ILSA J. BICK

Close friends become family and family is the true
center of the universe.
-- Dave Marinaccio, All I Really Need to Know I
Learned from Watching Star Trek

Dubbed a "phenomenon" by popular media and critics alike, the original
Star Trek's (ST) appeal is undoubtedly overdetermined, simultaneously dic-
tated and relfied by the self-referential nature of television, cinema, and
commentaries upon these media. This orchestrated commodification of Star
Trek has elevated the narrative to a cultural centerpiece while providing the
basis for a theoretical template. In his exploration of ST fandom, Henry
Jenkins ( 1988, 1992) unapologetically invokes his institutional authority to
lend legitimacy to his "fan" status and confronts popular stereotypes of
"Trekkies" as "nerdy guys with glasses and rubber Vulcan ears, 'I Grok
Spock' T-shirts stretched over their bulging stomachs" ( 1992, 9). Jenkins
thus recuperates fandom, transmuting it to the more academic rubric of
"textual poachers," a critical paradigm resting on a Marxist critique in
which fans, institutionally marginalized and socially decentered, become
participants in a rich, nomadic, subversive subculture defying the limitations
of the manifest narratives and the capitalist regimes that control them.

Although the breadth of Jenkins's work is impressive and resists homoge-
nization of the diverse facets of fan culture, he may be exaggerating the
fans' independence. Whether one is a poacher or not, surely it escapes no
one's notice that these fans, reinvoking authoritarian institutional hierar-
chies in their own organizations, ¹ are being actively courted by an enter-
tainment industry mindful of the consumer dollars in their bulging pockets.
Speaking at the formal reception of a retrospective exhibition on the origi-
nal series at the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C., on

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