Fan-produced meanings of fan-produced texts…?
February 14th, 2008 by ArielOne of the most intriguing things brought up in class today, to me, was Abby’s question of why fans feel like they get to prefer meanings and control access when they take that very ability away from producers. I came up with three answers:
1. Fandom is dangerous. Maybe the obscenity suit was a bit of an exaggeration (^^;;;), but imagine if the people who made Closer were kindergarten teachers. Now imagine if their principals, or parents in their communities saw this video. There would be hell to pay, not only for this but for a lot of slash and explicit fic. There are a lot of jobs and positions in society where saying “I write/draw/edit gay and/or fetish porn about fictional characters/actors/musicians/newscasters” will get you ostracized if not fired (see, this isn’t an exaggeration; note that this website about Internet crime has articles about fic on LJ). One of the primary uses of the fan community really is self-protection, at the very least from people thinking you’re weird, but on a very real level, to protect people who write Snarry from being perceived as people who would actually tie children up in dungeons and molest them. Within fandom, you get to label things with proper warnings, both to protect the producer of the fan text and to protect anyone who might not want to read it (anyone from people like Jamison, experienced fans who don’t want their souls tarnished, to actual honest-to-god innocent children). Especially concerning slash, one of the major things that slashers learn is that we’re doing things with characters that might really upset other fans, who are very invested in a different view of the text (not that they’re not doing the same to us sometimes). And, hearkening back to my fanifesto, fandom is in some sense about caring and emotional investment: we don’t want to harsh on other people’s squee by letting them accidentally read something that they don’t want to see, and we don’t want them to harsh on our squee in response.
2. Texts are produced in a capitalistic system and fan texts are not, by and large. We pay for books and movies and we watch commercials during TV, which means that we’re giving something in fair exchange for a text. In some sense, viewers “own” the text, then. If you buy a painting, the painter has no place to say that you can’t scribble all over it in crayon, because you own it, it’s your property. I think a similar thing happens with fan texts: once we invest our time and money, the text is fair game (I’m saying nothing about the actual legal definition of fair use, though). Fan texts, however, are not paid for, they are shared. You wouldn’t scribble all over a painting in someone else’s house that they’re letting you see, so why would you mess with the meaning of something shared with you (rather than bought by you)? I’m not trying to make this argument necessarily the most logical thing, but more to explain and perhaps justify a feeling of violation on the part of creators of fan works.
3. This is more an exception than an explanation, really: there are times when fans are totally okay with people re-interpreting their works. For example, there’s a practice known as “remixing” in which authors write a missing scene or a different perspective or just generally a re-interpretation of others’ fic. However, remixing is entirely consensual, as it were: authors agree to have their fic remixed. There are conventions for this sort of thing. This, to me, is a huge trend in fandom: anyone is perfectly welcome, as long as they play by the rules (for example, these LJ etiquette rules, all of which were familiar to me but had never been spoken to me at all).
Posted in LiveJournal fandom, Musings | 1 Comment »
While I understand Ariel’s points, I still have to disagree. I think that the main thrust of my argument is that these justifications are irrelevant to the Internet age and the way fandom has deliberately and with great gusto interacted with the Internet age. So, to step through one at a time:
1. Fandom makes people lose their jobs, get prosecuted, etc.: The Internet is the great bastion of anonymity. I have no idea who made the Closer video, and I doubt the FBI, much less some principal at a school where the author (maybe) teaches, does either. If you’re concerned about the content of your work having repercussions on your daily life, there’s simply no reason not to use a false name–all of the fanfic that I have read is written under pseudonyms. As regards that article about LJ shutting down fiction involving child-pornography on their cite, I think it’s been taken out of context. First of all, LJ did that, and then immediately apologized to all of the fanficcers it had accidentally shut down and then corrected its mistake. So I don’t exactly think you can hold that up as society hating fanfic and slash. Second, LJ is a privately run community that does not exist for the sake of fanfiction. It has the right to control what kind of content it wants passing through its domain. I would hardly equate being booted off LJ (which fanfic wasn’t) to being jailed, socially ostracized, fired, etc. This just doesn’t seem like that big a deal to me, and there’s no evidence that it’s any bigger a deal than that.
