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]

(chuckle) You have nothing on me for tl;dr. You should see what happens to my 1st draft MSs before they leave the house. Slash, rend, slice, dice, cutcutcutcut! (One of my very first editors told me, correctly, "Your only problem is that you write everything three times." I worked on that for a while and then told a later editor, "I think I've got it down to just two times now." He agreed and said, "Keep working on it and we'll get you down to just one." "Yeah," I said, "and after that, when I achieve perfection, I won't have to write it at all." He gave me one of those looks. Sometimes I get a little too Zen for my own good.)

Re the Romantic myth: We're on the same page here in the sense of agreeing that nothing comes out of nowhere, or merely out of one head. Every story has antecedents, either in earlier Story or the prose/-aic business of daily life. Yet it seems to me that the inventor/originator of a group of characters and their mutual dynamic brings something to the process that no one else will or can. It's not just about having been there first (though this can sometimes be part of it, I think); it's also to do with being present at / part of the creation or forging of the characters and the adjustments the creator makes in designing them so that they strike the maximum sparks off each other.

Maybe here the recipe paradigm is useful. Recent copyright law (springing from a suit brought by the great cookbook writer Richard Olney) has established that while the ingredients of a recipe cannot be copyrighted -- you know, the list up at the top: 2 cups of flour, 1 package of yeast, 1/4 cup melted butter, etc) -- the description of how to put the dish together can. That part is taken to be the voice of the cook, as it were, or the chef: the unique talent who, after assembling the ingredients, realized that you had to melt that butter first and incorporate it with the yeast batter to make the crumpets rise correctly. (This being what I was occupied with about an hour ago, as if you couldn't guess.) :) Others will later make the recipe and tweak it around to their own preferences, of course. But the amount of tweaking may turn it more into pancakes than crumpets.

(Probably I should get out of culinary mode now. It's dangerous for me to get hungry after midnight, especially when there's ice cream in the freezer...)

[ithiliana.livejournal.com]

I'm proud of working down from nine drafts of academic essays to only three before I can get feedback! Yay, process!

*drools happily at your analogy*

I did not know that about recipes and copyright law -- thank you!

I think it is an excellent analogy for fanfiction -- that the tweaking may turn the original crumpets into a whole variety of other baked goods (when my baking collapses, I blame humidity; no doubt humidity esp. in Texas could be blamed for bad fic). Much better than the "car theft" or "plagiarism" or "mugging" analogy used by some other writers.

And as I said before, I think fandom/fan fiction does acknowledge the original/originary creator through disclaimers and a host of other rhetorical framing devices (because while I happen to subscribe to the author is dead model in terms of who can control or not control interpretation, I think that is much less prevalent in fandom where major creator love is dominant.)

[dduane.livejournal.com]

Re the humidity & its effect on fiction: Oh, good, an environmental excuse! I like that excuse. Ghu knows, we've got enough of it in Ireland. (makes a note) ...It's easier to pull such reasoning off in Switzerland, though, as there they have the heavily positive-ionic föhn wind, which genuinely does have a bad effect on people (migraines, bad temper) but has gradually become the national excuse why you couldn't do something, or do it well. ("The föhn was so bad that day...")

Re disclaimers: It's nice to see them where and when they do happen. But they don't always. And even when they do, I've occasionally had reported to me some truly hilarious convictions stated in the very next breath: "these characters come from DD's YW universe, but who cares, since she doesn't know how to use them...", etc. To which the only possible response at this end is: "Uh huh."

And as for the author (in the generic sense) being dead... (snicker) Why do I suddenly flash on Monty Python? "Well, she was coughing up blood last night..."