ABSTRACT
Th e value of a new toy lies not in its material qualities (not “having things that buzz inside you and a stick-out handle,”) the Skin Horse explains [to the Velveteen Rabbit], but rather in how the toy is used. . . . Th e Skin Horse emphasizes, not the deterioration of the original but rather the new meanings that get attached to it and the relationship into which it is inserted. (Jenkins, 1992, p. 50)
Th e cultural scholar Henry Jenkins uses material from a book media commercial product-Th e Velveteen Rabbit (Williams, 1975)— to help explain how Star Trek fans use material from a loved television series for social connection and symbolic activity. Fans talk about, enact, and recreate that old show, even merging bits of its symbolic stuff with other media fare. As the Star Trek shows fragment, get reworked, become almost unrecognizable, they grow in meaningfulness; that is, they become the “real” stuff of collective meaning-making-of popular culture.
