Beth pointed me towards the Christie's Star Trek Auction, which I'd been hearing about, but hadn't looked up on the internet. And when I started looking at it, my heart just siezed up with love and memory. Honestly, I looked at all 1,000 items, and I nearly cried. My favorites:
Data's paintings. Can you imagine being able to hang the one of the bird's wing in your living room? It would be like having a portal to the Star Trek universe -- no, a portal to the universe of Data's soul -- hanging on your wall. It's a dream-portal. The thought makes me weep.
Grand Nagus's beetle snuff box. They're really selling it! His beetle snuff! Oh, what I wouldn't give to have that! Well. I guess I wouldn't give a thousand dollars. BUT I WOULD IF I HAD IT TO GIVE!
The flute from The Inner Light. If you owned it, would you play the song? Or would you simply sit in front of it and meditate, washed by memory, while the music played only in your mind? It is a question I will never answer for myself.
You can also own the men's skants they had in three episodes right at the beginning of NextGen (oh, how dumb they were!), Q's Sheriff of Nottingham costume, and Sisko's sexant (but not his baseball -- I think Avery Brooks has that), that silly-looking wooden model of a Pa-wraith that Gul Dukat used that one time, and so many other beautiful things.
Well, really, they aren't exactly beautiful. They're props and costumes, so they're actually as sloppily and cheaply done as they can be. The costumes are polyester, and the props are plastic. Things are painted too boldly for real life, and nothing looks realistic close up and devoid of lighting or post-production editing. And yet, somehow, they're still so moving to me. It doesn't matter that they destroy the illusion -- in fact, they don't destroy the illusion. I still feel just as much love for Data looking at the props that represent the character's search for humanity as I did when I was watching the show.
Which makes me think maybe there wasn't an illusion to begin with. I tend to think that my deep love of fiction indicates a possibly dangerous ability to separate myself from "reality," or to immerse myself in pure imagination -- in falsity. I suppose, really, that despite or perhaps because of my passion for fantasy and make-believe, I distrust it, or distrust my love of it. There are many ways in which I am dangerously, subconsciously Puritan.
But you know? That self-suspicion is wrong. If I were, in fact, unable to separate reality and fantasy, I wouldn't really want to see the plaster and the paint behind my imaginative idols, would I? But I do. My love for fiction, in fact, is enhanced by an examination of how fiction operates.
After all, I am in love with early modern theater, and one way I express that love is a deep interest in its history and in the technical details of its production. In fact, I am especially interested in the accidents of theatrical production. [I almost mean this in a Platonic sense as well as a colloquial one. I love thinking about the physical manifestation of theater, if I can say that. I mean the actual objects and bodies involved in the staging.] I love stories that indicate that some illusion or fantasy I adore is an almost accidental byproduct of cultural or historical pressures, a chance meeting of history, technology, and creativity that produced something that still, centuries later, resonates with my own subjectivity.
In this I don’t think that I'm really different from most of the people who would look at the Star Trek auction catalogue with delight. We all love Star Trek, not in despite of its status as a fiction, but because of it. We revel in the details of its creation.
For a Trekkie, touching the Inner Light flute would be, I think, something like touching a saint's relic. (Notice that two of the items I featured at the top of the entry are or have boxes that look a lot like reliquaries). And, like the relic, the main ideological property of the item (a property that, in the case of the saint’s relic, could have actual physical power) is its connectivity. That is: both items operate as a bridge between the individual and the ineffable.
Let me clarify: I don't mean to say that Star Trek is God. But Star Trek is, for those people who really get into it, representative of an ethos that helps shape one's life or one's imagination, but which is specifically not present in the physical or daily world. The Star Trek universe is valuable to those who enjoy it because it is optimistic, or extra-human, or expresses heroism in a way not available in everyday life. It is valuable precisely because it is not the way things are (or the way things seem) in the "real world."
The flute, then, partakes of both worlds at once -- the physical world, in which it is a fairly cheaply made prop, and the imaginative world, in which it has the essential qualities of, say, memory (a significant theme of The Inner Light). It connects the individual Trekkie to the representative of the Star Trek universe (the idea of Patrick Stewart, standing in for the idea of Captain Picard) and finally to the non-tangible fiction itself, the Trek-verse. In the same way, a bone from a saint both partakes of the physical (bone) and the non-physical (saintliness) in a way that denies neither. It connects the pilgrim to the representative of the spiritual world (the saint, standing in for grace or holiness) and finally to God himself.
