The Trekkie fanbase, and a few other truly dedicated fan-communities, are neither religions nor cults because there is no level at which there is any official belief that these events are real.
The individuals might, on some unconscious level, treat them as 'real,' but when cornered, everyone admits it's a TV show. It seems to me that one of the defining points of religion is that it has to, on some level, believe that the spiritual world is 'real' while the temporal world is 'fake.'
As for cults, as I understand it, they're defined as requiring payment to be in them, and having a central leader figure of some kind, a high-priest or a self-appointed deity on Earth. This is all dimly-recalled definitions from a religious studies and a sociology class at SFU, so I'm playing pretty fast and loose, here.
We should study fan communities as something unto themselves that uses elements of the cult, elements of religion, elements of literary readerships, and creates something new. That method is least likely to get it 'wrong.' If we keep trying to stuff fandom into a pre-existing model, we're going to end up forcibly interpreting it in terms of something else, carving the corners off of the square peg so it will fit in the round hole.
That said, I think it's fair to say that fans often treat the text (TV shows, movies, books, etc.) like scripture in a few respects, like memorizing details of the narratives and quoting passages that might apply to a current situation as if they were parables. That use of pop culture as scripture happens commonly with Yoda from Star Wars because his dialogue is specifically constructed to sound like 'ancient wisdom,' so "Do, or do not. There is no 'try,'" is repeated, ad nauseum, as if it were the word of God. "There is no spoon" had a similar resonance, until the sequels to The Matrix turned out to be extremely unpopular, at which point its philosophical power as a quotable text disappeared. We evaluate the power of the philosophy primarily based on the perceived quality of the narrative itself. If it entertains us, if it moves us, we believe its espoused wisdom.
I think internal conflicts that are resolved by embracing difference are a sign of an internally complex text that doesn't have any one meaning. In Trek, Spock and McCoy butt heads regularly, right to the end, but that friendly friction is taken as a source of strength, as is Kirk and Spock's totally divergent behaviour in regards to sex (the penis vs. the brain) and problem solving (the gut vs. the brain). Variety, represented in no small part by the multi-ethnic cast, is constantly championed in Trek.
That's not to say it doesn't have some rather discomforting imperialist overtones, of course, but despite Kirk's domineering presence (he does act as judge and jury of every culture they meet) the 'one true path' that the show advocates for is a self-guided one based on freedom of choice. Kirk's interventions are almost always based on rebelling against an alien presence that controls a society, like the computer Landrew, for example.
As for Moore, Gaiman, and Ellis, none of them have cultish fans in this way, although Sandman comes fairly close. A lot of young women dressed up as Death for a very long time, but half the time, they didn't realize it. It just turned into a 'look' in Goth fashion. But as my supervisor, the esteemed Dr. Douglas Barbour points out, that kind of obsessive behaviour is all but impossible with texts that constantly unwrite themselves, call attention to their own nature as texts, and deconstruct their genres.
Ellis' work is particularly stark about its rejection of standard genres. Less subtle, perhaps, but very powerful. Planetary unwrites the history of the Pulps up through the early days of comics, and evn James Bond. Global Frequency gets about 75% of the way through totally deconstructing the singular hero, but stops short of really blowing it to bits.
Posted by orion at May 13, 2006 3:48 PM