2. Slashers want to protect the innocent from running across their material: I simply find this point irreconcilable with Internet fandom. This is going to sound very blunt, but if you want to tightly control the readership of something, don’t post it on the Internet. I kind of think it’s just that simple. Slash fandom existed for decades through snail-mail consumption, and it could have continued to do that. But people post their stories on the web, and they have to realize that by doing that they are inviting a very wide, very diverse audience to read them. It’s simply not possible to say, “The rest of the Internet is a free and democratic and open society, but this story is inviolate. Do not misinterpret it, do not post it somewhere else, do not even read it if I don’t want you to.” Fandom has embraced the Internet as a communicative device, and it has its drawbacks, as does every kind of communications’ medium. Fans can’t pick and chose what kind of Internet they want.
3. Slashers don’t want to be judged: Again, I’m going to sound harsh, but one of the drawbacks to creating something and then shopping it around to the public is that people will judge you for it. I agree that sometimes the level of judgment is excessive for people who are not making their living as creators (writers, artists, etc.), and I understand that it sucks to have someone not like your work, but it’s inevitable. You have put your story out there to be read and readers may not agree with you. Also, I would like to point out that slash/fanficdom is not some kind of utopian community where no one judges each other and everyone protects each other from the harsh light of hte outside world. Just look at the way most fanfic writers react to Mary Sues (people who insert themselves into their fanfic–see Lexicon). That’s as judgmental as it gets.
I think there’s a bigger problem here that I’m trying to get at, and that’s assuming that all members of the slash community are safe to read any slash material and react to it the way the author wishes, but non-slash readers (or at least non-slash people who aren’t carefully selected by the author) are incapable of doing so. Slash readers are not one, indivisible thing. Even bondage-slash readers, or child-slash readers, etc. They may still misinterpret the author, be offended, etc. They may be even harsher on the author than someone outside the community. And also, at what point are you a member of this community? When you write a story? When you read a story? Can you only view Closer if you have read/seen 10 bondage slash fics/vids already? I don’t understand how this boundary of people who may and may not interpret Closer can possibly get drawn.
4. We bought it so we own it; you didn’t buy the fanfic so you don’t own it and can’t make it your own: This point may seem a little obvious, but that boundary is only a wishful one. Maybe I’m taking this too literally, but half of the stuff people write fiction about they never paid a dime for. They downloaded it illegally, they downloaded it legally, a friend showed it to them, etc. Also, what about the people who write fanfiction/slash about canons they have literally never even seen/read/etc.? They certainly have not played by these rules. Also, I’m not sure that the metaphor about the painting in someone else’s house holds up. Sure, a visitor couldn’t damage the original painting (and readers cannot go to the publisher and alter the officially printed text without the author’s say so), but a visitor would have every right to get something different out of that painting than the owners if they are brought into the house into a room with the painting in it. Let’s say it was a nude. If the owners were concerned that it would offend the visitor or that the visitor would judge them, they should not have invited the visitor to their home, or they should have temporarily stashed the painting away for the duration of the visit. As it stands, the visitor as every right to interpret the nude as being obscene, not tasteful/artistic.
This is getting very long. I’d like to conclude by saying I think you could make an argument that since fandom is a small group trying to buck the oppressive, dominant mainstream culture, there should be a special sensitivity to their subordinate position when dealing with their speech–kind of like the way affirmative action is (in my opinion), not the same thing as discriminating against white people, because of all of the history behind race relations. But I see two big problems with this position, as well. First, as the second school of fan studies points out, it’s not at all clear that fandom and mainstream culture are two different things. Fandom may not be oppressed after all. Second, even if we concede that fandom is an oppressed category, I’m very uncomfortable equating fandom with race, gender, sexual orientation, etc. I’m simply not ready to declare that a fan faces the same social, political, economic, whatever obstacles as a racial or sexual minority (and I know that there is a lot of overlap in these categories). Maybe I’ve missed the point of the class, but I think it would dilute the meaning of affirmative action or hate crimes or other ideas that try to help minorities overcome discrimination and debilitating circumstances to include fandom in this category as specially protected speakers.