Gabe Koerner–”The ‘Trekkies’ Kid”
February 12th, 2008 by GregJust a quick post to update those of us who were speculating on the future of Gabriel Koerner, the teenager with the impressive 3D modeling skills and precise pronunciation featured in “Trekkies.”
After a google search on his name, I found his website (personal or professional, you choose!). Be sure to check out his reflections (sorry, I couldn’t make this one link: from his personal page, click ‘bio’) on his appearance in “Trekkies.”
Notice that he deftly he avoids the issue of his Trek fandom, which I find interesting considering that he worked on Star Trek: Enterprise (again, no link: from professional page, click ‘resume,’ scroll 1/3 of the way down).
As far as his fandom goes, I didn’t find anything that smacked of fan activity in a few quick searches, but maybe this discussion is itself fan activity?
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Feel free to edit the post in order to make those things link.
One of the really interesting things on his personal site is his self-deprecating bio. If you read it, you’ll notice that he takes significant steps to distance himself (somewhat lovingly) from the person he was on Trekkies. This brought me to one of the thoughts I had while watching them movie. While we keep talking about the critical collapse of distance between fans and their fan objects and trying to maybe subvert that stereotype, I’ve been wondering if we maybe haven’t been experiencing a critical collapse of distance between ourselves and the fans we’re studying. I found it sort of refreshing that Gabe recognized that his fourteen-year-old self was, to be honest, kind of a “prick” (his word, not mine). And I don’t find it pathological or reprsentative of his internalization of destructive ideas from mainstream culture that he thinks so. He’s smug, often condescending, and really unecessarily anal about the hard work other people have done for him. And being a fan doesn’t excuse these qualities that we would probably dislike in any member of the human race. Anyways, all that I’m saying is I think that we should be careful not see everything bad that we think or that someone else says about a fan as representative of the evil, hegemonic, brainwashing dominant culture that should be totally avoided.
I wonder what message is encoded in a documentary that uses a 14-year-old kid as its main star. Most of the fans shown were adults. Could there be some message being sent about fan maturity in making constant references back to the obsessed kid?
What does it say about the “adults” in this film when we hear that this kid “grew out of it”? Did most of these fans move on in some way? Jenkins seems to think that fans may move on to new shows, but practices are not some immature “phase.” They are valid practices.
I think a more valuable documentary would be a Trekkies: 2 where they caught up with these people 10 years later. My guess is that a seemingly homogenous bunch would have diversified in many ways. What this says about fandom I don’t know.
http://www.trekkies2.com/
Again, though, while I agree that there are messages beneath the surface reading, I don’t think that we should characterize them all as totally negative towards fans, or at least as unfair. The kid was as legitimate a subject of the documentary as any of the adults–he wasn’t some isolated case that they were misrepresenting; if anything, I think Gabe’s website confirms that the documentary is a pretty accurate depiction of what he was like. I wouldn’t have rather had the documentary leave the kid out because it didn’t want people to make negative assocations between the kid and the adult fans. If we do make those associations, it’s also not entirely clear that they aren’t warranted in some cases. Overall, I also thought that this was a pretty in-depth, multi-faceted approach. Yes, some of the people came off as immature (and again, I don’t think that it pathologizes a 14-year-old to say that he’s immature), but others came off as remarkably adult, more so than many non-fans–think of all of those fan groups devoted to community service. That was something the documentary makers could have easily left out if they wanted to harp on about the immaturity of the fans. It would seem pretty pathetic if a woman who worked in shipping wanted to be called “commander”; it seems much less so if she’s the commander of a large organization that conducts important work in the community.
I agree that not including Gabe would have been problematic, since his inclusion really helped the documentary explain the Trek community as not excluding anyone arbitrarily. Gabe participated equally with adult fans, in ways that a typical kid probably couldn’t (I certainly could NOT design models on my computer.) I also don’t think the community itself would have found the documentary questioning their maturity level because of the ethos behind their own involvement.
Anyone notice the “able to finnagle his broke and struggling father to build a shuttlecraft on the back of a 1980 VW pickup truck” bit in his bio? Maybe that answers Brandon’s question about why they didn’t play up the touching family connection: they were actually editing around tensions.
It really is interesting to contrast Gabe and some of the actors themselves. Gabe grew out of his fandom it seems. He still seems to consider it a part of him, but a part that’s no longer important. Yet for Scottie and Bones, the show has been huge for both of them since they quit. It’s not something they grow out of rather it’s something that they continue to be a part of, for the rest of their lives and beyond. The cast of Star Trek never really grew out of the series, never really stretched their wings out. Shatner tried to, even winning a few Emmy awards, but he’ll still always be Kirk. This is the same way that Mark Hammill will always be Luke Skywalker despite his amazing voice acting work. But Scottie and Bones never tried to stretch their wings, they seemed to be more than content with being their roles. They don’t need to grow anymore, they are in places that they are happy to be. It’s get a life reversed, with the actors “stuck” in the role with the fans moving on.
I think that inclusion of Gabe helped represent the generations that Star Trek has touched and influenced. It isn’t just adults, it is teens and children that find joy and belonging within this fandom. One of the main points that seemed to be pushed throughout the documentary was that Star Trek was a moral show that could benefit everyone. It is not exclusive, but gives everyone a wholesome way to live. (It reminds me of the religious qualities of fandom discussed in Fandom’s introduction. I can’t help but see parallels to the moral code provided by Star Trek and the way of life outlined by the Bible. This, of course, may be due to my own religious upbringing and the arguments I’ve heard for christainity.)