There's been an amazing amount of pretty stupid things said by people on the subject these last few days. I just can't see how anyone can fail to understand that
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Re: here's what I don't understandhippoiathanatoiMay 11 2010, 12:29:36 UTC
What I keep seeing thrown out in response is Barthes' "Death of the Author" means that readers no longer have to care about being respectful to the wishes of authors in respect to their work. I don't think Barthes meant what they think they meant. He's not talking about the production of literature, merely its interpretation. The natural end point of their appropriation of "Death of the Author" is the end of copyright and a general creative free-for-all.
In all honesty, the proliferation of fan fiction strikes me as another symptom of Gen X and Y self-entitlement syndrome. My generation and the one after are, without a doubt, the most privileged generations to have ever walked the Earth. Unfortunately, I think this makes it easy to assume that privileges extend in whatever direction one wants, to encompass anything one pleases if it's convenient for you. The only reason there aren't more fan fiction writers trying to commercialize their product is that the law will come down on them. If they could do it without any danger of getting caught, a small portion, at least, would do so. (And, I mean, it does happen. The fandom wikis are full of stories of crazy fan fic writers who tried to solicit monetary support for their "work".)
I think one aspect to all this that I think provides a lot of the ire from fan fiction writers is that fan fiction is almost exclusively produced and consumed by women. The Board of Directors of the of the Organization of Transformative Works, for example, is exclusively female. Most every fan fic community I stumble across is almost entirely female in population.
Which makes me think that gender politics are underlying a lot of this: who gets to assert the "right way" to interact with a work and so on. But I find the lack of universality among women, vis-a-vis writing and consumption of fan fiction, suggests that what we really have here is a pretty small, but very loud, interest group which does not really represent where most people stand on the subject.
Re: here's what I don't understandhippoiathanatoiMay 11 2010, 18:19:14 UTC
Hopefully without stepping into a minefield...
One of the defenses of fan fiction writing that I generally see is that it's simply another method to interrogate a text, no different than applying LitCrit theory in an analysis, writing a review, or talking about it on a forum. But it seems to be, by dint of the composition of the fan fiction writing community, to be a predominantly female approach to interrogation through ... I don't know, appropropiation and reinterpretation?
So. A community of (mostly) women forms around a (mostly) feminine way of interacting with literature. And then the forces of the status quo -- of copyright regimes (created and enforced mostly by men), of the literary establishment (also top-heavy with men), of fandom (traditionally dominated by men, at least in most genres, until the advent of the Internet allowed new communities to form) -- come in and say, "No, you shouldn't do this, because X, Y, and Z."
It's easy to read this as being a matter of male vs. female, because of this dichotomy.
And so, I wildly speculate, that's part of what's happening: fanfic communities are strongly driven by gender politics, mostly involving women not wanting to stop interrogating texts in a way that they mostly feel is mostly uniquely feminine. (All these "mostlys" are to hedge for the fact that not all fanfic writers or readers are female, nor do they all necessarily see things in gendered terms, and so on and so forth.)
Re: here's what I don't understandhippoiathanatoiMay 26 2010, 20:09:43 UTC
No, your vagina is what makes you a cunt, actually.
You don't have a right to do whatever you want with a copyrighted text, how hard is that to comprehend? Its not a logical extrapolation of anything, its just selfish and greedy. I mean, I get it, and I have a vagina too. So, clearly, that isn't the problem.
That said, I also feel there are some gender issues to consider when it comes to fan fictions. It is predominantly women writing and reading fan fiction. Trying to ignore that is just plain stupid. Clearly, men and women generally respond to and interact with a text in different ways. Some of which are not acceptable to a great many authors, including not legally acceptable.
In all honesty, the proliferation of fan fiction strikes me as another symptom of Gen X and Y self-entitlement syndrome. My generation and the one after are, without a doubt, the most privileged generations to have ever walked the Earth. Unfortunately, I think this makes it easy to assume that privileges extend in whatever direction one wants, to encompass anything one pleases if it's convenient for you. The only reason there aren't more fan fiction writers trying to commercialize their product is that the law will come down on them. If they could do it without any danger of getting caught, a small portion, at least, would do so. (And, I mean, it does happen. The fandom wikis are full of stories of crazy fan fic writers who tried to solicit monetary support for their "work".)
I think one aspect to all this that I think provides a lot of the ire from fan fiction writers is that fan fiction is almost exclusively produced and consumed by women. The Board of Directors of the of the Organization of Transformative Works, for example, is exclusively female. Most every fan fic community I stumble across is almost entirely female in population.
Which makes me think that gender politics are underlying a lot of this: who gets to assert the "right way" to interact with a work and so on. But I find the lack of universality among women, vis-a-vis writing and consumption of fan fiction, suggests that what we really have here is a pretty small, but very loud, interest group which does not really represent where most people stand on the subject.
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One of the defenses of fan fiction writing that I generally see is that it's simply another method to interrogate a text, no different than applying LitCrit theory in an analysis, writing a review, or talking about it on a forum. But it seems to be, by dint of the composition of the fan fiction writing community, to be a predominantly female approach to interrogation through ... I don't know, appropropiation and reinterpretation?
So. A community of (mostly) women forms around a (mostly) feminine way of interacting with literature. And then the forces of the status quo -- of copyright regimes (created and enforced mostly by men), of the literary establishment (also top-heavy with men), of fandom (traditionally dominated by men, at least in most genres, until the advent of the Internet allowed new communities to form) -- come in and say, "No, you shouldn't do this, because X, Y, and Z."
It's easy to read this as being a matter of male vs. female, because of this dichotomy.
And so, I wildly speculate, that's part of what's happening: fanfic communities are strongly driven by gender politics, mostly involving women not wanting to stop interrogating texts in a way that they mostly feel is mostly uniquely feminine. (All these "mostlys" are to hedge for the fact that not all fanfic writers or readers are female, nor do they all necessarily see things in gendered terms, and so on and so forth.)
Reply
(The comment has been removed)
You don't have a right to do whatever you want with a copyrighted text, how hard is that to comprehend? Its not a logical extrapolation of anything, its just selfish and greedy. I mean, I get it, and I have a vagina too. So, clearly, that isn't the problem.
That said, I also feel there are some gender issues to consider when it comes to fan fictions. It is predominantly women writing and reading fan fiction. Trying to ignore that is just plain stupid. Clearly, men and women generally respond to and interact with a text in different ways. Some of which are not acceptable to a great many authors, including not legally acceptable.
Reply
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