I. Introduction
“There were so many people out there, yelling and screaming. I just froze and couldn’t move for several minutes,” (Shatner, 1994, 45). Anything shocking enough to render William Shatner, the Star Trek star and infamous egomaniac, completely speechless is an accomplishment indeed. The amazing feat referenced here is the first Star Trek convention that Shatner attended, early in the 1970’s. He was unprepared for the number of fans that appear for these conventions and the emotion and dedication that they have for Star Trek. 30 years later, no cast or crewmember that joins a Star Trek production goes in without being warned. However, this doesn’t prevent the awe of seeing it for the first time. The Star Trek fans are many and they are loyal. So loyal in fact, that the Star Trek that they got on television and movie screens was never enough for them. They have expanded the Star Trek universe faster and with more diversity than any writer or director could. In this, Star Trek fans stand alone. They are fans devoted to a popular culture creation, yet they show many traits of a folk group. As my brother found out while attending a convention, the line is never so easily drawn.
II. Discussion of the Interview
I realized early on that finding a subject for this project would be tricky. Unlike many summer students, I don’t live nearby. So I devised a strategy which would allow me to take care of two responsibilities at once. I would go home for a weekend and see the family, as well as interview one of them for the project. After talking with each family member briefly I decided that Ryan, my younger brother, may have a unique story to tell. He had attended a large Star Trek convention in Baltimore last summer and I thought that he would have some interesting insights into those fans as a folk group. So it was all set. I would come home on the weekend of June 12-14. My cousin and her new husband would also be there, so I was able to visit with even more family than I had anticipated while completing the project.
I made sure everyone knew that I had to get a project done with Ryan at some point so that we could come up with a time. It was decided that my parents would take the newlyweds on a trip to Williamsburg, about 30 minutes from our home in Yorktown, Virginia. This would give us a few hours to work without interruption. It didn’t occur to me until we were getting ready to go that I was about to record a folklore project with one of the youngest members of my family. But, as a 17 year old high school student, Ryan is definitely one of the more open and honest people in the family when it comes to sharing stories.
Having Ryan as an informant doesn’t come without difficulties. While I was flipping through my notes preparing final questions, no more than two minutes from the start of recording, he is falling asleep on the couch. I know that active youngsters need their rest, but I was getting frustrated at his attitude. So, as good brother would do, I threw stuff at him. He doesn’t get the nickname of “Rhino” for nothing, and I was probably lucky he didn’t react by charging at me. But once he was awake, he really buckled down. He prepared his own notes and had a good idea of what he wanted to get across. And it came through for the most part. However, when I would divert off of the framework we set and ask further questions about one of his observations, he would get pretty frustrated with me, as evidenced by the scowls I got during the silences on the recordings. But even then he recovered pretty well and I had a solid half-hour recording to work with.
III. Interview Content
The direction I wanted to go with this project was to get a feeling from Ryan that he observed a real folk group in action. Even if one of their common bonds originated as a popular culture television series, the fans of Star Trek have taken on a clear folk identity. This came through very clearly in the interview. When I would ask a question regarding some of the aspects that a folk group would possess he had examples of them readily available. I found it fascinating that he could identify them so quickly. He has not been associated with Star Trek fandom for a long period of time, and he has only been to one convention to date. Yet all of these group features were apparent to him. It is clear that the fans at the conventions share many cultural practices specific to them and are, in many cases, extremely organized. For example, there are several nationwide community service organizations that are inspired by and run completely by Star Trek fans. They come to almost all of the conventions to recruit new members into their organization. This evidence all points to these fans as a high context group.
The other aspect that I was interested in teasing out of him was comparing these conventions with traditional festivals. There are a lot of ways to position just about any population as a folk group, but to argue that Star Trek fans have built their own traditions through public display events like most acknowledged folk groups is more challenging. I don’t think that he was clear on exactly what the functions of a festival was at first, as far as folklore is concerned. But we came across some comparisons with other festivals to elucidate the festival experience at the conventions. After awhile he did think of a number of ways in which a convention could be a festival. These included the clothing that was worn, the common music and drama, arts and crafts, and other types of performance. For example, needlepoint is extremely popular among Star Trek fans and many bring them to the conventions to show them off or to sell them. There are also performances unique to these conventions, including William Shakespeare’s Hamlet being performed completely in Klingon, a fictional language that began development in the Star Trek universe and has continued to evolve amongst the fans.
