Prompts for Week 4
February 12th, 2008 by BobFirst, a note about tonight’s screening: due to rotten weather, I handed projection duties over to Natan, whose own schedule will make it necessary to screen Trekkies before “Amok Time.” (I had planned to show them the other way around, but I want to respect Natan’s needs.) You won’t be watching the slash vid “Closer” at tonight’s screening, so please view it on your own before Thursday’s class. Lauren has posted an immensely valuable guide to the “Closer” debate and provided a number of resources on fan vids, so please check out her post before you watch the vid.
As usual, feel free to respond to any of the prompts below with your comments, or raise other questions / share other perceptions about the week’s screening and articles.
- Trekkies sets out to document the Star Trek fan community. What are some of the strengths and weaknesses of its approach? How would you characterize its overall take on media fandom? And what similarities and differences do you see between Trekkies and other “portraits” we’ve been exposed to, from Shatner’s “Get a Life” sketch and Jenkins’s recuperation of it to the more “objective” accounts offered by Radway and Seiter?
- Can you place Trekkies (which was released in 1997) on the time scale of fan studies offered in the introduction to Fandom (“fandom is beautiful” and so on)? How does the documentary’s rhetorical position reflect a particular moment of mainstream culture’s reaction to media fans?
- How are the fans featured in Trekkies creative? What kinds of material practices characterize their fandom?
- Picking up on our discussion of authority, how are various kinds of authority invoked in the film? What role do Trek’s professionals (writers, actors, etc) play in establishing this authority?
- Once you have watched both “Amok Time” and “Closer” (and followed some of the links provided by Lauren), can you evaluate the vid as an instance of what Jenkins calls “poaching”? How does it differ from the kinds of fan activity described in Chapters 1 & 2 of Textual Poachers?
- Given your experience of fandom (as participant or observer), where do you see poaching happening today? Does the poaching model still hold up? How could we revise/improve it?
- Chapter 2 of Textual Poachers identifies a number of reading traits associated with “excessive” fandom: the collapse of critical distance; the in-depth study of a show; the recording and remixing of media; gossip. Do you see these behaviors reflected in contemporary fandom? How have they been transformed in the years since 1992? Do the technologies available to fans play a role?
- Finally, what did you think of the Star Trek episode? (I’m particularly interested to hear reactions from people who have never seen the 1960s series!) Can you imagine yourself in the various interpretive and affective positions of the historical fan? Does the show “scan” for you as a fan object?
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Since Bob put the time into making 8 prompts for the screening I feel like I should address at least one of them before I made my own points. Sarah and I were discussing where on the time scale “Trekkies” took place. We came to a consensus that it was a transitional piece between “Fandom is Beautiful” (FIB) and “Fandom as in Mainstream” (FAIM). We saw the FIB because the movie mainly follows participants at a Star Trek convention. Also, the movie does still other the Trekkies, at least slightly, as in the beginning of the movie, one of the organizers of the convention said something along the lines that he has been doing conventions for 7 years and now they starting to seem normal. Also, the Star Trek juror was presented in another instance of mainstream othering. On the other hand, there was the scene were the Trekkies revealed their occupations, which served as a method to show that they were not so different and could belong to the mainstream.
Now for my own observations. One thing that has been brought up in a few of our readings and was mentioned in “Trekkies” was how much more normal sports fans are considered when compared to Trekkies. While that is true to a point, there are instances where sports fans are deemed just as other as hardcore Star Trek fans. The juror claimed that its deemed normal for people to wear football uniforms, but not Star Trek uniforms. I think this is not true, because I have never seen anyone wear a full football uniform any where but at a game, and even those fans are somewhat othered. You see people wearing football jerseys, but rarely, do you see someone wearing the jersey over shoulder pads and carrying a helmet. As Jenkins said, no body wants to be the most hardcore fan, and if you do, you will be at least a slight outcast. One example of this is from Seinfeld where David Puddy was a much more hardcore hockey fan than the accepted norm for a hockey fan. (The first minute of the clip is the relevant part) The thing that puts such a stigma on Trekkies is the hardcore fans are seen as the majority of Star Trek fans. Soccer fans in England are perceived negatively, at least in my experience, becaue the hardcore hooligans are seen as the norm. So, I don’t really think that the object of a fan’s affection is the marker for otherness, but the degree of ‘hardcoreness’ that a certain are percieved to hold is the basis for the amount of ostracizing for that group.
My first reaction to Trekkies was, I think, not the intended one. Because of the high level of participation in the film by actors from the Original Series of Star Trek and subsequent series, I got the feeling that the video was supposed to legitimize fan practices. The prevalence of fans in costume and the way they kept repeating, “Star Trek is about including all kinds of people,” and, “I feel like I have something in common with everyone here,” all this acceptance business, gave me the feeling that Trekkies was supposed to be an enthusiastic celebration, a la “Fandom is Beautiful” not only of fan communities but of Star Trek itself.
My reaction? Honestly? Ew, I’m not like THEM, am I?
