JOMEC Journal Journalism, Media and Cultural Studies Published by Cardiff University Press When Tourism Comes to You (But You Still Have to Go Get It, Dawg): The Rickmobile and Transmedia Tourism/Fandom Paul Booth DePaul University Email: [email protected] Keywords Fandom Merchandising Mobile Advertising Social Media Branding Tourism Consumer Culture Transmedia Abstract This paper analyses the Rickmobile, a mobile, pop-up merchandise car themed and designed around the eponymous Rick Sanchez (voiced by Justin Roiland) from Cartoon Network’s Rick and Morty (2013- ), as a site of transmedia mobile pilgrimage and fan-tourist destination. As a material fan object and as an object of fan tourism, the Rickmobile becomes a site of overlapping discourses surrounding the historical contexts of cult merchandising, media pilgrimage, and fans’ social media reporting. Reflecting aspects of the show, it can be seen as a transmedia brand extension. At the same time, the Rickmobile encourages a particular type of fan engagement, harnessing active fan agency and encouraging fans to create their own Rick and Morty experience – but in doing so, fans become simultaneously imbricated within authorized, top-down and commercially-aligned structures. Contributor Note Paul Booth is Professor of Media and Cinema Studies at DePaul University. He is the author/editor of 11 books, including Digital Fandom (2010/2016, Peter Lang), Game Play (2015, Bloomsbury), Wiley Companion to Media Fandom and Fan Studies (2018, Wiley- Blackwell), and the forthcoming Watching Doctor Who (2020, Bloomsbury, with Craig Owen Jones). Citation 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, ‘Transmedia Tourism, ed. Ross Garner, 91-105. DOI: https://doi.org/10.18573/jomec.177 Accepted for publication: 24th October 2019 https://jomec.cardiffuniversitypress.org/ @JOMECjournal (which itself is an X-rated short parody of Introduction the Back to the Future trilogy (Zemeckis, 1985, 1989, 1990), follows titular Studies of transmediality offer multiple characters Rick Sanchez (voiced by frameworks for understanding the Roiland), an alcoholic scientist and relationship between texts in a inventor (and, as we find out, intergalactic transmedia framework. In particular, a ne’er-do-well), and his grandson Morty top-down authorship approach (see Scott (also voiced by Roiland) an oft- 2012) sees the controlling figure of an exasperated pubescent teen, as they have auteur as key to understanding adventures throughout time, space, and transmedia franchises, while a bottom-up alternate dimensions. fan-centric approach (Dehry Kurtz and Bourdaa 2017) reveals more tenuous but The transmedia dimensions of Rick and related connections. In the former, Morty are not vast: beyond the television auteurs help to frame the transmediation; program, only an ongoing monthly comic in the latter, audience interpretation takes book title continues the narrative, while a precedence. However, important series of games, toys, and merchandise differences within media texts can be further the transmedia brand (see revealed when different transmedia Tenderich and Williams 2015). This paper structures enter into the media argues, however, that the Rickmobile – a environment. For example, media mobile pop-up shop in the shape of Rick industries relying on fan audiences can Sanchez – reframes the transmediation engender different structures of through a fannish tourist framework. The transmediation. I argue in this article that Rickmobile adjusts the temporality and different types of fan labour can be identity of fans, turning transmediated fan harnessed by transmedia brand engagement into fan labour, in the way it extensions focused on touristic and highlights connections between media consumerist behaviors of fans, using Rick tourism, social media, and merchandising and Morty’s Rickmobile as a prime in the age of consumerist and example. mainstream fandom. Much recent fan studies scholarship has approached the Rick and Morty (Cartoon Network 2013–), fan-as-labour paradigm, wherein the a popular adult cartoon which airs on the mainstream media industries are US’s Adult Swim late-night offerings and harnessing the power and reach of fans on the UK’s FOX network, has become a to work (usually for free) for the media cult hit, developing a sizable fandom 1 producer (see Booth 2015c; Chin 2014; despite its short tenure onscreen. Scott 2009). Much of this scholarship, Developed by Justin Roiland and Dan however, tends to examine more active Harmon, the show has aired, as of 2018, uses of fans – fans’ art being cited as a 31 episodes – with a further 70 ordered type of word-of-mouth advertising, or by Cartoon Network – and has developed fans’ social media use being harnessed to a base of active and participatory fans. promote and discuss a particular text. The show, which is based on Roiland’s This paper argues, in contrast, that the early work on the animated Internet web Rickmobile paradoxically enables fans to series The Adventures of Doc and Mharti do both: fans are active through their 1 During the writing of this article, multiple detailing quite negative interactions of the Rick popular criticism articles have been released and Morty fandom (see Purdom 2017). 