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When tourism comes to you (but you still have to go get it, dawg): The Rickmobile and transmedia tourism/fandom

Booth, Paul 2019. When tourism comes to you (but you still have to go get it, dawg): The Rickmobile and transmedia tourism/fandom. JOMEC Journal (14) , pp. 91-105. 10.18573/jomec.177

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Abstract

This paper analyzes the Rickmobile as a site of mobile media pilgrimage and fan tourist destination. The Rickmobile is a mobile, pop-up merchandise car themed and designed around eponymous Rick Sanchez from the cult cartoon Rick and Morty. As a material fan object and as an object of fan tourism, the Rickmobile becomes a site of overlapping discourses surrounding the historical context of cult merchandising, media pilgrimage, and social media ‘pre-textual’ fan reporting (Hills 2015b). At the same time, it problematizes traditional fan studies’ examinations of active and passive fan labor. This paper argues that the Rickmobile functions as a pseudo transmedia extension, allowing fans to create one type of active Rick and Morty fan experience, but to be used as a different type of passive industrial Rick and Morty experience.

Item Type: Article
Date Type: Publication
Status: Published
Subjects: G Geography. Anthropology. Recreation > GV Recreation Leisure
H Social Sciences > H Social Sciences (General)
H Social Sciences > HM Sociology
Uncontrolled Keywords: Fandom; Merchandising; Mobile Advertising; Social Media; Branding; Tourism; Consumer Culture; Transmedia
Publisher: Cardiff University Press
ISSN: 2049-2340
Date of First Compliant Deposit: 8 January 2020
Date of Acceptance: 24 October 2019
Last Modified: 14 Aug 2023 00:59
URI: https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/128350

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