Fandom, an idiosyncratic view from the inside

It has been months since I've blogged.  I've been contemplating what I could use this blog for now that I'm in a phase where I'm researching and writing, and that just doesn't lend it self to blogging.  I'm sure no one wants to read a blog about the academic books on Chinese cinema and art I've been reading lately.  In all of this reading I have, however, stumbled across a field of enquiry that I never knew existed.  There are actually scholars who study fandom.  Yeah, you could have knocked me over with a feather when I read this.  Not only that, but there is a special term for academics who are fans of the artists that they are studying--aca-fans (short for "academic fans").  I must say I was surprised.So what does this have to do with me and this blog?  As many of you may know, I am a fan of Leslie Cheung, the Hong Kong singer and actor.  Leslie has many fans these days, it seems, if the polls and internet statistics are to be believed.  But the vast majority of them are Asian and most of them live in Asia and not in the West.  All of this seems to indicate that I'm a rather unusual sort of Leslie Cheung fan.  I've always been quite curious about why I was so bowled over by Leslie, given that I discovered him more than four years after his death.  I had never seen one of his films before June 2007, and until September 2007, I had never seen a video of one of his (in)famous Hong Kong Coliseum shows or heard him sing.  Yet in late March 2010 I was on a plane bound for Hong Kong to participate in the commemorative activities around the seventh anniversary of his passing. (to be continued)