Popular Culture Review Vol. 12, No. 1, February 2001 | Page 71

“Every Old Trick is New Again”: Myth in
Quotations and the S ta r T rek Franchise
The original series of S ta r Trek first aired on U.S. television in 1966 and was
cancelled by NBC in 1969. Despite the program’s low official Nielsen ratings, a
large and dedicated fan following of the series developed during, but mostly after,
its initial broadcast run (Asherman 31-32, 67-9, 103, 139, 141). Syndication of re
runs allowed the series to reach a broader audience, as well as an opportunity to re
watch the series before the advent of home video machines. Sequels to the series
emerged in the form of an animation series (broadcast in the U.S. in 1973-4),
feature films (the first being S ta r Trek: The M otion Picture, Wise 1979), liveaction series, and an increasing range of related merchandise and cross-media forms.
Perhaps due to this relative longevity. S ta r Trek as a “franchise,” beyond its
individual manifestations, has been described as “mythic” and “classic.” Linda
Johnston notes that whether a work is a “classic” tends to be a matter of “faith
because it has stood the test of time [...]. But is Star Trek a classic because it has
survived since 1966?” (65). The “classic” status of S ta r Trek, therefore, is relative
to its position within a specifically twentieth century communication technology.
S ta r Trek's sequel series of the 1980s and beyond have increasingly played upon
this status in its narrative strategies, positioning itself as a form of contemporary
myth through an interplay with its own textual past and appropriated myths.
While myth comes from the Greek mythos, originally meaning simply words
or a speech {Iliad 6.381-2, 9.431, 9.443), the definition of myth has been much
contested. Traditional explanations tend to focus upon supernatural and heroic
subject matter, oral composition, and archaic setting. More broadly defined, myths
are narratives that embody communal ideas about the natural and social world.
Conceptualised in this broader sense, myths can be seen to articulate universal
themes of human life (such as birth and death) as well as reflecting and mediating
specific cultural shifts. The concept of a “modern myth” has been anathema to
many scholars working with more traditionally defined myths, and for whom
distinctions between myth, legend and folklore are themselves much debated.
In popular use, myth has also come to stand for a fictitious story, or a widely
believed falsehood. Myth has become conceptualised in terms of an ever-broadening
field of narrative and belief systems (Brockway 2). In particular, the characterisation
of film and television as contemporary myth has been the focus of heated debates
in cinema studies, most notably in the short-lived appropriation of Claude LeviStrauss’ structuralism in the 1960s and 1970s, as well as in the context of genre
theory from the 1970s. Myth has also been understood as one possible