91 https://jomec.cardiffuniversitypress.org/ @JOMECjournal social media usage and engagement in wherein fans journey to ‘a location or site transmedia tourism, but in doing so they that has a meaning in the ‘text’ become positioned by the Rickmobile as surrounding a popular culture figure’ a passive consumer/promoter of the (Linden and Linden 2017, 105). Yet, product. By applying the methodologies of traditional studies of fan pilgrimages only fan studies to contemporary debates focus on stationary places – Graceland, about transmedia and tourism, this article Vancouver, New Zealand, Disneyland – or complicates scholars’ traditional views of stores like Forbidden Planet (e.g. Geraghty the monetization of the active 2014). In contrast, the Rickmobile turns engagement of fans of cult media texts. fan tourism into a ‘FOMO’ (Fear of Missing Out) experience, as it drives from city to city and relies on the social media usage ‘Does Your Car Look Like a Smaller of fans to help spread the word on the Version of Your House?’ vehicle’s eventual locale. The car, filled with one-of-a-kind merchandise, That there are fans of Rick and Morty announces it’s ‘tour’ online – where it will should not be a surprise, and that they are stop and when – but fans work as active participants in the fandom even promotional branders (Burns 2016) to less so. The 21st century media advertise the vehicle. Lines often exceed environment is built for fandom (Booth the amount of merchandise available. 2015c). Fans are mainstreamed now, becoming the de facto audience for many The Rickmobile is not the first-time fans hit television series and films (Jenkins have been asked to promote the 2007; Fraade-Blaner and Glazer 2017). As whereabouts of a traveling cult object, nor Rhys Williams (2016) notes in his review is it the only transmedia tourist of Rick and Morty, ‘If one broad current of experience that has been designed. comedy might be defined as ‘playing with Ahead of the release of Despicable Me 2 expectations’, then Rick and Morty (Coffin and Renaud, 2013), for instance, demands a fannish level of expertise to Universal Pictures and Illumination ‘get’ everything’ (Booth 2015c, 147). Fans Entertainment created the Despicablimp, of Rick and Morty had one additional way a flying blimp in the shape of a Minion of participating in their fandom that was from the film. Fans were encouraged to not available to fans of many other shows follow along on social media by tweeting or films: they could follow, and purchase sightings or posting images on Instagram. products from, the Rickmobile as it Similarly, the #SpotStuart campaign used traversed the country selling Rick and a giant balloon of Stuart the Minion for Morty themed merchandise. In doing so, promotion of Despicable Me 3 (Balda, fans not only participated in the active Coffin and Guillon, 2017). Designed to consumption of the text, but also become look like Rick Sanchez, the Rickmobile participants in a transmedia branding (Figure 1) depicts a hunched over Rick, exercise that hinges on both the social facing backwards, vomit spilling out of his media usage of contemporary fans and mouth, with a deranged look in his eye. the mainstreaming of fandom in the The body and image of the car contemporary media environment. paratextually frames a particular reading of the character and, through him, the Studies of fandom and tourism argue that show. Rick and Morty features ‘the fan travel can be a type of ‘pilgrimage’ overriding aesthetic and substance …[of] 92 https://jomec.cardiffuniversitypress.org/ @JOMECjournal a grotesque body-horror/body-comedy ‘entertainment has seeped into every (Williams 2016, 148), and the car features aspect of the economy’, and ‘shopping a tortured and excessive body posture – has become blended into entertainment’ Rick on his knees, vomit on his mouth, (Kozinets et al. 2002, 17). They argue that angry look in his eye. Williams (2016) goes ‘themed brand stores’, or stories that are on to note that: primarily focused on selling branded services rather than products, have The grotesque aesthetic and the become ‘woven into the fabric of reflexive irony of the show are generated consumers’ cultural universe’ (Kozinets et by the void at its heart, a void that plagues the postmodern liberal today. al. 2002, 18). Consumers follow brands The grotesque is, traditionally, not only and, as Kozinets (2014) later illustrates, an aesthetic but an expression of brand leaders try to cultivate their resistance – a folk weapon against the consumers as fans. The Rickmobile is a status quo and its strictures. (Williams site of fan consumption, and at the same 2016, 149) time, a space where fan interactions transmediate the Rick and Morty The Rickmobile becomes a synecdoche experience.