Ph.D. candidate Paul Falzone recently published in Western Folklore

Monday, July 24, 2006

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Annenberg Ph.D. candidate Paul Falzone was recently published in Western Folklore (v. 64 #3/4). His article is entitled "The Final Frontier is Queer: Aberrancy, Archetype and Audience Generated Folklore in K/S Slashfiction" Abstract: Known by various names (Spirk, K/S, Kirk/Spock) K/S is defined as fan-generated art, stories, novels, poems, songs, or other creative media that take as their starting point an imagined romantic relationship between the two principal characters of the original Star Trek film and television series. K/S represents a fan folklore in which an aberrant reading of a genre-specific narrative has had the power to transcend issues of genre, gender, sexuality, medium, time, as well as the retirement of the primary narrative source. This paper provides an overview of the history of K/S and its tropes, and uses K/S as a launching point to explore broader issues of queerness, character archetype and the role of the audience in constructing new non-hegemonic narratives outside the bounds of the "poached" parent narrative. It posits that the enduring success of K/S is that it is not about two characters but about situationality between two character types.