Pr0n vs Fanart: Some Thoughts
Yesterday I woke up to lj_biz’s first clearer response (when compared to all the ‘clarification’ posts which have come before) and, I’ll admit, I was hopeful. I read it and thought, fantastic! They’re finally making a distinction between actual porn and fanart. I was hopeful that this was a good first step and that fandoms (because really, this is a question that affects all fandoms who fancy a bit of smexy smut, not just HP) would finally be vindicated.
The language in the post regarding drawings is somewhat vaguer when it comes to talking about what’s ‘objectionable,’ especially when you compare it to the stance presented about real photographs and videos of actual people. Part of me took this as just another consequence of trying to define ‘art’ using ‘normal’ language and standards since what one person considers ‘art’ another may consider ‘trash.’
As the day went on, many in fandom responded to the lj_biz post either directly in comments or in other comms or on their personal journals. And then a fantastic snag appeared. It seemed rachel was once again doing what her colleagues had done before: conflating ‘child porn’ with ‘fanart.’ “Don’t call us paedophiles! We’re not!!” fandom cried again. How could this happen? How is it that rachel, who we presume was responsible for writing and posting the lj_biz post, could make such a gaffe? “You were doing so well,” people told her in the comments.
I think it’s obvious to everyone that, in the LJ/6A staff, fandom is dealing with people who are not involved in fandom and whose familiarity with it may be whatever they encounter when an abuse report comes through and they have to check it out. Even if they peruse journals from time to time, it does not appear they engage with fandom *in* fandom on a daily basis. Should they? In an ideal world, perhaps they should, after all, how many people using LJ’s journaling service are involved with one fandom or another? Upwards of 35,000 according to fandom_counts. But the truth is they’re probably busy trying to keep the ship afloat-they’re more likely concerned with executing the day-to-day operations necessary to keep servers online, etc. I reach this conclusion based, among other things, on their continued use of the word ‘porn’ when discussing fanart (and, again, though LJ may be saying right now that fanfic is excluded from this discussion, fandom knows that the ‘porn’ label could be applied to fic or poetry as well). So why ‘porn’ and why haven’t they figured out by now that fanart is not ‘porn.’
Again, I go back to a staff not well versed in the ways and definitions of fandom, and particularly not as familiar with the nuanced ways in which fandom itself uses the word ‘porn.’ Think about it. How many posts have you seen with the line, ‘I come bearing PR0N!!11!!one!!!eleven!!11!!!’ and you open up the comments and are met with ‘glee!!’ ‘ZOMG the hawtness!!11!!’ etc.? We in fandom throw the word ‘porn’ around like it’s delicious candy. Should we? Should we use ‘erotica’ instead? Or would ‘smut’ or ‘smex’ be better? What I’m seeing is that this whole debacle with LJ/6A comes down to a question of semantics-which words are used and how they’re used. If we go back to the premise that the LJ/6A are not hard core fandommers, but are outsiders who scan posts infrequently or when reported to them as abuse as possible ToS violations, what do they encounter? Users and perhaps artists themselves who call their work ‘porn.’ Which definition of the word can we expect they’ll use then: the fandom definition or the mainstream one?
Now, if you’ve made it this far you may be thinking, so are you defending LJ/6A, Pen? No, I’m not. What I am trying to do is get my head around how and why they keep mixing ‘porn’ with ‘fanart.’ So I’ve been thinking, and I remember that when we set up the current fanworks rating system at Immeritus, we had to give a lot of thought to how we’d define age of consent with the different ratings systems between the US and the UK since, not only are our members from various countries whose laws and definitions vary from those in the US and the UK, but also because Immy’s servers live in the US and, by law, we’d be held to US laws on anything posted on Immy. Moreover, we had to think about outside perception to things like the fandom glossary. Why? Because it provides definitions to fandom terms for those not familiar with them. And if you’re new to fandom and have no idea that fanworks exist, you may find smut and slash jarring at first for the sole reason that you may not have been expecting it. After all, the seasoned fandommer knows not everyone first approaches a new fandom with fanworks in mind, and particularly not kinky fanworks. But it wasn’t until we received our first complaint that we were forced to remember that the fandom outsider does not see the word ‘porn’ or words related to it and think ‘hawt.’ And this, I think, is where the LJ/6A staff are-outside fandom looking in without a clear understanding that fandom uses ‘porn’ to mean something different and unrelated to ‘child porn.’
So to get past this am I proposing fandom stop using ‘porn’ to describe their work? Heh. I think I’d be the last person to advocate a shift in terminology to ‘conform.’ But I do think there are mainstream examples out there which can be used when talking about fanworks to outsiders (perhaps they have been and I’ve not seen them, if so, please forgive my ignorance and link me to it). The one example that immediately springs to mind is the “bodice-ripper” romance genre. The story’s usually (not always) incidental and superfluous, but the smex is hawt, no? It doesn’t matter if you prefer het or gay “bodice rippers,” the mainstream understanding should be the same: bodice ripper = sex, explicit, graphic, delicious sex. Can this be used to describe fanworks? I think it can. After all, there are people who, say, see The Empire Strikes Back and see the infamous Leia kiss Luke in front of Han scene who think, “Ha! Way to make him jealous! And look at that Luke looking all smug!!” These people tend to forget that later we find out Luke and Leia are siblings. But fandommers? Fandommers see that scene, knowing what comes later in the series, and think “Skywalker!cest!!!!!” and thus are born cest fics and art, or OT3 fics and art, or L/L pr0n with voyeur!Han. And we glee because, come on, there’s just too much subtext in that scene to let it go. It’s a fandommer’s dream come true.
