Star Trek Fan Research Articles

How Long Do I Have, Doc?

Star Trek fans know that the unnamed crewman will usually die before the episode's first commercial. In real life, however, even doctors can't make such accurate predictions about a person's remaining time. But researchers might achieve the feat for nematodes, according to a new study suggesting that a worm's output of a stress-fighting protein forecasts its life span. The work might eventually allow scientists to devise tests to estimate human longevity.

Dancing with discrimination: managing stigma and identity

Fans are a group that are stigmatized and discredited, at least to some degree, by their “deviant” and common form of symbolic consumption. At stake in the process of stigmatization is the very identity of the individual fan, and their symbolic and emotional well‐being. This paper reports on an empirical study of one particular group of fans—Star Trek fans (or “Trekkies”)—and explores the complex identity issues articulated by them as they “manage” their problematic public identity. Drawing upon interviews conducted with 18 Trekkies, the article describes how this stigmatic identity is organized within a disciplinary matrix that operates at a micro level through two key processes: humour and self‐surveillance. In particular, we highlight their struggle with the dilemmas of exposing their private “fandom” in a public context, and the highly ambivalent manner in which they seek to escape stigmatization.

Utopian Enterprise: Articulating the Meanings ofStar Trek's Culture of Consumption : Figure 1

In this article, I examine the cultural and subcultural construction of consumption meanings and practices as they are negotiated from mass media images and objects. Field notes and artifacts from 20 months of fieldwork at Star Trek fan clubs, at conventions, and in Internet groups, and 67 interviews with Star Trek fans are used as data. Star Trek's subculture of consumption is found to be constructed as a powerful utopian refuge. Stigma, social situation, and the need for legitimacy shape the diverse subcultures' consumption meanings and practices. Legitimizing articulations of Star Trek as a religion or myth underscore fans' heavy investment of self in the text. These sacralizing articulations are used to distance the text from its superficial status as a commercial product. The findings emphasize and describe how consumption often fulfills the contemporary hunger for a conceptual space in which to construct a sense of self and what matters in life. They also reveal broader cultural tensions between the affective investments people make in consumption objects and the encroachment of commercialization.

Religion and Popular Culture in America

Preface to the 2005 Edition Preface to the First Edition Introduction: Finding Religion in Unexpected Places Bruce David Forbes Part I. Religion in Popular Culture 1. The Oriental Monk in American Popular Culture Jane Naomi Iwamura 2. Consecrating Consumer Culture: Christmas Television Specials Robert J. Thompson 3. Re-Mythologizing the Divine Feminine in The Da Vinci Code and The Secret Life of Bees Jennie S. Knight 4. Like a Sermon: Popular Religion in Madonna Videos Mark D. Hulsether Part II. Popular Culture in Religion 5. Evangelicals and Popular Music: The Contemporary Christian Music Industry William D. Romanowski 6. The Internet, Religion and Community Greg Peterson 7. The Cross at Willow Creek: Seeker Religion and the Contemporary Marketplace Stewart M. Hoover Part III. Popular Culture as Religion 8. It's about Faith in our Future: Star Trek Fandom as Cultural Religion Michael Jindra 9. Losing Their Way to Salvation: Women, Weight Loss, and the Salvation Myth of Culture Lite Michelle M. Lelwica 10. An American Apotheosis: Sports as Popular Religion Joseph L. Price 11. The Church of Baseball, the Fetish of Coca-Cola, and the Potlach of Rock 'n' Roll David Chidester Part IV. Religion and Popular Culture in Dialogue 12. The Disguise of Vengeance in Pale Rider Robert Jewett 13. Rap Music and Its Message: On Interpreting the Contact between Religion and Popular Culture Anthony Pinn 14. The Gender Dynamics of the Left Behind Series Amy Johnson Frykholm Conclusion: Establishing a Dialogue about Relgion and Popular Culture Jeffrey H. Mahan Contributors Selected Bibliography Index

