Big Brother is Trekking You

News Media Commentary
Title:	Big Brother is Trekking You
Commentator:	James Wolcott
Date(s):	February 2, 1976
Venue:	print
Fandom:
External Links:	online here
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Big Brother is Trekking You is a 1976 article in "The Village Voice" by James Wolcott.

It has the subtitle: "Beneath the opitimism of the Star Trek craze lies a vulgarized Nietzscheanism -- the will to power banalized in the stud-adventurer, Captain Kirk."

Some Excerpts

Though Trek fans look cute in their pajama uniforms, and though many of them are so glassy-eyed one imagines that their brains sound like "Metal Machine Music," my initial frivolousness faded when I realized that trekkies are not just out on a lark. These kids are serious.

Spooky kids. (And, yes, I know that many are older than the age of consent.) These fans started appearing at science fiction conventions, setting up their displays of Star Trek memorabilia. As their numbers grew, as stray fans discovered that others shared their passionate devotion to the ethos of the show, a community began to coalesce, which made the straight sci-fl fans nervous and Irritated, soon very irritated.

Consider after years of being sequestered in pulp hackdom, sci-fi writers began to attract that most elusive lit-crit establishment honor—respectability. The best of them began to see the lines of connection between their work and the work of Barth, Calvino, and the blind Borges. So manumission into serious attention is the light at the end of the pulp tunnel and then, cursedly, these kids show up. These goddamn spooky kids in their pajamas and pointed ears — these trekkies — were obviously going to fuck it all up. Bitter consternation was in the air.

Well, these fans weren't children of Spock for nothing, so they did the logical thing — they organized their own conventions, which were astoundingly successful. The emergence of random is breathlessly told in a paperback entitled "Star Trek Lives!" written by Jacqueline Lichtenberg, Sondra Marshak, and Joan Winston. As we shall see, these women have their libidinal thermostats turned up pretty high, hence their prose squeaks and squeals like the rusty springs in a newlywed's bed. Yet the style of their enthusiasm gives much insight into the Trek fan's mentality. What one comes to understand is that aside from the show's superb production values, respectable acting, and intelligent writing, the real basis of "Star Trek'"s popularity is sex, cool, and technology.

Remember the movie version of "The Fountainhead"? Patricia Neal visits the quarry where a" sweaty, muscular Gary Cooper is drilling away. The shots jump from his drilling to the aroused reaction of Neal to his drilling. A cigar, said Freud, may just be a cigar but a movie drill, say I, is not just a drill. In Ayn Rand novels the women find their fulfillment after submitting to the sexual sovereignty of phallic heroes like John Galt and Howard Roark. (Together, Ayn Rand and Una Wert-Muller could rule the world.) So I began to get suspicious when the triad printed lush encomiums in "Star Trek Lives!" to Ayn Rand's philosophy, for it suggested that beneath the Optimism Effect was a vulgarized Nietzscheanism — the will-to-power banalized in the stud-adventurer. Captain Kirk. After all, the vast majority of fan writers — i.e., those who publish stories in fan publications based upon the Trek characters — are women, and their stories (at least the ones referred to in "Star Trek Lives!") are sexually charged-up. What are they responding to? Aside from the mastery of power, and the sexual attractiveness of the comically handsome William Shatner (Kirk) and the imperturbable Leonard Nimoy (Spock), what we have here, bless Leslie Fiedler, is the return of runaway boys on the biggest damn raft you can imagine — the U.S.S. Enterprise. Male readers have always been drawn to the story of two men venturing out together, but "Star Trek" also hooks the women by the sexual tension beneath that buddy-buddiness — a sci-fi variation of Newman and Redford. Though much maligned, male bonding is still a powerful theme — indeed, at the end of Sam Peckinpah's blurred-vision beauty, "The Killer Elite," James Caan and buddy go sailing off together — and because the character of Spock is so resolute, so quietly forceful, he becomes a parody of the unreachable woman. He's practically an extra-terrestrial Garbo.