I watch Star Trek every weekend, ok? I was awwing all over the place about George Takei and DeForest Kelly. I skimmed Nichelle Nichols’ autobiography when I was supposed to be working at the NC State University Library.
All the same, I thought Trekkies was a great example of the criticism leveled against the first wave of fan studies in that it re-othered the fans it presented, thereby alienating any potential new fans.
The costumed fans in Trekkies, especially those who wore their costumes all the time, seemed to me to be some of the most extreme examples of Star Trek fandom. In presenting their clubs as the norm of fan interaction (showing the “Romulan fleet” as a common fan meet-up, ex.), Trekkies may have exaggerated the average fan’s investment in Star Trek, even that of the average convention-goer, or the average cosplayer.
In the face of these exaggerations, especially the glowing predictions towards the end of the film about how Star Trek would determine the future and cure cancer and eliminate all inequality (as Jenkins says, fans *know* their fan object is flawed), I felt really uncomfortable. Was I supposed to feel this unconflicted about Star Trek? If I were a true Star Trek Fan (or Trekkie, or Trekker, or WhatshisnameFemme), would I really be surgically altering my ears to make them more pointy?
What resulted from the overall screening for me was a peak of excitement over Star Trek (while watching “Amok Time” — I even felt like the other people watching the screening with me, who had never seen Star Trek, were with me in digging the episode), followed by a sort of hasty distancing myself from the whole thing.
That’s what re-othering is all about, in my mind.
Henry Jenkins’ second chapter, with his unquestioning quotation of the term “mundanes” to refer to non-fans (a term Lauren previously, and rightly, I believe, complained to me about), is no less guilty. His quasi-hazing ritual, whereby older fans force younger fans to watch specific clips from episodes over and over again until they learn to see the way fans see, in that “superior mode,” also turned me off.
And don’t get me started on his whole Fans = Women = Middle-class white housewives construction.
Let’s just say that, this time around with Jenkins, I’m glad that he’s not the be-all and end-all of Fan Studies.
For someone who knows very little about Star Trek fandom, Trekkies was able to shed a lot of light on this particular fan community. Although I knew that Star Trek conventions occurred, learning that there were probably several every weekend, all across the world, really changed my understanding about the magnitude and broadness of Trek fandom. Another strength of this film was that it brought up a lot of social and ideological perceptions that fans get from ST that people might not otherwise consider. Fans talked about the inspiration that got from seeing blacks and women in positions of power, as well as a model of people from all different backgrounds (and planets) living and working together. Trekkies also showed that part of the series’ appeal was that it gave and continues to give people hope about the future. I think that this was probably most significant with the first series as it aired during the height of the Vietnam War.
However, I think the overall portrayal of Star Trek fandom in this documentary was negative. Although one of the convention managers asserts, “It’s starting to become normal”, the film paints a very different picture. I think the movie’s producers chose to document only the most hardcore and obsessed Star Trek fans. From the woman who goes outside and stares at one of the actors’ house, to the people who wear ST garb 24/7, to the guy who goes around in that motorized chair, the film serves to enforce the stereotype that fans are obsessive, immature, and unable to separate fantasy from reality.
The question of appeals to authority in Trekkies is amusing to me because of what was probably my favorite moment in the entire thing (barring the part with the kitty), when Denise Crosby was told that sometimes the dentist dressed up as her when he and his wife were role-playing during sex. If you read this interview with the director of Trekkies, you’ll find that he watched Star Trek as a kid, considers himself a scifi fan, has noticed the “we laugh because we understand” phenomenon, and didn’t intend Trekkies to be either sympathetic or mocking. Most interestingly, though, is the fact he didn’t come up with the idea for Trekkies, Crosby (Yar) did. When I was watching it, I saw what was presumably the choice of Crosby as host as an appeal to authority: the documentarian is on the side of the producers, and is sympathetic to the fans, was my reading. I saw Crosby’s benevolent, accepting demeanor throughout the film as indicating to viewers that, yes, Trekkies are harmless and was amused at the aforementioned moment when her composure slipped because it seemed to indicate some underlying feeling that no, Trekkies aren’t always harmless, sometimes they go too far. But if the movie was Crosby’s idea in the first place, I don’t think it can really be appealing to her as a producer-representing authority. So now I’m not quite sure what to think; it’s notable that they didn’t really show the other actors interacting with fans at all, and in the only comparable moment to the one above, Brent Spiner kept his composure a lot better than Crosby did.
On a totally different topic, I’m going to extend both the nomad and the poaching metaphor until they creak like 100-year-old hinges, but only because I think it’s productive to do so. After class on Tuesday, Bob said something about how he considered every time someone borrows an idea from someone else to be poaching in a way and Kathy mentioned fantasy novels as borrowing from each other, etc. I disagree with both. Let’s examine the scenario of poaching in its more conventional usage: someone in a weak position of power (a serf) steals from someone in a strong position (a king). Producers taking ideas from other producers can’t be poaching: if a lord hunts in another lord’s forest, it’s almost certainly by permission, and even if it’s not, it would probably be treated as bad form or a misunderstanding at worst; IE, not a hanging offense. People working within a generic or folkloric tradition don’t really poach from each other either, because generic and folkloric conventions are public or shared property in a way — when farmers in England grazed their cows on public land before the enclosure act, they weren’t taking anything from anyone, because that grass was already everyone’s. Poaching, to me and I think to Jenkins, requires a power differential.
