Around twenty years ago, I guess, I posted to a very thoughtful fanfic listerv I belonged to at the time, a question that I had been wondering about for a while. I happen to be Catholic, and I had noticed that media fandom in the U.S. at the time included a much higher percentage of Jewish and Catholic members than the U.S. population, at least in my impression (which the list members agreed was accurate). Not necessarily practicing Jews or practicing Catholics, but people who were raised in those cultural traditions. There were plenty of Protestants around, just not as many as you'd expect. My question was, why? The listserv batted this around for a little while and generally agreed that both faith traditions are closely associated with storytelling in a distinctive way (as compared to mainstream Protestant traditions). I can't think of specific Jewish examples that were raised--everyone seemed to assume that was obvious!--but Catholic examples included things like medieval mystery plays and the lives of the saints. And being raised in such a tradition made people more open to/interested in fanfic.
It was so long ago that I forget whether the next step in the conversation was something that I had noticed myself or that someone else pointed out! At any rate, while there were a lot of Jews and Catholics writing fanfic in the 1990's, if you go back earlier to the origins of Trek fandom in the late 1960's, the movers and shakers tended to be Jewish. Devra Langsam, who edited the first Trek fanzine, Spockanalia; Ruth Berman, who edited another early zine, T-Negative; the folks who put on the first conventions, etc. etc.
Just to give an idea of how Jewish-friendly a space this listserv was--one of the Jewish members felt confident enough to give the following reason why the early foundresses of Trek fandom were mostly Jewish. "Look, we all know the stereotype!" she wrote. "We're Jews! We're rude and pushy and we don't take no for an answer! We. Get. Things. Done."
So while it's seriously cool that one can spin a dreidel with Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock, they're not the founders I'm thinking of. Rather, it's Devra and Ruth and all those other people whose names I can't remember off the top of my head, who created this amazing sandbox we're all still playing in.
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Date: 2018-08-04 02:34 am (UTC)Around twenty years ago, I guess, I posted to a very thoughtful fanfic listerv I belonged to at the time, a question that I had been wondering about for a while. I happen to be Catholic, and I had noticed that media fandom in the U.S. at the time included a much higher percentage of Jewish and Catholic members than the U.S. population, at least in my impression (which the list members agreed was accurate). Not necessarily practicing Jews or practicing Catholics, but people who were raised in those cultural traditions. There were plenty of Protestants around, just not as many as you'd expect. My question was, why? The listserv batted this around for a little while and generally agreed that both faith traditions are closely associated with storytelling in a distinctive way (as compared to mainstream Protestant traditions). I can't think of specific Jewish examples that were raised--everyone seemed to assume that was obvious!--but Catholic examples included things like medieval mystery plays and the lives of the saints. And being raised in such a tradition made people more open to/interested in fanfic.
It was so long ago that I forget whether the next step in the conversation was something that I had noticed myself or that someone else pointed out! At any rate, while there were a lot of Jews and Catholics writing fanfic in the 1990's, if you go back earlier to the origins of Trek fandom in the late 1960's, the movers and shakers tended to be Jewish. Devra Langsam, who edited the first Trek fanzine, Spockanalia; Ruth Berman, who edited another early zine, T-Negative; the folks who put on the first conventions, etc. etc.
Just to give an idea of how Jewish-friendly a space this listserv was--one of the Jewish members felt confident enough to give the following reason why the early foundresses of Trek fandom were mostly Jewish. "Look, we all know the stereotype!" she wrote. "We're Jews! We're rude and pushy and we don't take no for an answer! We. Get. Things. Done."
So while it's seriously cool that one can spin a dreidel with Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock, they're not the founders I'm thinking of. Rather, it's Devra and Ruth and all those other people whose names I can't remember off the top of my head, who created this amazing sandbox we're all still playing in.