derivative works in context

Via cofax7, Boing-Boing on Bookshop's Post

From boing-boing comment:

If fanfic wants to be something that expresses a love of / obsession with a particular cultural product and reinforces a shared, often subcultural, identity built around it - which is surely, what fanfic is - then it is unlikely to have much impact beyond that. But as soon as it starts to mean something independent of the original product, it ceases to be fanfic and becomes part of wider culture. Exactly like most of the things on this list, whatever their origins.

A lot of arguments about fanfic revolve around the idea of the lack of creativity--which is absurd--the lack of quality--because pro novels are uniformly good, let me refer you to Brian Fucking Herbert before you even bother--but this one, this one....

But as soon as it starts to mean something independent of the original product, it ceases to be fanfic and becomes part of wider culture.

No, it ceases to be fanfic when authors can legally publish it and potentially get paid for it. Diane Duane's Spock's World had exactly as much context to wider culture as D'Alaire's Voyager fic Word Painter.

Cofax goes into the context bit here, which I agree with and keep thinking I want to add to, but it's more complicated than that.

Derivative works already mean something independent of the original product; that's why they were written. So it comes back to the context issue; a derivative work isn't fanfic if it can stand alone without context.

I could say this; all fiction requires context.

I could say this; some fiction requires more context than others.

I could use this: tell me that Apocalypse Now would work if you were not American, did not know the military existed, and lived on the moon. Fiction accesses context consciously and unconsciously all the time, from general cultural context to historical context to language context--Bastard Out of Carolina, hard Southern: Mairelon the Magician, cockney: Ghost Story, very British. The Yellow Wallpaper requires knowing about the treatment of women by society and the patriarchy in the nineteenth century; Raj needs a basic understanding of India's state under British rule and the effects of colonialism.

And samdonne's Your Cowboy Days Are Over requires some understanding of colonialism and Stargate: Atlantis.

At some point, someone needs to just admit it; it's not about context, and in some ways, it's not even about copyright; it's the subculture around fanfic that makes it unacceptable. Derivative fiction that comes out of mainstream is literary and critical and meaningful and art; derivative fiction that comes out of fanfic communities isn't.

Or as one poster put it:

I read (and watch, and listen to) plenty of things that aren't pushing any artistic boundaries. But I don't pretend it's anything more than popcorn, and for the most part the producers don't pretend it's anything more than popcorn.

Yeah. I miss coffee right now.

ETA: Link corrected.

Comments

[dduane.livejournal.com]

Aha. Thanks for the recap; it's been a long day.

(sigh) Meanwhile, I see we're celebrating the Liminalia again. (What, in May??) Somebody please call me when we successfully define the boundary between profic and fanfic. (This does keep coming up cyclically, kind of like sunspots). Meanwhile, I'll just be off writing, you know, ...stuff. :)

[seperis.livejournal.com]

It's been several weeks of it? It's like living life in a George Romero film; arguments that should have been decently put to rest drag themselves hither and yon, shedding badly articulated arguments and sometimes terrible craft metaphors, and you never know where one will pop up next.

Retrospectively, I might have seemed hostile, but it was more restrained panic; to understate the case dramatically, Spock's World and related might have been somewhat influential in my Trek fannishness. Earlier pro authors that posted about this negatively didn't matter to me; this is the first time that, for me, it mattered.

[dduane.livejournal.com]

:) I didn't read any hostility in it: rather, the response I saw sounded fairly restrained. Maybe I should have come in earlier. ;)

And for my part, "somewhat influential", however understated, is reward enough. In the final analysis I'm an entertainer, and if people got entertained by SW, that's good enough for me. (Apparently the writers of the new ST movie got entertained as well: I hear they sometimes passed out chunks of SW to the actors along with script pages, to help establish context.)

[seperis.livejournal.com]

*grins* That would explain the xenophobia in the meeting with Spock to join the Science Academy as well as Spock's treatment by his peers. When I did my review of the movie, it was one of the first thing I mentioned thematically, especially considering it was post-Nero and therefore establishing the existence of the Romulans earlier in ST canon.

I don't know if you know how hugely influential your Star Trek novels are and how much they influenced how I view Trek, or for that matter, how they influenced most people who are Trek fans, and that I've used them very often to recruit people into Trek fannishness. They're amazing and among the few novels period I've bought (more than once; I'm hard on my books) in hardback when possible because above and beyond being Trek novels, they're amazing in and of themselves. And I've used them as supplementary canon when I write Trek fanfic as well (and directly credited when used).

Thank you for that.

[dduane.livejournal.com]

BTW... you're entirely welcome. It's always nice to hear when people think I'm getting the job done. :)