Drooling R.E.M. fans as “matter out of place"

Bennett, Lucy ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2264-7596 2010. Drooling R.E.M. fans as “matter out of place". Presented at: International Association for the Study of Popular Music-UK / Ireland, Cardiff, 2 – 4 September 2010.

Full text not available from this repository.

Abstract

In this paper I discuss how members within Murmurs.com, an online community for fans of rock band R.E.M., construct meanings surrounding the band and their music. I demonstrate how these fans are driven by the image of R.E.M and their music as holding value for the “thinking” fan and explore the manner in which this is constructed within the community and explicitly enforced by the hierarchy through strategies of power. Drawing on Mary Douglas (1966), I will show how members that do not engage in the accepted intelligentsia image of the band and community, but instead display extreme levels of adoration and desire identified as drooling, are targeted as “matter out of place,” a pollutant within Murmurs, due to their non-compliance with normative discourse and the accepted musical meanings within R.E.M fandom.

Item Type:	Conference or Workshop Item (Paper)
Date Type:	Completion
Status:	Unpublished
Schools:	Journalism, Media and Culture
Last Modified:	27 Oct 2022 10:28
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/70439

Actions (repository staff only)

Edit Item