IV. Analysis
A. Context of Collection
The collection went almost entirely as planned and came out well. I am fortunate to have a family that was willing to form their schedule around my academic duty and give Ryan and me plenty of time to work on the recording. I was also fortunate that there was a room in the house suited to this activity. The heating and air doesn’t run into it to create noise, the floor is carpeted, most of the furniture is padded, it was very small, and there are even drapes. It was extremely hot, but the final result sounded great.
B. Performance Analysis
I was very impressed with Ryan’s composure during the whole recording. He usually becomes very flustered in a pressure situation like public speaking and recordings (that is unless he is portraying the school mascot, but that is another story), but he remained calm even in the face of unexpected questions. I think I helped him stay cool with some old coaching strategies. First, I positioned our folks as the enemy rather than the recording equipment. I kept telling him we needed to have a good run because they would be coming home soon and we wouldn’t get to finish until tomorrow. Then I insisted that the recording would just be for practice and that we could do the final later. Even though those assurances seem to overlap a bit, it worked for him and we captured a good interview. The only real noticeable gesture that he unconsciously relies on is hand movement. Often it doesn’t correlate with any of the story elements, it just accompanies the verbal. My dad and I have the same gestures. A funny texture facet that Ryan leans on is voice projection. Side by side, Ryan and I have very similar voice patterns. But when we listened to the recording we noticed his voice was much lower. He admitted that he tries to do this when he speaks to unfamiliar people to portray authority and size. He did not intend to use it on the recording, but it kicked in nonetheless. I think, in the back of his mind, he thought that it would help legitimize him as a source.
C. Situating the Collection within the Body of Folklore Scholarship
Even though I obtained the information I sought during the interview, I still found myself in a dilemma. Are Star Trek fans, fans of a television series, a folk group? Because it is difficult to label them under the strictest definitions, I turned to the available research on the topic.
Star Trek fans are a unique group. Not only were they the first worldwide folk group to spawn from a fictional popular culture creation, but they are also one of the most studied fan groups in current academia. But a problem arises when discussing fans of a popular culture creation like a television series. With many definitions of folklore, popular culture creations are seen as an entity that lives outside of folk traditions and transmits their stories and performances through various, non-interpersonal mediums. However, some folklorists are not satisfied with this restriction. Elizabeth Bird believes that the mode of transmission should not be taken in to account. She says,
We need to forget about whether or not popular culture "transmits" folklore. Rather, we begin to consider that certain popular culture forms succeed because they act like folklore. To some extent they may have replaced folk narratives, but not with something completely new. Thus popular culture is popular because of its resonance, its appeal to an audience's existing set of story conventions, (Bird, 1996, NP).
This definition certainly helps to label Star Trek fans as a folk group, because they are simply reflecting on and reveling in the set of folklore that they have been exposed to. Like The Day of the Dead in Mexico or an Appalachian Heritage Festival, people gather to share and collect stories that relate to a similar set of values or way of life. The only difference is that Star Trek fans found this similarity on the television screen. But academia’s interest in fan culture doesn’t stop there. Bird also points out the role of fans participating in the development of popular culture artifacts. She claims, “If audience members are seen as active in helping to shape the way popular culture is created, they become much more comparable with folk 'audiences,’” (Bird, 1996).
A development that allows Star Trek fans to appear as a folk group is the development of their own unique slang. Linguist Patricia Byrd wrote an article about this topic in 1978. The year is important because this was almost ten years after the series had been canceled, but before it was revived as a motion picture in 1979. At that point in time, Star Trek’s only mediated existence was on television re-runs. But Byrd says that, “The real life of ‘Star Trek,’ however, is in the activities of its fans,” (1978, 52). This leads perfectly into Bird’s conception of the popular culture fan evolving into a folk group. Byrd analyzed many fan publications with the sole purpose of reading the letters to the editor and collecting the types of slang that was used in the conversations.
Even though this article over 30 years old, Ryan found many of the terms and the activities attached to them to be still in use today. In the interview, the term “filking” comes up. Ryan describes the activity as he observed it at the convention as, “rhythmical songs that talk about futuristic cultures...based on fantasy and sci-fi,” (Olson, 2009, NP). Through Byrd’s research, she defines the term: “Filk song: The name ‘filk’ song was originally a typographical misspelling of the word ‘folk’ song. It now means those songs known to frequent cons, conclaves, or gatherings of fans. Most folk songs are well-known melodies with rewritten lyrics,” (Byrd, 1978, 57). I think the irony of the folk/filk typo is quite humorous considering the development and now interstitial state of Star Trek fans as group. They display all of the elements of a folk group, but are held back from being labeled as such due to the nature of the bond that originally tied them. Filking is also of interest due to the group that has become particularly interested in that practice. They go to the conventions to display their new and old folk songs, like a storyteller may go to a festival to share his or her stories with the attendees. There are some filk song writers who have been so successful over the years that they have attained a state of near reverence by convention attendees and fellow filkers alike.