Fan Reactions and Comments

A fan in 2016 wrote:

In honor of Star Trek’s 50th anniversary and ST Mission NY starting tomorrow, I present my own tiny contribution to early Star Trek history. In the Feb. 2, 1976, Village Voice, James Wolcott (who went on to become a famous media and culture critic writing for Vanity Fair) used a ST con I’d attended as an opportunity for a scathing (and sexist) critique of fandom. He wrote stuff like:

The emergence of fandom is breathlessly told in a paperback entitled Star Trek Lives! written by Jacqueline Lichtenberg, Sondra Marshak, and Joan Winston. As we shall see, these women have their libidinal thermostats turned up pretty high, hence their prose squeaks and squeals like the rusty springs in a newlywed’s bed, yet the style of their enthusiasm gives much insight into the Trek fans’ mentality. What one comes to understand is that aside from the show’s superb production values, respectable acting, and intelligent writing, the real basis of Star Trek’s popularity is sex, cool, and technology.

and

What’s underlying Star Trek’s appeal, what lies beneath the surface of vulgar merchandise and optimism-effect cant, is an inchoate surging of power–technological and sexual–which Trek fans are trying to tap into.

Read the whole thing:

Dear Editor: I was shocked by James Wolcott's article, "Big Brother is Trekking You" (Voice, February 2). I find it hard to believe that anyone can so thoroughly miss a point as he has. Mr. Wolcott is correct in noting that the kids (and adults) at Star Trek conventions are serious but he fails to realize why. Star Trek deals with many real problems, and says that we can handle them. This is a message which drives home to today's youth. While the rest of the world doesn't know if it will survive, these kids believe that we can overcome our problems and differences. I also refuse to believe that the bases [sic] for Star Trek's popularity are "sex, cool, :and technology." Do thousands of fans come to a convention only because enjoy playing around with gadgets? Are all those women fans because Captain Kirk turns them on? Do thousands of kids watch the show faithfully solely because they envy Mr. Spock's cool? I find it difficult to believe that all those people of all ages and all walks of life completely miss the messages of a show in which a monster who attacks men is really only protecting her children; in which the racial problems of a planet are overcome through rational thinking and many other such episodes. And why should the cooperation of two men such as Kirk and Spock be macho when they :are in fact serving the interest of peace? I have found that many critics of Star Trek, including Air. Wolcott, look only at the fans instead of at the show itself. How can anyone understand Star Trek fandom without examining Star Trek? Mr. Wolcott must be a Klingon spy.

Even at 14, I knew that basically what he was saying was, Yeah, Star Trek is pretty good for TV, but these overheated, embarrassingly uncool fans – especially the female ones – don’t really get it. Fandom is just a combination of hormones and adolescent maladjustment.

These were the days when fandom wasn’t an accepted phenomenon affectionately seen as adorkable. It was considered truly shameful and nerdy in the worst possible way. And female Trekkies, like Beatlemaniacs before them, were worst of all: desperate, sexually frustrated, emotional, and out of control.

So I took it upon myself to pen a response, and the Voice published it. I’m still pretty proud of this. Today, it would have been an ephemeral post online, one of thousands, but because back then responding meant writing, typing, mailing, waiting, and hoping for publication, I was (I think) the only response to Wolcott’s hatchet job.

Dear Editor:

I don't know what qualifications Jim Wolcott has that made him a candidate for resident "Star Trek" expert, but surely a knowledge of science fiction and its development couldn't possibly be among them. Otherwise, he would have made the mistake in trying to analyze the popularity of "star Trek" in isolation from the rest of the field. Prior to its inception, every single science fiction movie or television series (anthologies like Twilight Zone were better in this regard but had too little continuity to attract the same kind of fanatical following) had as its major characters, noble strong man like James Kirk, and either the hero or an unflappable scientist/sidekick could have matched Spock's cool ice cube for ice cube.

In fact, this was the pattern not only for sci-fi but for other specialized genres such as Westerns and detective stories. The quality that set "Star Trek" apart was the penetrability of this machismo dike. At least every third episode showed the crew of the Enterprise being tossed around like rag dolls by aliens with super powers, and every episode had its touch of humor, from the self-conscious Spock-McCoy banter to the occasional comedic extravaganza of a "Trouble with Tribbles." Kirk ranted, raved, felt self-doubt, succumbed to a thousand attacks on the human mind and spirit; Spock's cool was punctured repeatedly by annoyance, love, loyalty, and the occasionally resurgent dark side of the Vulcan nature.

In short, "Star Trek," marked the beginning of a transition in the visual presentation of science fiction from the stereotype to a more believable human character. It was only a beginning, and the inflexibility of television killed it off before further progress could be made; but the changes that ultimately led to moves such as "2001" and "A Clockwork Orange." [both] had their roots in "Star Trek."

Perhaps, instead of taking pot shots at the show for the unforgivable sin of not having anticipated the insights of the succeeding five years into the use of sexual stereotypes, Mr. Wolcott might employ his time more profitably by condescending to learn something about the subject of his next article.