Allison Lampert's Midterm

As a child, spending the night at a cousin’s house was really the most exciting thing you could imagine, other then spending a night at the grandparents’ with your cousins. For as long as a can remember, for me this meant playing Star Trek. I was little and had never actually seen the show but I wholeheartedly wore the budges and said phrases like “Beam me up!” regardless. As adults, my cousins were even more obsessed with Star Trek. One cousin found out that there was going to be Star Trek convention near where she goes to college. As it turns out there was a fan film competition. I happened to be visiting my cousins before they went away to college and got bribed into acting in their fan film. For them, and consequently me, Star Trek is more then a television show, it is a culture.

Star Trek is a widely popular, long running show with many variants. It is produced by the mass media. By all means this makes it part of mass culture. In Masscult & Midcult, Dwight Macdonald has a very clear view of mass culture. In fact he shortens the phrase into one word, masscult, because to him it is not even real culture. High culture is however something to be revered. The mistake often made is thinking high culture only consists of quality works. This is not true. It is just that only the high quality works from the past eras of high culture continue to be known and talked about today.

According to Macdonald, high culture is an expression of feelings, ideas and tastes. High culture has personality and is individual. By this definition, anything produced by the mass media cannot be high culture. That takes Star Trek out of the running.

Masscult is the very opposite of high culture. Macdonald even goes as far as to say that it is anti-art. This is a heavy accusation. Macdonald insists that with masscult, the audience is only a spectator, that there is no communication between individuals. He does say people are connected, not to each other directly, but through some impersonal abstract factor. For example, a television show such as Star Trek.

Henry Jenkins talks about culture in his book Convergence Culture. Jenkins’ ideas of the folk culture of America’s past are not unlike Macdonald’s ideas of high culture. Folk culture is personal and comes from grassroots movements. It is the quilting bees and square dances of the past. Folk culture in older America was a blending of cultures and traditions of a plethora of immigrant populations. Families passed down traditions and skills from generation to generation. No economical compensation or exclusives rights and ownership was expected.

This changed with commercial ventures like circuses and showboats. At first the commercial world tried to blend with the folk culture scene but that didn’t last. There came a time when a folk culture performer couldn’t meet the industry or technological standers. This pushed the folk culture scene underground, but not for good.

Like Macdonald, Jenkins also sees mass culture as something that is impersonal and mass produced. Unlike Macdonald, Jenkins looks at what happens when someone takes mass culture and makes it personal. This is when mass culture meets folk culture. This is popular culture.

There have been great technological changes since the America where quilting bees and square dances were common. It is easy for the inexperienced person to do what was reserved for the professionals in the past. With the advent of new production technology and the World Wide Web anyone can become a producer of media and can share that media with anyone else in the world. This makes things interesting.

With the new ability to participate is a willingness to produce. We participate according social and cultural protocols. Our participation is open-ended and not as controlled by the mass producers as in the past. The grassroots production and even distribution is controlled by consumers turned producers. According to Jenkins, this is how folk culture has returned. The folk culture of today models itself after mass culture. It is in dialog with and in reaction to mass culture.

A perfect example of that kind of folk culture is the Star Trek convention my cousin went to. Star Trek may have been popular and mass culture at one time, but that has changed. Today, many people laugh at it and call it “nerdy”. I am not judging; that is just what I have heard. This does not stop the fans, however. Thousands of people show up at conventions. These people, and Star Trek fans in general, even have a name, Trekies.

These conventions do reflect Macdonald’s idea of masscult connecting people through superficial means, such as a television show. Trekies, however, have made the show their own, like Jenkins’ ideas of popular culture. While at the convention, people come together with something in common, the love of Star Trek, but leave as friends. They talk about episodes they like and characters they don’t. They begin to connect on a personal level. They build communities.

For the fan film competition at the convention, Trekies produced films with characters, costumes, and settings that reflect the show. To be labeled a Trekie, weather this is viewed as good or bad, you have to do more than simply watch the show. I have seen the show and am not a Trekie. Trekies participate with the show. There are multiple online communities and blogs devoted to Star Trek. There are conventions, clubs, and fan film competitions. Obviously, Trekies produce works that are individual and show personality. The audience responds individually to the actual Star Trek show and to the fan produced media. Trekies put their heart and soul into the media they produce. I know this from experience. According to Macdonald, this is the definition of high culture.