There are many fans that feel that Star Trek has become, what Ryan called, “20th century mythology,” (Olson, 2009, NP). In the book Star Trek on Sacred Ground: Explorations of Star Trek, Religion, and American Culture, Michael Jindra suggests that “for many people, Star Trek takes the place of previous metanarratives and mythologies, such as nationalism or Christianity, that have allowed people to make sense of their identity and place in history,” (Jindra, 1999, 218). He goes on to mention that, through this supplanting, Star Trek used many of the dominant symbols and themes of Western society. This use of previously popular material, as Bird suggests, is what allows Star Trek to maintain such a firm grasp on the imaginations and interest on its fans.
D. Identification of Folklore Genre, Functions, and Meaning
Ryan’s personal narrative about his visit to Shore Leave 30 (the formal name of the convention) touched on many enlightening aspects of the folk culture of Star Trek fans and opened the door for some important questions to be asked. But something that was never in question, in Ryan’s mind, is the function of Star Trek conventions. He described the time in the convention as “an outlet for them (fans) to display their feelings. They don’t have to be worried about being judged in that very open environment,” (Olson, 2009, NP). I don’t think there is a better testament to the function of escaping social repressions.
In another example to elucidate his explanation he says, “If I walk down the street in my Starfleet uniform I would be ridiculed and laughed at, but if I wear a football jersey, no one’s going to say anything. It’s commonplace,” (Olson, 2009, NP). I think this is a great example, and it is actually a very common one among fans of many genres who like to dress up. For fans who want to be very excited about their object of affection, the acceptable space is determined by that affection. For whatever reason, fans of a fictional series are largely relegated to weekend events whereas sports fans are allowed to roam free sans ridicule. Most importantly, the fans have made the best of this folk law, and have developed their own culture within the convention walls. In that “time out of time” they display a side of themselves that is, for the most part, unseen in day-to-day life. This is identical to the attitudes toward festivals, a material genre in folklore, in many cultures.
There is an interesting turn when it comes to the meaning of the narrative. The fans that Ryan is describing are going through all of the effort and time that it takes to have a successful to, in large part, engage in activities with people that have similar interests. While I had a responsibility to complete this recording, I probably could have found anyone to talk about some story. But that isn’t what I wanted to do. Events came together to allow my brother and I a few hours to work on a project together. We are both Star Trek fans, but the topic was just the result of our time working on it. It was that we had that time that was really important. I did not realize until very recently, and I am sure Ryan has yet to realize, that the opportunities we have to do any kind of activity together are going to become very rare soon. I am moving farther away from home for graduate school and in only one more year he will be graduating high school, moving off to college somewhere, and will meet with lots of new responsibilities. As much as he and I would hate to admit it, for most of our lives we have shared many more experiences together than we have had while individually involved in other groups. It seems that he and I will be facing our own new frontiers shortly, and it is only natural that we learn from how to deal with that journey from Star Trek.
V. Conclusion
Claiming to be crucial mythology of the 20th century, or any century for that matter, is a bold statement. There are few that would claim such an accomplishment. But it only one accomplishment on the long list that Star Trek has compiled in its 43 year lifespan. There are far more consumers of Star Trek stories than there are readers of the exploits of Hercules or Perseus. It has spread across the globe and invaded every trade from cooking to weapon making. What is it that keeps the fans coming back for more? Ryan seems to think that Star Trek provides “a model for the way things could be, should be,” and that this appeals to many people (Olson, 2009, NP). In a time where the choices for activities and entertainment are so high, Star Trek still captures the attentions of so many perhaps due to this very observation. It isn’t just languages and starships; it’s a way to come together, work together for a real noble purpose: hope. Hope for what Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry called a “kinder, gentler future and one in which people of all types of people from all manners of places live together in harmony. In my mind, any group, folk or not, that attempts to make this a possibility and believes that it will do just that is undertaking a Herculean effort indeed.
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