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Emma Keates Mr. Taylor AP English 14 March 2014 Emma Keates Mr. Taylor AP English 14 March 2014 Shattering the Fourth Wall: The Evolution of Fan Influence On The Creative Process In Television Today, it is impossible to watch television without actively becoming a fan of something. Even if a person does not identify as a member of any particular fandom, a basic working knowledge of the season’s most popular shows, plots, and characters has become a requirement of cultural literacy. To be considered in the know, there is a pressure to participate in everything from workplace conversations about Walt and Jesse’s latest drug-filled escapades on the previous night’s Breaking Bad, to passionate arguments about which Game of Thrones highborn should truly sit on Westeros’ iron throne, to critical dissections of the gossip among the staff on Downton Abbey. Whether it be sports, aliens, doctors, dysfunctional families, vampires, or dragons, fan culture in all its forms and variations has clearly become a staple of modern society. Fandom is omnipresent and inescapable in our 21st century world, but this was certainly not always the case. While people tend to broadly associate Star Trek with early fan culture, in her comprehensive essay, “A Brief History of Media Fandom,” cultural scholar Francesca Coppa explains that the concept of modern fandom was first born in the letter writing section of the 1926 science fiction magazine Amazing Stories, which provided readers with the first “interactive element…by publishing fan’s addresses, [allowing] science fiction fans to contact each other directly.”1 The opinions and discussions begun in these early letters soon evolved into a small number of DIY-style “zines,” entirely fan produced publications consisting of writing, art, and analysis. In turn, the connections created through these zines inspired devotees to plan 1 Coppa, Francesca. "A Brief History of Media Fandom." Fan Fiction and Fan Communities in the Age of the Internet. Ed. Karen Hellekson and Kristina Busse. Jefferson: McFarland & Company, 2006. section II. Print. Keates 2 and gather at the first ever science fiction convention, Worldcon, held July 4, 1939;2 and thus, a community was born. It is estimated that this event was only attended by a total of 200 people,3 however, which pales in comparison to the over 130,000 participants at last year’s San Diego Comic-Con,4 what is now the world’s largest fan convention. So what brought about this change? It is evident that the ideas and culture of fans have transformed from a whisper on the fringes of society to a mainstream cultural roar, but at what cost? While it is obviously liberating for television fanatics to no longer be cast off as, in the words of Henry Jenkins, pop culture and media studies expert, “cultural dupes, social misfits, and mindless consumers,”5 this improved social status threatens the very media to which they are so devoted. The collective voice of fandom has grown louder in the ears not only of society, but perhaps more importantly, the creators of the shows themselves, who have in recent years displayed a growing tendency to cater more and more to the wishes and desires of their most outspoken fans, often at the expense of plot and character. In accordance with this trend, modern fan culture has developed a collective sense of entitlement, and the creators have allowed a blurring of the line between consumer and producer at the risk of creative integrity and the future of television as an artistic medium overall. On September 8, 1966, viewers across America settled in to watch the premiere of a small new program about aliens and spaceships and listened as William Shatner recited the now iconic line for the very first time: “To boldly go where no man has gone before.”6 While these words were used to represent the five-year mission of the USS Enterprise in the context of the 2 Coppa, Francesca 3 "World Science Fiction Convention." AnimeCons. Adequate, n.d. Web. 12 Feb. 2014. 4 "About Comic-Con International." Comic Con International. San Diego Comic Convention, n.d. Web. 12 Feb. 2014. 5 Jenkins, Henry. Textual Poachers. New York City: Routeledge, 1992. Print. 