Abstract
Henry Jenkins uses Michel de Certeau’s term “textual poaching” to describe how fans rewrite Star Trek television shows and movies in order to produce their own narratives, which they then share among each other in the form of novels and music.1 Constance Penley has also analysed artwork produced by these fans, and Heather Joseph-Witham has looked at their costume-making.2 These studies have brought critical attention to what might have seemed to be an overdone and outdated subject, and have highlighted how important Star Trek fan culture is to the fields of media and reception studies. Yet their work is limited by its exclusive focus on those more marginal fans who are producers of new texts rather than more “ordinary” fans who consume the original text but do not write stories and filk music (a term used to describe science fiction folk singing), dress up or manipulate video material. 3 The Star Trek movies and television shows play an important role in the emotional and affective lives of American fans. Therefore in this chapter I want to investigate the ways in which fans actually talk about the show and their engagement with it.4 Specifically, given the long-running nature of the series, I want to address the differential character and historically shifting contexts of audience reception as found in Star Trek correspondence.
Original language | English |
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Title of host publication | Popular media cultures |
Subtitle of host publication | fans, audiences and paratexts |
Editors | Lincoln Geraghty |
Place of Publication | Basingstoke |
Publisher | Palgrave Macmillan |
Pages | 73-87 |
ISBN (Electronic) | 9781137350374 |
ISBN (Print) | 9781137350367, 9781349468348 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 2015 |
Keywords
- Fans
- Star Trek
- Letter Writing
- Audiences
- Utopia