Utopian Enterprise: Articulating the Meanings of<i>Star Trek</i>'s Culture of Consumption : Figure 1

TLDR

The article investigates how Star Trek fans construct consumption meanings and practices through media images and objects. The study draws on 20 months of fieldwork—including observations at fan clubs, conventions, and online groups—and 67 fan interviews. The findings show that Star Trek fans create a utopian consumption subculture that legitimizes the franchise as a religion or myth, invests heavily in self‑identity, and uses sacralization to separate it from commercialism, while also highlighting tensions between emotional attachment and market forces.

Abstract

In this article, I examine the cultural and subcultural construction of consumption meanings and practices as they are negotiated from mass media images and objects. Field notes and artifacts from 20 months of fieldwork at Star Trek fan clubs, at conventions, and in Internet groups, and 67 interviews with Star Trek fans are used as data. Star Trek's subculture of consumption is found to be constructed as a powerful utopian refuge. Stigma, social situation, and the need for legitimacy shape the diverse subcultures' consumption meanings and practices. Legitimizing articulations of Star Trek as a religion or myth underscore fans' heavy investment of self in the text. These sacralizing articulations are used to distance the text from its superficial status as a commercial product. The findings emphasize and describe how consumption often fulfills the contemporary hunger for a conceptual space in which to construct a sense of self and what matters in life. They also reveal broader cultural tensions between the affective investments people make in consumption objects and the encroachment of commercialization.