Eh. I don't think I'm exactly getting at what I mean here. I'm certainly not managing to refute the Protestant critique of relics as idolatry (although perhaps I don't need to, since I I'm not trying to engage in a theological debate). I also suspect that I'm confusing some important features of Representation as such, and I'm not even addressing the issue of commodification.
(What does it mean that the relationship of the Trekkie to this memorabilia is structured by the auction? These pieces are available because they are being assigned a market value absolutely separate from their production cost, and thus trekkie-ism itself gets assigned a fluctuating monetary value! I don't know enough to unpack this!)
It's a start, though. Maybe I ought to be presenting on this memorabilia auction, instead of on American Idol, for the celebrity-commodity class. Actually, I’m not even sure what to call these artifacts. They are not the same as, say, a model of the Enterprise you buy and put together yourself. They are part of the show. “Memorabilia” or “collectibles” elides the difference.
I’m starting to think now of the way Tiffany Stern discusses prologues and epilogues as “collectible” in a way, largely because of their occasionality or one-off-ness (singularity?). You can put them in your commonplace book in a way you do not put the entire play. And I’m also thinking of a comment one of my Ren Prose Fiction classmates made a couple weeks ago about the practice of ordinary citizens actually buying back the costumes used on the stage – and getting in trouble for it, since they were often the cast-offs of the nobility. If that really happened, I need to get hold of a resource about it. Might that be in Stallybrass? I should look.
Does anyone have recommendations for reading that might help me with these concepts?
Even if you don't, if you're at all a Trekkie, you should go look at the Christies page. I found it a genuinely moving experience, despite my ironic overstatement at the beginning of this entry. I might even buy the catalogue, which would be my own relic (are relics iterative? or are they only iterative in a captialistic society?) of the experience. Also, I have a strong desire to go get an impulse tattoo today of a next-gen-style federation symbol on my hip. I totally want that someday. Why not today?
Data's paintings. Can you imagine being able to hang the one of the bird's wing in your living room? It would be like having a portal to the Star Trek universe -- no, a portal to the universe of Data's soul -- hanging on your wall. It's a dream-portal. The thought makes me weep.
Grand Nagus's beetle snuff box. They're really selling it! His beetle snuff! Oh, what I wouldn't give to have that! Well. I guess I wouldn't give a thousand dollars. BUT I WOULD IF I HAD IT TO GIVE!
The flute from The Inner Light. If you owned it, would you play the song? Or would you simply sit in front of it and meditate, washed by memory, while the music played only in your mind? It is a question I will never answer for myself.
You can also own the men's skants they had in three episodes right at the beginning of NextGen (oh, how dumb they were!), Q's Sheriff of Nottingham costume, and Sisko's sexant (but not his baseball -- I think Avery Brooks has that), that silly-looking wooden model of a Pa-wraith that Gul Dukat used that one time, and so many other beautiful things.
Well, really, they aren't exactly beautiful. They're props and costumes, so they're actually as sloppily and cheaply done as they can be. The costumes are polyester, and the props are plastic. Things are painted too boldly for real life, and nothing looks realistic close up and devoid of lighting or post-production editing. And yet, somehow, they're still so moving to me. It doesn't matter that they destroy the illusion -- in fact, they don't destroy the illusion. I still feel just as much love for Data looking at the props that represent the character's search for humanity as I did when I was watching the show.
Which makes me think maybe there wasn't an illusion to begin with. I tend to think that my deep love of fiction indicates a possibly dangerous ability to separate myself from "reality," or to immerse myself in pure imagination -- in falsity. I suppose, really, that despite or perhaps because of my passion for fantasy and make-believe, I distrust it, or distrust my love of it. There are many ways in which I am dangerously, subconsciously Puritan.
But you know? That self-suspicion is wrong. If I were, in fact, unable to separate reality and fantasy, I wouldn't really want to see the plaster and the paint behind my imaginative idols, would I? But I do. My love for fiction, in fact, is enhanced by an examination of how fiction operates.
