ABSTRACT
The ability of fans to construct such readings is only a result of distanciation and non-reciprocality in the consumption of transnational popular culture, but of the proliferation of intertextuality within and across popular media. While national broadcast entertainment has been a crucial agent in building a shared national cultural horizon, mediated popular culture has nevertheless been tied to forces and processes of globalization throughout the era of national broadcasting in three important respects. In the increasing cultural interconnectivity of globalization, fans' participation in selected aspects of popular culture thus not only enable fans' membership of networks and communities but also becomes a tool of both deliberate and inadvertent distinction. However, the emphasis on fans' agency and the role of popular culture as a realm of resistance and empowerment in Cultural Studies has frequently failed to acknowledge the degree to which practices of contemporary consumption are embedded in industrial everyday life and consumerism.
