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

[leupagus]

It seems to me that the Boing-Boing argument is that fanfic is more that it relies *more* heavily on context than other works; while I agree that Apocalypse Now wouldn't work to someone unfamiliar with the basic tenants of the world, there's still context to guide you. In SGA fic, for example, there were a number of jokes about Rodney's allergy to citrus that weren't explained and didn't make sense to me when I first came into the fandom, because I started reading the fic before watching the show.

The problem is that I disagree with their implication that a heavier reliance on an existing framework makes for an objectively worse creation. There are any number of books that are part of a series, for example, and that build on each other; I think you need to read the Harry Potter books One and Two before reading "The Prisoner of Azkaban," in order to fully understand the references, but that doesn't mean "Prisoner" is a worse book than "Sorcerer's Stone." (Probably not a great example, but I'm just using the first example off the top of my head.) Works that depend on other works are not, in themselves, worse -- "Pride and Prejudice" sequels notwithstanding.

I was wondering, though, if you've seen anyone address what I think is the main problem most people have with fanfic -- mainly, that it's written and consumed almost exclusively by women. I know of one person on my flist who has self-defined as a man, and that's it; fanfic is not something that most men read or write in the context of livejournal, dw, ff.net, etc.

I think that the fact that fanfic is such a woman-dominated area is something very important when talking about how "bad" or how "pointless" it is. Whenever I read another screed against fanfic, it feels like it's being condemned primarily for being "girly" as well as morally bankrupt or what-not. I mean, all the comparisons to cross-stitching and knitting and such can't be coincidence, can they?

Have you felt this at all, or am I just paranoid?

[cofax7]

I think that the fact that fanfic is such a woman-dominated area is something very important when talking about how "bad" or how "pointless" it is.

Oh, that's absolutely the subtext of a lot of the screeds against it. (Not all, mind you.) Rather like the off-the-cuff comments one finds about how LJ is populated entirely by thirteen-year-old girls writing about their homeroom crushes. Which, besides the obvious untruth, negates the value of the forum by virtue of the gender of its inhabitants.

But it's easier to say, "fanfic sucks" than "things written/done by women suck". Or, if not easier, easier to get away with because even on BoingBoing they (sometimes) call out the really blatant misogyny.