Interview with Shayne C. McCormack
| Interviews by Fans | |
|---|---|
| Title: | Interview with Shayne C. McCormack |
| Interviewer: | Susan P. Batho |
| Interviewee: | Shayne C. McCormack |
| Date(s): | 2002 |
| Medium: | online as PDF |
| Fandom(s): | many |
| External Links: | effect of commercialisation and direct intervention by the owners of intellectual copyright : a case study : the Australian Star Trek fan community by Susan Bathos (2009) |
| Click here for related articles on Fanlore. | |
Shayne C. McCormack was interviewed at Faulconbridge, NSW.
The interview was included in an academic paper by Susan P. Batho which addresses the effect of the Viacom Crackdown, TPTB, and Australian fandom.
Part of a Series
- Interview with Susan Batho
- Interview with Geoff Allshorn
- Interview with Julie Gormly
- Interview with Ruth Collerson and Joanne Kerr
- Interview with Shayne C. McCormack
- Interview with Ian McLean
- Interview with Tricia McKinlay
- Interview with Rose Mitchell
- Interview with Regina
- Interview with Jim Rondeau
- Interview with Derek and Sharon Screen
- Interview with Rachel Shave
- Interview with Nikki White
- Interview with Donna Hanson
- Interview with Bob Miller
- Interview with William Hupe
- Interview with Dr. Ann Hupe
- Interview with Fern Clarke and Jodi Williams
Excerpts
I think the early Fandom especially back in the 60’s, was the way it was because none of us had ever been involved in anything like that before. We had never been in any sort of club like that before there really weren’t any clubs like that before. So we didn’t know what we were doing. In effect we were individuals brought together for a common pleasure, love of a particular thing, which in this case happened to be Star Trek. I’m not even quite sure we realized we were forming a club it was more just something to call what-ever it was that we were, and for the fun of it. I mean just to think up a weird name and call ourselves in fact I must admit that for all its cuteness I think the name sort of vaguely embarrassing, whenever I had to explain what it meant. Although in later years it gained nostalgia, so it became less embarrassing.
It was a very family like feeling that first club it was like we were almost like sisters and brothers. We just happened to be sisters and brothers who weren’t related, and had been brought together by their love of Star Trek. We had to make our own entertainment because there were no VCR’S, there were no copies of episodes to watch. There were little crappy audiotapes if we wanted to listen to them, and there were pictures people had taken off the TV, there were pictures from magazines. There were slides you could buy so many for a dozen and we had slide show nights. So it was a very social orientated thing, we had parties, we had picnics, and dinners. I think all that changed as soon as Next Generation came along, because then it wasn’t necessary for us to provide our own entertainment; the show provided entertainment. Especially when they started bringing in the episodes from America in advance, because then we had the fun thing of saying, well I went out on Sunday to whichever organization it was and saw an episode that hasn’t been on air in Australia yet. So that was kind of a little ego thing that people could say: they saw it first and they loved it as well. But as soon as you had that scenario of seeing it on the screen the classic couch potato syndrome set in, there was no involvement there was no interaction with each other.
At the time if I’m to think back about my feelings on it, my feeling was a degree of outrage that Paramount would do it. Especially I remember thinking to myself, that all these people who fought for the show in the 60’s and 70’s had not done it so that the studio could then turn around and dump on them for simply continuing the tradition of what they’d done. However I’m not exactly certain whether Paramount were taking that action because of fans or Fandom in general or from that segment of fans that were making money, and that’s the part I’m unsure about. If they were doing it to the fans in general, then stuff them, that was a terrible thing to do! If they were doing it in the light of a segment of it making profit from it, then I can, to a degree, I can understand why that should be. It’s a pointless exercise as far as I’m concerned because I can’t recall any film company or organization that has successfully destroyed a Fandom. George Lucas tried it with his decease and desist orders and it’s never worked. My overall opinion is at the time I felt an outrage about it but I think it could be because I’m an optimistic person but I didn’t think it would work, and I personally don’t think it was a contributing factor to the decline in Fandom. I think the Fandom just declined of its own, in the actual course of advents, as the shows were released on video and you could hire them at video retailers and I think that the release of the fan’s videos of the TV series didn’t all do much to hasten the clubs decline if anything. But it’s a sad statement that, that should be the thing that should cripple Fandom. In retrospect, maybe that sort of Fandom had only limited existence. If a more sociable orientated Fandom should come into existence, afterwards then I’m all for it.
My feeling is zines will still be produced as long as we have paper, they don’t seem to have disappeared. My understanding is people with the internet, and I know everyone claims the internet would be or has been the great cause of the apocalypse as far as zine production is concerned. I think, in a weird sort of a way the internet has actually quite promoted fanzines, because people are advertising on the internet. They’re also finding more writers coming out of the woodwork that would not otherwise had been found. There are young people who are being approached by editors for zines and are printing stories in fanzines for the first time. Now those people, it’s unlikely they would of ever been found because most of them are in fairly obscure out of the way places. But they are not so out of the way if you’ve got a phone line and a computer, you can be in contact with people all over the world via the internet. So an editor can reach out to places and people they could of never ever find before, and a lot of them have already established a readership through the internet and through them follow them into the zines and then buy the zines. So in a way I think it has actually increased the amount of zines being produced. There has been 4 or 5 significant Star Wars slash zines put out, big zines and these are all containing writers that have only previously ever written on the internet. So I think it’s going very well for zines.