Academia Explores the Final Frontier
A look at fandom theses and dissertations
by Karen Ann Yost
Only a chosen few are allowed to enter the silent, darkened room.
Before the gathering can officially begin, each member must place their weapon on a table
as a show of good faith. Candles provide the only light in the room. The fog of incense
clouds the underlying tension in the room.
Suddenly, a challenge rings forth. Pandemonium reigns until the coup is
thwarted and the rightful leader retains his title.
What’s going on here? An ancient Roman senate tribunal? An African
tribal ritual? A Mafia meeting? Devil worshippers? Nope, it’s just your normal
Klingon ritual gathering, Tera’daq Tlhinganghom’mey.
Science-fiction and media fans participate in role-playing games like
the one above every weekend at conventions around the world. These games are just one
aspect of media fandom that has been studied by the academic community.
But what’s there to study? Anyone who watched William Shatner on Saturday
Night Live can tell you what media fans look like. Male fans are skinny, wear glasses,
and are virgins. The girls are overweight, wear glasses, and are virgins. Star Trek
fans can give you the stardate of every original episode, but can’t remember a
dentist appointment. All fans need to get a life.
The above stereotypes do exist. Most fans are able to laugh them off
and continue to enjoy their "Weekend Only World."
I’m a media fan and I’ll admit to being strange. What else do
you call someone who will spend $25.00 on a mediazine, but have kittens because bananas
are 49 cents a pound? But am I worthy of serious academic study? Apparently so and fans
have mixed feelings about it.
Academic Study of Fandom
Some researchers are also fans and their publications seem less
distanced than other studies. Other academics use a "strange tribe" approach of
observing fans at conventions. Fans tend to view these studies as incomplete because of
the fandom community that exists outside the formal structure of a convention that is
rarely discussed. One such informal gathering may be fans getting together at
someone’s house to watch five straight episodes of Blake’s 7 one night a
month.
One published fan-academic is Henry Jenkins, author of
Textual Poachers: Television Fans & Participatory Culture.
Jenkins attended late night viewing marathons, mediazine collating parties, and
conventions for over ten years before he published his book. Some of these informal
gatherings may have influenced his findings of fandom as a participatory culture; that
media fandom is an ACTIVE forum, not just the passivity of watching a television series.
Jenkins sees fans as participating in a large, diverse community and
accepting an identity which is belittled or criticized by institutional authorities. He
also observed that a significant number of media fans are women, have college degrees and
are employed in occupations where they are underpaid and their creative skills are not
utilized.
Amen! The above description fits me, as well as friends in my little
fan posse: one bookkeeper, one free-lance researcher, three librarians, one nurse, one
secretary, and a teacher!
In his book, Jenkins examines the end products of fan interactions: fan
fiction, mediazines, fan art, fan music videos, and filk music. Psychological and
ethnographic conclusions are kept to a minimum.
Other studies have not been as kind. Some researchers do not network
with fans due to the fear that a known act of observation will change that which is being
observed. As a result, some reports are incomplete or inaccurate due to the
researcher’s attempt to place fans and fandom within established scientific theories.
Enterprising Women: Television Fandom and the Creation of Popular Myth
Many female fans rolled their eyes in frustration with the publication
of Camille Bacon-Smith’s book,
Enterprising Women: Television Fandom and the Creation of Popular Myth.
First, Bacon-Smith referred to some of her sources as informants, essentially giving
fandom an underground, cult status. She also attempted to explain particular genres of fan
fiction.
Hurt/comfort is a type of fan story where the writer develops a plot
where one character becomes injured (either physically or mentally) and the other
character offers comfort. Women writers are notorious for producing this type of story
where the male characters are cast in the traditional female role of nurturer.
Bacon-Smith couldn’t mask her distaste for this genre in her book.
She chalked up these literary efforts to personal turmoil in the writers’ lives. Pain
is so pervasive in these women’s lives that it effects their creative efforts; that
women are either casting themselves as heroes in their stories or are wishing for rescue
in their lives.
Slash Fandom and Academic Research
The slash genre didn’t fare much better in the book. Slash stories
feature explicit, male homosexual material using media characters. Kirk/Spock (K/S) is an
example of a slash pairing. Some of Bacon-Smith’s theories concerning slash writing
include: 1) that the male characters are actually surrogate women and, 2) that slash
writers are afraid to write about heterosexual sex because they’re afraid
they’ve been doing "it" wrong all these years; that women aren’t
really expected to know the mechanics of gay, male sex so essentially anything is allowed
and accepted.