Star Trek Fans and Costume Art

Star Trek Fans and Costume Art by Heather R. Joseph-Witham. Folk Art and Artists Series. (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1996. pp. 72, Preface, Photographs. $32.50 cloth. $16.95 paper) Heather R Joseph-Witham, a doctoral candidate in folklore and mythology at UCLA, has produced the first sustained account of costume art within the Star Trek fan community. In recent years, Star Trek fandom has emerged as a central locus of research for those concerned with the ways that participatory and folk cultures emerge in the shadows of the contemporary mass media. This research has helped to shatter once and for all the stereotype of the clueless Trekkie in desperate need of a life. Fans of Star Trek and many other programs have been examined as active participants in a thriving subculture with its own music, literature, philosophy, video art, and painting. These fans have taken the broadcast material as the raw materials for their own creative activity, much as earlier generations elaborated and retold the stock narratives of their culture. As one of Joseph-Witham's respondents explains, We're not defined by Trek; Trek is defined by us. Joseph-Witham's short yet rewarding study examines one particular sector of that community-those fans who are engaged in the design, production and modeling of their own uniforms, make-up and costumes based on the series. Joseph-Witham helps us to better understand the reasons people choose to more actively participate in this fan culture, despite some of the social stigma that surrounds it, and enables us to more fully appreciate the craftsmanship and ingenuity which goes into this contemporary folk culture. She explores, for example, the tension between fans' desires to more accurately reproduce the costumes which they saw on the aired episodes and their desires to design costumes that reflect their own individual tastes. She describes the sense of community and empowerment the fans gain through their participation within fandom. Her book is richly illustrated with full color photographs of Klingons in full ceremonial attire, of fans dressed as favorite characters from the series or as original personas designed to fit within the program mythology. She also offers some helpful contributions to current debates about the relationship between folk and popular culture. For the most part, Joseph-Witham allows the fans to speak for themselves, faithfully recording their own accounts of how they became involved in science fiction costuming and how that involvement has changed their sense of who they are. …

Star Trek Fandom as a Religious Phenomenon

This essay is an ethnographic exploration of Star Trek fandorn. Rather than the more common textual analyses of the program, this article examines the history and practice of the fans themselves, on computer networks, at consentions and in tourism, in UStarJleet fan clubs and in fan literature. All these fan activities canstruct and add to the altemative universe of Star Trek while also connecting it with the present. At a time when scholars are finding religion in nonconventional locations, I argue that Star Trek fandan is one of these locations. Star Trek fandorn involves a sacralization of elements of our culture, along with the fonnation of communities with regularized practices that include a canon and a hierarchy. Star TrekfarXn is also associated with a popular stigma, givingfans a sense of persecution and identity common to active religious groups. Star Trek (ST) is a phenomenon unlike any other. Now over 25 years old, it originated when the original Star Trek television series was threatened with cancellation after its first year. Fans immediately sprang into action with a letter-writing campaign to keep it going (Trimble 1983). When it finally was canceled after its third year, the show went into syndication, and ironically, that is when the fandom phenomenon really started to take off.l The first convention was in New York in 1972. A centralized fan clearinghouse organization, the Welcommittee, was established in 1972 to introduce fans to ST (Van Hise 1990; Bacon-Smith 1992). At this time, noncommercial fan magazines (fanzines) were already being written; and books, manuals, and novels were published. Efforts to revive ST broadcasts in some form continued. An animated series was produced from 1973-1974, and in 1979 the first of the six (at present) ST movies was released. In 1987 Star Trek: The Next Generation (TNG) was pro

Star Trekrerun, reread, rewritten: Fan writing as textual poaching

This essay rejects media‐fostered stereotypes of Star Trek fans as cultural dupes, social misfits, or mindless consumers, perceiving them, in Michel de Certeau's term, as “poachers” of textual meanings who appropriate popular texts and reread them in a fashion that serves different interests. Specifically, the essay considers women who write fiction based in the Star Trek universe. First, it outlines how these fans force the primary text to accommodate alternate interests. Second, it considers the issue of literary property in light of the moral economy of the fan community that shapes the range of permissible retellings of the program materials.

Star Trek Lives: Trekker Slang

television show which was cancelled in 1969 after three seasons but which continues to be shown in syndicated reruns. The real life of Star Trek, however, is in the activities of its fans. Although Star Trek conventions are mentioned occasionally in newspapers and news magazines, meetings are only the most public and easily seen activity. In addition, fans are producing large numbers of usually short-lived magazines. These magazines tend to publish either fiction written by fans-as in Warped Space-or news of interest to and letters from fansas in The Halkan Council. The fiction is, for the most part, about characters and places that appeared in Star Trek. However, even the magazines devoted to fan-produced fiction usually include letters to the editor. This study reports in-group vocabulary, especially as used in the letters to the editor and in the editorials of these fan-produced magazines. Thus, the vocabulary of the fiction is not considered, although terms from it like beam up and Kraith are worth study. Some information gathered from conversations is included. The special vocabulary of Star Trek fans centers on three topics: conventions, publications, and the fans themselves. There is a close, if not always amiable, relationship between Star Trek and other science fiction fans, who like to think of themselves as purists and of Star Trek fans as television-star-smitten pre-teens. Trekkers, naturally, resent that attitude. Because of the connection between the two groups, however, some of the words reported here are current in general science-fiction fan magazines too. Indeed science fiction and Star Trek fans are not the only users of the form zine, which the Gale Research Company is using to advertise a new hardbound annual called Pages. New York Magazine (15 November 1976, p. 89) quotes a company spokesman as saying that Pages will be a lavishly produced book-a-zine, a book with a magazine format. Even though some of the following words are used by other groups, a command of the whole constellation of terms is seen by fans as an indication of status within the Star Trek world. The new fan