Reflection #11
Write a short article on fandom in the voice of James Wolcott.
This reflection is late because I really frickin' hate James Wolcott's voice. I've been dreading sitting down and doing this. But here goes nothing...
Discussion of fanfiction invariably seems to begin with mounting defenses for the production of fanfiction, along with a built-in apology for poaching on some other author's creative territory. This, simply put, is balderdash. For thousands of years, mankind has been altering well-loved stories and presenting their "new" works for the world to see. If writing fanfiction is truly a lower form of writing, or even a crime, than Chaucer, Shakespeare, and numerous other writers from the Western canon need to be evicted from our education system.
For many years, fanfiction has been supposedly toeing the line of Copyright Law because first, the fans writing it have good intentions and don't make a profit, and second, there are far too many fanfiction writers to possibly sue them all. This framework for the legitimacy of fanfiction is utterly warped though because fanfiction is a natural occurrence. One of the first impulses of creativity is to rework a pre-existing story, or write a story like this one but with elements of that one, and so on and so forth. The idea of an "author," of somebody who actually is the originator of an idea, is ridiculous. There are no new stories, and therefore the concept of copyright is hogwash.