I rambled quite a bit on Sisko, Bashir, and O'Brien from Star Trek: Deep Space Nine over on kattahj's journal (http://kattahj.livejournal.com/388526.html?format=light) and I hope you don't mind my continuing to do so here! Not that I've anything insightful to say about class -- I'm no academic, just a Trek fan :)
O'Brien is the only main character who is enlisted -- everybody else is a commissioned officer. He's the Everyman, a regular Joe with a blue-collared job, wife and kids. But how are we to make class distinctions when money is obsolete, education is free, and the main characters are Starfleet? But I'd argue the PTB wanted us to read O'Brien as different from the "middle-class" officers.
IMHO, O'Brien being Irish definitely factored into the blue-collar background, especially since they play up the odd couple relationship between O'Brien and upper-class Englishman Dr. Bashir. O'Brien trained as a classical musician and could've made a career out of that, but he signed up for Starfleet instead. IIRC, O'Brien's father was upset with his decision -- perhaps because his father saw becoming a classical musician as a way for O'Brien to break out of the family's blue-collar status?
I don't know if O'Brien's "blue-collar" background the reason he's got less fanfic than Bashir. Certainly Bashir's accent, prettiness, and slashability made him very popular. But O'Brien's marital status means he gets story-lines dealing with family, not romance -- which means not as much 'shipper fic. (And Bashir/O'Brien is the biggest O'Brien pairing, anyway.)
One problem is that I can't tell whether we're just imposing our 21st century views being imposed on the Trekverse, or if class is still a factor in the lives of (human) Federation citizens. Another question is, whether or not class is still an issue among humans/the Federation (I'm not counting alien-on-alien friction, eg Cardassians looking on Bajorans as servile by nature), does that even matter to us in fandom? Or does it only matter how we perceive it? (Corollary being, does race still matter? Sisko says yes, but perhaps he's not the majority.)
I perceive Sisko as middle-class (if such a thing exists) and Bashir as upper-class based solely on their accents. Accents probably aren't an accurate indicator, but the writers use this kind of shortcut with Bashir's parents. His dad has a working-class English accent, which matches his struggling employment situation and general "loser" characterisation, while his mom's English has an Asian accent (which UK viewers might read as immigrant/foreigner, educated, a hard worker) and she's portrayed much more sympathetically.
[Oooh, brain flash! If Bashir is indeed "upper-class", it's a recent move upward. What if we read Bashir feeling like a "fraud" over his genetic engineering as a stand-in for his move from working-class to upper-class? He's shed his former self (Jules) and taken on a new persona (Julian). His family fakes his background, moves to a new city, and presents him to the world as bright, successful, upwardly-mobile. Julian distances himself from his working-class father and immigrant mother, gets educated, and moves to the far reaches of the Federation. But while he enjoys his new status, he can't ever forget that what he is now is manufactured, not come by naturally. Hmmm...]
I don't have stats on how much fic is written for each character, but Bashir is definitely more popular than O'Brien or Sisko. The latter two are probably about the same? Not sure. I keep stumbling across new fic for both, which makes me very happy of course! *g*
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O'Brien is the only main character who is enlisted -- everybody else is a commissioned officer. He's the Everyman, a regular Joe with a blue-collared job, wife and kids. But how are we to make class distinctions when money is obsolete, education is free, and the main characters are Starfleet? But I'd argue the PTB wanted us to read O'Brien as different from the "middle-class" officers.
IMHO, O'Brien being Irish definitely factored into the blue-collar background, especially since they play up the odd couple relationship between O'Brien and upper-class Englishman Dr. Bashir. O'Brien trained as a classical musician and could've made a career out of that, but he signed up for Starfleet instead. IIRC, O'Brien's father was upset with his decision -- perhaps because his father saw becoming a classical musician as a way for O'Brien to break out of the family's blue-collar status?
I don't know if O'Brien's "blue-collar" background the reason he's got less fanfic than Bashir. Certainly Bashir's accent, prettiness, and slashability made him very popular. But O'Brien's marital status means he gets story-lines dealing with family, not romance -- which means not as much 'shipper fic. (And Bashir/O'Brien is the biggest O'Brien pairing, anyway.)
One problem is that I can't tell whether we're just imposing our 21st century views being imposed on the Trekverse, or if class is still a factor in the lives of (human) Federation citizens. Another question is, whether or not class is still an issue among humans/the Federation (I'm not counting alien-on-alien friction, eg Cardassians looking on Bajorans as servile by nature), does that even matter to us in fandom? Or does it only matter how we perceive it? (Corollary being, does race still matter? Sisko says yes, but perhaps he's not the majority.)
I perceive Sisko as middle-class (if such a thing exists) and Bashir as upper-class based solely on their accents. Accents probably aren't an accurate indicator, but the writers use this kind of shortcut with Bashir's parents. His dad has a working-class English accent, which matches his struggling employment situation and general "loser" characterisation, while his mom's English has an Asian accent (which UK viewers might read as immigrant/foreigner, educated, a hard worker) and she's portrayed much more sympathetically.
[Oooh, brain flash! If Bashir is indeed "upper-class", it's a recent move upward. What if we read Bashir feeling like a "fraud" over his genetic engineering as a stand-in for his move from working-class to upper-class? He's shed his former self (Jules) and taken on a new persona (Julian). His family fakes his background, moves to a new city, and presents him to the world as bright, successful, upwardly-mobile. Julian distances himself from his working-class father and immigrant mother, gets educated, and moves to the far reaches of the Federation. But while he enjoys his new status, he can't ever forget that what he is now is manufactured, not come by naturally. Hmmm...]
I don't have stats on how much fic is written for each character, but Bashir is definitely more popular than O'Brien or Sisko. The latter two are probably about the same? Not sure. I keep stumbling across new fic for both, which makes me very happy of course! *g*