Desiring Harry Potter: Consumption practices in hyperreality

The extant research on hyperreality rather focuses on fantasy and fandom aspects like online communities, films, and tourism. The rise of the fantasy genre (appendix 1), however, as increasingly popular, calls for more research on hyperreality, which is an inextricable element of this trend. The present study sheds light on how people consume hyperreal elements and how desire operates under this hyperreal condition by looking at the fandom of Harry Potter. A netnographic analysis of 130,000 comments, yielded the fans’ own explanations on the reasons they consume Harry Potter, utilising the theoretical framework of Jean Baudrillard and Jacques Lacan. The fans’ stories attest that the hyperreal shift- previously attributed to the pandemic- is rooted to trauma. People choose to escape to hyperreal environments and leave behind not only their worries, but also their various physical and mental illnesses, grief, and abuse. In short, every traumatic event might cause a desire to reside in a fantasy realm, which is seen as a safe place. Nevertheless, prolonged period of immersion leads to simulation, where people integrate fandoms in their lives and habitats. The fans of this category, go through a transformation to become Uber-fans. As such, this type of fans is exposed to the fandom and nits hyperreal elements for so long that their desire for the fandom becomes a hyperdesire as they crave for the hyperreal element that becomes integral in the subject’s (the fans’) existence. The study ultimately shows that the hyperreal hides the real and assumes its place. In such occurrence, consumer typologies must be adapted to include the hyperreal element, and the hyperreal becomes the fourth order in a psychoanalytic explanation of the psyche that can no longer fit in the three major structures of the symbolic, the imaginary and the real as the hyperreal order interferes and changes the balance.