I'd like to comment, yet again, on fans and their relation to the stars.

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Title:	I'd like to comment, yet again, on fans and their relation to the stars.
Creator:	Beverly Zuk
Date(s):	December 1981
Medium:	print
Fandom:	Star Trek: TOS
Topic:
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I'd like to comment, yet again, on fans and their relation to the stars. is the first line of a letter by Beverly Zuk that was printed in Interstat #50 in December 1981.

It was written, in part, as a response to Susan Stephenson's letter, So many topics in the past few months require perspective I see lacking.

Some Topics Discussed

• good fans and bad fans
• what it means to be a fan
• "Mr. Roddenberry did more for women's lib than Gloria Steinem."
• Gene Roddenberry gave fans a choice in how they socialize, fandom gives women a right to be different
• violence by fans on celebrities, giving fans a bad name

From the Letter

I'd like to comment, yet again, on fans and their relation to the stars. You know in an era when it's unfashionable to knock a person's race, and declasse to bring up religion, it's becoming quite the thing, especially in the media to raise issue with how a person chooses to socialize. For instance: "The brains. Goodie-goodies. Weiners. Geeks. They were different, defiantly so. They got excellent grades, even though everyone else knew better, but never let anyone copy." Just a bit of the condescension ladled out to science fiction fans by Barbara Brotman in her article "Fantasy film buffs eye future - and find it fandom-tastic", Chicago Tribune, October 11, 1981.

Which oddly enough, calls to mind the concept of IDIC. That is, the right to be different; to have a different world view; a right to have different likes and dislikes; and a right to air those different opinions. The right to differ is of course embedded in the Constitution of the United States. Why then did Mr. Roddenberry feel it necessary to take that embedded ideal out of its setting, so to speak, and placing it against the black velvet of drama, expose its many facets to the glare of public opinion? Was it perhaps, because he'd just lived through the "be like the Jones, 50s", when the great social sin was to be different or eccentric? And so Mr. Roddenberry asked a question: "What's so bad about being different?"; also, "What's so bad about being smart?"; and "What's so bad about not following the herd?" Spock was, of course, the major vehicle for those questions.

Well, it seems to me that a lot of persons heard those questions, and decided there was nothing very wrong with any of those things. A lot of those people happened to be women. By an odd twist, I believe Mr. Roddenberry did more for women's lib than Gloria Steinem. He made women accept their right to be different.

But as Sue so adroitly pointed out, I foam. The question under discussion is, after all, THOSE NASTY FANS. Or in Sue's thrilling condemnation: "If the majority of fans continue to tolerate or overlook the thoughtless, destructive behavior of a few, then the public image of fans can only become worse."

Boy, just shows how wrong a gal can be! Here I thought I was going to cons to have a good time, and all the while it was because I wanted to tolerate thoughtlessness.

But seriously, let's consider: Semantics. The word fan is being made to cover an awful lot of territory these days. It's applied to card-carrying members of the William Shatner Fan Fellowship, as well as those who don't know what "tush" means. It can be applied to those who'd hock their first born for the price of a zine, to those who'd think twice before coughing up four bucks to see ST:TMP. And here I'm limiting myself to just one segment of a larger fandom (Science Fiction) (Media), which is, in turn, one of many fandoms.

That's only part one of the semantics problem. When the media gets on their 'all fans are demons and/or crazy cultists' they don't bother to say: "All Jody Foster fans are blankity, blankity, blankity." They say ALL fans.

Part two of the problem is how we perceive ourselves. Sue would have us believe, and the tendency is to believe, that anyone who shows up at a con is a fan. WRONG!

Using the formula I proposed in my last letter (do I hear howls of dissent?), I now propose that the destructive element isn't fans at all. Do [poorly behaved fans] show admiration and appreciation? Do they create? Do they acknowledge the rights and interests of others? Quite the opposite, I'd say. Opposite. These persons are opposites to everything the word fan stands for. Their word should show that. They aren't fans, they're NAFS. They oppose the ideals and interests of fandom. Those Nafs!

Now what to do about the nafs. One is tempted to believe, after reading Sue's letter, that there are more fruits and nuts, not to mention nafs, in the state of California, than in the other 49 states. I may not have Sonni's mileage but I've conned as far west as Kansas City and as far east as New York, and I've only seen one instance of the kind of behavior routinely reported by Sue and Sonni. That instance was at August Party '79. It didn't happen at August Party '81 because the con committee, 1) made an effort to keep trouble some Nafs from registering, and 2) patrolled the halls and public areas of the hotel, all night, every night, of the con. I'm sure it was a giant pain for them, but it worked.

Ah - just remembered another instance. The Chicago Space Circus, 1974/75?. Some young men?, who weren't even nafs, were lured in off the street by false advertising. De took the brunt of their dissatisfaction with the management. Fortunately two of the sharpest mouths around, David Gerrold and Harlan Ellison, were there for the rescue. It was worth the price of a ticket to see Harlan verbally skin those over-expanded macho egos down to size.

Which brings up the only legal form of complaint fans have. We personally can't take the nafs' little sharp pointed toys away from them. That's stealing. We can't kick them where they so richly deserve to be kicked. That's assault. All we can do is support our local con committee. Period.

Now, as promised, the fans versus the stars, that uneasy marriage in which we supply the money and they supply the looks and talent. We've rolled along lo these many years, with only minor difficulties on either side, and then one day, there it was on the front page: FAN SHOOTS STAR. (This whole analysis is general, not specific, i.e. Trek stars, in nature.) Well anyway, the newspaper hemmed and hawed and got all the mileage they could out of a good story, but after a while one got the impression they were after something more, something of the 'man bites dog' variety, something like STAR SHOOTS FAN. Wild imagination on my part? Possibly, even probably. But the fact does exist that an air of distrust and suspicion has been fostered in the media, toward the fan. It is also a fact that this distrust has taken root. During the first week of October a television program "Entertainment Tonight" showed a segment about the Hollywood Gun Club. You can imagine what I thought when I saw Robert Conrad telling the camera how he needed a gun to protect himself. And, Sue, the man was not talking about protection from home burglaries. In honesty there were stars, Ed Asner for one, who weren't thrilled with the 'gun in hand' strategy.

Maybe Mr. Asner has enough foresight to know what will happen the day the papers get their STAR SHOOTS FAN headline. Because it probably won't be the SOB that provoked the shooting that gets plugged, it will probably be an innocent, a kid, or some little old lady from Dubuque. What will happen is this: The media (press) will happily gnaw on the media (film), and tell everyone, far and wide, that the film community has been building themselves up to a paranoid, hysterical state for years with such productions as "The Fan" and "Day of the Locust". And then they're going to say, isn't it a shame, and something should be done.

Well Sonni - DO SOMETHING!

There now, Susan, aren't I a good girl? I didn't even mention that it does make a difference who's in the White House.