I cannot say that Bacon-Smith’s conclusions are wrong, but I do
suggest that the conclusions are incomplete. She did attend conventions, read mediazines,
and interviewed fans for her book. On the other hand, I "speak" with fans
practically everyday due to the wonder of the e-mail system on the Internet. Never, has
any writer told me that their hurt/comfort masterpiece was based in part on personal
experience or the "working out" of tragedy or unhappiness in their lives.
Some writers do a great deal of research to write a realistic
hurt/comfort story. Some fan writers study books on weapons and poisons. Others consult
fellow fans who are health care professionals in order to find out how patients respond to
certain types of injuries.
The slash writers I know simply love men! They love Kirk and Spock,
Starsky and Hutch, Blake and Avon, Bodie and Doyle, and Illya and Napoleon. Slash is
erotica for women, by women. Many slash writers use pseudonyms only because they DO have
lives outside of fandom where any type of erotica would be met with distaste. Those in the
fan community know who the slash writers are; quite frankly, fans openly discuss slash all
the time. It’s hardly necessary that parents and coworkers be made aware of a element
of fandom that is openly debated within the fandom community itself. In no way is slash a
covert, feminist action to decry the lack of believable female heroes on television.
TV Fans versus the University Researchers - Us vs Them
So why do I have one impression of fan fiction while a serious
researcher has another? Well, fans probably view me differently and are willing to give me
more information or insight. When I approach fans with an idea for a Strange New Worlds
article, I tell them that I’m a fan. When I’m at a convention, I don’t need
to identify myself as a fan; I have a stack of zines in my arms and wear a button that
says: Hello, I’m from the American Association for the Abolition of Acronym Abuse,
Regional Group Headquarters (AAAAARGH!). From the title of the publication, fans can tell
that the audience of Strange New Worlds is other media fans. As a result, I may get
more information than a ethnographic anthropologist who approaches fandom as simply a
curiosity to be studied.
An "us against them" attitude will always exist in fandom.
This is not fan snobbery, but fan fear. Fans have created a unique community with valid
forms of expression: fan art, fan fiction, filk music, and fan music videos. The possible
results of academic studies of fandom include an influx of people who come to conventions
in search of a world they’ve only read about.
They really don’t want to be a member of the fan community. They
have no interest in the shows, nor the fans who enjoy them. Disinterested or uninvolved
people may change the very nature of the community that Star Trek fans began to
build over twenty years ago.
Fandom isn’t about Spock and space ships, Vincent and Catherine in
the Tunnel World under New York City, or Dr. Sam Beckett leaping through time. One does
not become a fan merely by watching a television show. As any true fan can tell you,
fandom has become as much about the friends we make, the ties that we establish, than just
about the shows we love.
(Special thanks to Sue Clerc and Agnes Tomorrow for their
generous help with this article.) •
Bibliography:
Bacon-Smith, Camille.
Enterprising Women: Television Fandom and the Creation of Popular Myth.
Phila., University of Pennsylvania Press, 1992.
Clapp, T.J. Burnside. Weekend Only World (filksong). Fesarius, Wail
Songs, 1987.
Davis, Erik. "tlhIngan Hol Dajatlh’a (Do you speak
Klingon?)." Utne Reader, no.62, March/April 1994, p.122-129.
Gibberman, Susan R.
Star Trek: an annotated guide to resources on the development, the
phenomenon, the people, the television series, the films, the novels, and the recordings.
Jefferson, N.C., McFarland & Co., 1991.
Harris, Cheryl Theorizing Fandom: Fans, Subculture, and Identity. Hampton Press.
1998.
Jenkins, Henry. T Textual Poachers: Television Fans & Participatory Culture. New
York, Routledge, 1992.
Lewis, Lisa A. The Adoring Audience: Fan Culture and Popular Media. Routledge, 1992.
Sanders, Joseph L. Science Fiction Fandom: (Contributions to the Study of Science Fiction and
Fantasy). Greenwood Publishing Group, 1994.
A Short List of Fandom
Theses and Dissertations
Amesley, Cassandra. Star Trek as cultural text: proprietary
audiences, interpretive grammars, and the myths of the resisting reader. University of
Iowa (Dissertation, Ph.D.), 1989.
Enzelberger, Ingrid. "Fandom is a way of life" or What are
the psychological social reasons for becoming addicted to a TV program like Star Trek.
Bowling Green State University (Thesis, M.A.), 1988.
Harris, Cheryl D. Social identity, class, and empowerment: television
fandom and advocacy. University of Massachusetts at Amherst (Dissertation, Ph.D.), 1992.
Heaton, Daniel. Star Trek, polysemy and television ritual: a cultural
studies approach. Louisiana State University (Thesis, M.A.), 1990.
Strange, Judith. Folkfan: science-fiction fandom as folk identity.
Bowling Green State University (Thesis, M.A.), 1988.