And now for some xkcd: http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/online_communities_small.png
This isn’t really a representation of the world of fandom, per se, but I think it’s interesting and very comparable. I find the idea of nomadic media fans to be a very useful and productive one, not so much in the way it models behavior, but in the way it leads to modeling fandoms themselves. Some fandoms are huge cities with tons of urban sprawl, so that there are really casual fans in the suburbs: Harry Potter, for example, or comic books heroes (I’m sorry, but anyone who sat through the monstrosity that was X3 has to count as a fan). Some fandoms are small, contained cities that have a sizable population but don’t participate in much commerce. Take, for example, Sherlock Holmes fandom, which has a lot of people who aren’t fans of anything else and isn’t very well known in other fandoms. Some fandoms have an old city and a new city, like Montreal: Lord of the Rings fandom, say, because of the movies. Some fandoms are small towns that don’t tolerate difference very well, like Stargate Atlantis where anyone who doesn’t ship Shephard/McKay is EVIL!!!11. And some fandoms are little more than collections of people who live within a couple of miles of each other on farms in the country and I can’t think of an example right now but I’m sure they exist. Fans can travel between these communities, keep multiple residences, etc. I think it’d be kind of cool to draw a map of my fandom world, where I’ve been, where I keep coming back to, where mine overlaps with others, etc. It’s not a perfect model, but I think it does pretty well, all things considered.
First– confession to the fandom I grew up with. I texted my father before watching “Amok Time” informing him of the episode of Star Trek I was about to watch. I was expecting him to be “proud of me,” but instead he responded with a short synopsis of the episode followed by a
“right?” My dad continues to surprise me with his Trekkie qualities.
I hesitate to use the term “trekkie,” however, due to the vast difference in definitions collected in the documentary “Trekkies.” I was originally under the assumption that Trekkies was a word used by outsiders – by non fans – and that Trekkers was the legit term; but it appears that it is a level of classification within the fandom. It also seems that the classification is dependent on who you ask. I assume it is defined by each subgroup? It seems dangerous and grounds for discussion within the fandom…
In response to Steve’s post regarding sports– I have to strongly agree with the points he made. Full uniform verses a team jersey is a significant difference; for instance, no one would find a Star Trek t-shirt out of the ordinary. The documentary attempted to show a complete picture of the convention and its attendees; however, I agree with Ari in that the overall portrayal was negative. Outlandish people and practices are interesting and they sell. (Example– Brittany Spears shaved her head, showed up to her first show since her pregnancies drunk, and was recently committed for bipolar disorder…ah the life of the rich and famous) Showing motorized life-support boxes used as everyday transportation and women who insist on being called commander at work SELLS. They are what are remembered and talked about after the documentary. They catch our attention. They become the stereotype.
It is the natural flow of normalization.. first it is outlandish and negatively viewed.. but then as time goes on, it is worked into society and loses its identity among the mass production and mass acceptance.
Based on the prompts that Bob gave us, as well as the current discussion that’s been started by other members of the class about the Trekkies documentary, I wanted to talk a little bit about the issue of authority invoked in the film. At one point in the film, one of the producers mentioned that Star Trek has an open script submission policy, and I thought that was really interesting. Most shows do not have open submissions policies due to laws and regulations with the Writer’s Guild of America, but Star Trek went through special deals with the WGA and other TV legal departments in order to allow freelance script submissions. Considering the producers of the show went through the trouble to create the open script policy, it would seem that they want to give fans the agency to influence the text of the show. There is even a link on the TrekWeb website (“the source for everything Trek”) dedicated to scriptwriting for the show, which lays out the guidelines and procedures of the process for anyone who may be interested. I wonder then if this open submissions policy does anything to solve the sort of producer versus consumer, writer versus reader conflict that Jenkins talks about in Textual Poachers. (Jenkins 28-33). It seems like it would, at least on the surface, because Star Trek fans could feel as though the producers are actually sensitive to the opinions and needs, if you will, of the fans.
In the Trekkies documentary, however, the several times we hear from the producer of the show, he seems to be somewhat condescending toward the fans and shoots down many of their ideas. I do not remember exactly, but I’m pretty sure he shows an example of a really over-the-top submission from a female fan, but never gives an example of a submission that was ultimately used in an episode of the show. I mean, maybe there have been instances where fans’ ideas have made the scripts, but in the way Trekkies documented this issue, it seems like the producers of Star Trek are merely appeasing their large fan base while holding the ultimate authority over what does and does not make the series. I mean, I know this point seems to be obvious, because of course the producers would have the last say in what ultimately airs, but I just wonder then, how much the show’s producers are really incorporating the ideas of some of the show’s most dedicated fans, and if the producer versus consumer conflict is diminished at all by this policy.