6 "The Man Trap." Dir. Robert Butler. Prod. Gene Roddenberry. Episode #1. Star Trek. Prod. Gene Roddenberry. NBC. Television. Keates 3 story, they also beautifully predicted the magnitude of the show itself. Gene Roddenberry’s Star Trek truly did venture into the great unknown. While low ratings and budget problems forced NBC to cancel the original series after only three seasons,7 its short run left a lasting and far- reaching impact. In her essay “Live Long and Prosper…” scholar and long time fan, Elizabeth Thomas, perfectly sums up the fandom’s genesis by explaining, “With the reruns now airing in syndication, the show’s fan culture took on a life of its own far removed from Roddenberry’s own efforts to revive Star Trek. The fans had found each other.”8 Here, Thomas captures the very essence of what Star Trek truly did for fan culture. While science fiction fandom certainly existed before the days of Klingons and Romulans, nothing up to that point had ever reached the sheer volume or cultural significance as the Star Trek community. As science fiction author and fan Jean Lorrah writes, Trekfandom is…friends and letters and crafts and fanzines and trivia and costumes and artwork and posters and buttons and conventions – something for everybody who has in common the inspiration of a television show which grew far beyond its TV and film incarnations to become a living part of world culture.9 To fans, this newly formed community was a sort of sanctuary; a place to meet and connect with people across the globe with a set of shared interests and passions. Yet, the trekkies were stigmatized from the very beginning. In a famous and controversial 1986 Saturday Night Live sketch, Shatner himself appeared in front of a stereotypically geeky Star Trek convention and after being asked questions about finite details of the show, emphatically proclaims, “Get a life, will you people? I mean for crying out loud, it’s just a TV show! … Move out of your parent’s basements and get your own apartments, and grow the hell 7 Thomas, Elizabeth. "Live Long and Prosper: How Fans Made Star Trek a Cultural Phenomenon." Fan Phenomena: Star Trek. Ed. Bruce E. Drushel. Bristol: Intellect, 2013. N. pag. Print. 8 Thomas, Elizabeth 9 Lorrah, Jean. Star Trek: The IDIC Epidemic. New York City: Pocket, 1988. Print. Keates 4 up!”10 Although this skit was obviously exaggerated for humorous effect, the image it presents is one that has been oft-repeated in the media and the minds of society. In his book, Textual Poachers, Henry Jenkins sums up the archetype presented by this sketch, which shows fans as people who: a. are brainless consumers b. devote their lives to the cultivation of worthless knowledge c. place inappropriate importance on devalued cultural material d. are social misfits who have become so obsessed with the show that it forecloses other types of social experience e. are feminized and/or desexualized through their intimate engagement with mass culture f. are infantile, emotionally and intellectually immature g. are unable to separate fantasy from reality11 The Star Trek fans were never able to shake this caricature. They were even ostracized by fellow superfans within the larger science fiction community for caring too much about the relationships of the characters and not the science fiction elements of the show.12 Although the Star Trek fandom functioned in largely the same exact way as most modern fandoms, the fact that they came first made them almost as alien to outsiders as the extraterrestrials on their screens. While the actual writers and producers of the show certainly didn’t view their fans with the negative extremity as much of society at the time, the fan/executive relationship was still incredibly unbalanced. When asked about the original writers’ opinion of their audience in a 2003 interview with popular Star Trek fansite, bringbackkirk.com, David Gerrold, writer of multiple episodes (including the famous Trouble with Tribbles) answered, “We were doing Star Trek for ourselves. We were taking chances, not because we had an eye on the ratings, but 10 "Get a Life!" By Bob Odenkirk and Judd Apatow. Episode #221. Saturday Night Live. Prod. Lorne Michaels. NBC. 20 Dec. 1986. Television. 11 Jenkins, Henry 12 Coppa, Francesca Keates 5 because we wanted to see how far we could push the envelope…the attitude was to do REAL science fiction.”13 The Star Trek system places emphasis on the executive team, rather than the wants and desires of the fans themselves. This philosophy certainly had its share of drawbacks. In the words of longtime fan P.L Caruthers-Montgomery, fans often wrote their own versions of episodes to “correct the wrongs done to ‘Our Guys’.”14 However, these revised manuscripts were always written in good fun and never with the intention that they would actually be seen by the producers. This system benefited the show in two ways; it not only allowed the writers to retain their creative freedom, but it also kept a sense of entitlement largely out of the fanbase, who were forced to defer to the writers ideas. The climate of Star Trek era producer/consumer relations is fundamentally different than that of today. But which side accounted for this change? Jenkins argues that this new environment is partially due to an evolved sense of what it means to be a fan, which he defines in a series of poignant comparisons: If old consumers were assumed to be passive, the new consumer is active.
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