After all, I am in love with early modern theater, and one way I express that love is a deep interest in its history and in the technical details of its production. In fact, I am especially interested in the accidents of theatrical production. [I almost mean this in a Platonic sense as well as a colloquial one. I love thinking about the physical manifestation of theater, if I can say that. I mean the actual objects and bodies involved in the staging.] I love stories that indicate that some illusion or fantasy I adore is an almost accidental byproduct of cultural or historical pressures, a chance meeting of history, technology, and creativity that produced something that still, centuries later, resonates with my own subjectivity.
In this I don’t think that I'm really different from most of the people who would look at the Star Trek auction catalogue with delight. We all love Star Trek, not in despite of its status as a fiction, but because of it. We revel in the details of its creation.
For a Trekkie, touching the Inner Light flute would be, I think, something like touching a saint's relic. (Notice that two of the items I featured at the top of the entry are or have boxes that look a lot like reliquaries). And, like the relic, the main ideological property of the item (a property that, in the case of the saint’s relic, could have actual physical power) is its connectivity. That is: both items operate as a bridge between the individual and the ineffable.
Let me clarify: I don't mean to say that Star Trek is God. But Star Trek is, for those people who really get into it, representative of an ethos that helps shape one's life or one's imagination, but which is specifically not present in the physical or daily world. The Star Trek universe is valuable to those who enjoy it because it is optimistic, or extra-human, or expresses heroism in a way not available in everyday life. It is valuable precisely because it is not the way things are (or the way things seem) in the "real world."
The flute, then, partakes of both worlds at once -- the physical world, in which it is a fairly cheaply made prop, and the imaginative world, in which it has the essential qualities of, say, memory (a significant theme of The Inner Light). It connects the individual Trekkie to the representative of the Star Trek universe (the idea of Patrick Stewart, standing in for the idea of Captain Picard) and finally to the non-tangible fiction itself, the Trek-verse. In the same way, a bone from a saint both partakes of the physical (bone) and the non-physical (saintliness) in a way that denies neither. It connects the pilgrim to the representative of the spiritual world (the saint, standing in for grace or holiness) and finally to God himself.
Eh. I don't think I'm exactly getting at what I mean here. I'm certainly not managing to refute the Protestant critique of relics as idolatry (although perhaps I don't need to, since I I'm not trying to engage in a theological debate). I also suspect that I'm confusing some important features of Representation as such, and I'm not even addressing the issue of commodification.
(What does it mean that the relationship of the Trekkie to this memorabilia is structured by the auction? These pieces are available because they are being assigned a market value absolutely separate from their production cost, and thus trekkie-ism itself gets assigned a fluctuating monetary value! I don't know enough to unpack this!)
It's a start, though. Maybe I ought to be presenting on this memorabilia auction, instead of on American Idol, for the celebrity-commodity class. Actually, I’m not even sure what to call these artifacts. They are not the same as, say, a model of the Enterprise you buy and put together yourself. They are part of the show. “Memorabilia” or “collectibles” elides the difference.
I’m starting to think now of the way Tiffany Stern discusses prologues and epilogues as “collectible” in a way, largely because of their occasionality or one-off-ness (singularity?). You can put them in your commonplace book in a way you do not put the entire play. And I’m also thinking of a comment one of my Ren Prose Fiction classmates made a couple weeks ago about the practice of ordinary citizens actually buying back the costumes used on the stage – and getting in trouble for it, since they were often the cast-offs of the nobility. If that really happened, I need to get hold of a resource about it. Might that be in Stallybrass? I should look.
Does anyone have recommendations for reading that might help me with these concepts?
Even if you don't, if you're at all a Trekkie, you should go look at the Christies page. I found it a genuinely moving experience, despite my ironic overstatement at the beginning of this entry. I might even buy the catalogue, which would be my own relic (are relics iterative? or are they only iterative in a captialistic society?) of the experience. Also, I have a strong desire to go get an impulse tattoo today of a next-gen-style federation symbol on my hip. I totally want that someday. Why not today?
Labels: celebrity, death/mourning/corpses, nerd power, representation, tv
You should write a paper on Internet trainwrecks! I will write it for you. It will just be a list of places I go during the day, and why they are trainwrecky. Then I will talk about theory for 50 pages.