See what I’m getting at? Perhaps instead of continuing to bang our heads against walls by trying to get outsiders to understand fandom using fandom terms, we ought to mix in some mainstream examples, pointing out that what fandom is doing is not all that different from what’s available in the mainstream reading world, or even in the mainstream TV world (QaF, L-Word, Sex in the City, hell, daytime soaps anyone?). It might help them get their heads around our gleeful use of the word ‘pr0n’ to mean ‘delicious and raunchy sex’ not ‘illegal and harmful content.’ With fictional characters no less. I’m just saying.
The language in the post regarding drawings is somewhat vaguer when it comes to talking about what’s ‘objectionable,’ especially when you compare it to the stance presented about real photographs and videos of actual people. Part of me took this as just another consequence of trying to define ‘art’ using ‘normal’ language and standards since what one person considers ‘art’ another may consider ‘trash.’
As the day went on, many in fandom responded to the lj_biz post either directly in comments or in other comms or on their personal journals. And then a fantastic snag appeared. It seemed rachel was once again doing what her colleagues had done before: conflating ‘child porn’ with ‘fanart.’ “Don’t call us paedophiles! We’re not!!” fandom cried again. How could this happen? How is it that rachel, who we presume was responsible for writing and posting the lj_biz post, could make such a gaffe? “You were doing so well,” people told her in the comments.
I think it’s obvious to everyone that, in the LJ/6A staff, fandom is dealing with people who are not involved in fandom and whose familiarity with it may be whatever they encounter when an abuse report comes through and they have to check it out. Even if they peruse journals from time to time, it does not appear they engage with fandom *in* fandom on a daily basis. Should they? In an ideal world, perhaps they should, after all, how many people using LJ’s journaling service are involved with one fandom or another? Upwards of 35,000 according to fandom_counts. But the truth is they’re probably busy trying to keep the ship afloat-they’re more likely concerned with executing the day-to-day operations necessary to keep servers online, etc. I reach this conclusion based, among other things, on their continued use of the word ‘porn’ when discussing fanart (and, again, though LJ may be saying right now that fanfic is excluded from this discussion, fandom knows that the ‘porn’ label could be applied to fic or poetry as well). So why ‘porn’ and why haven’t they figured out by now that fanart is not ‘porn.’
Again, I go back to a staff not well versed in the ways and definitions of fandom, and particularly not as familiar with the nuanced ways in which fandom itself uses the word ‘porn.’ Think about it. How many posts have you seen with the line, ‘I come bearing PR0N!!11!!one!!!eleven!!11!!!’ and you open up the comments and are met with ‘glee!!’ ‘ZOMG the hawtness!!11!!’ etc.? We in fandom throw the word ‘porn’ around like it’s delicious candy. Should we? Should we use ‘erotica’ instead? Or would ‘smut’ or ‘smex’ be better? What I’m seeing is that this whole debacle with LJ/6A comes down to a question of semantics-which words are used and how they’re used. If we go back to the premise that the LJ/6A are not hard core fandommers, but are outsiders who scan posts infrequently or when reported to them as abuse as possible ToS violations, what do they encounter? Users and perhaps artists themselves who call their work ‘porn.’ Which definition of the word can we expect they’ll use then: the fandom definition or the mainstream one?
Now, if you’ve made it this far you may be thinking, so are you defending LJ/6A, Pen? No, I’m not. What I am trying to do is get my head around how and why they keep mixing ‘porn’ with ‘fanart.’ So I’ve been thinking, and I remember that when we set up the current fanworks rating system at Immeritus, we had to give a lot of thought to how we’d define age of consent with the different ratings systems between the US and the UK since, not only are our members from various countries whose laws and definitions vary from those in the US and the UK, but also because Immy’s servers live in the US and, by law, we’d be held to US laws on anything posted on Immy. Moreover, we had to think about outside perception to things like the fandom glossary. Why? Because it provides definitions to fandom terms for those not familiar with them. And if you’re new to fandom and have no idea that fanworks exist, you may find smut and slash jarring at first for the sole reason that you may not have been expecting it. After all, the seasoned fandommer knows not everyone first approaches a new fandom with fanworks in mind, and particularly not kinky fanworks. But it wasn’t until we received our first complaint that we were forced to remember that the fandom outsider does not see the word ‘porn’ or words related to it and think ‘hawt.’ And this, I think, is where the LJ/6A staff are-outside fandom looking in without a clear understanding that fandom uses ‘porn’ to mean something different and unrelated to ‘child porn.’
So to get past this am I proposing fandom stop using ‘porn’ to describe their work? Heh. I think I’d be the last person to advocate a shift in terminology to ‘conform.’ But I do think there are mainstream examples out there which can be used when talking about fanworks to outsiders (perhaps they have been and I’ve not seen them, if so, please forgive my ignorance and link me to it). The one example that immediately springs to mind is the “bodice-ripper” romance genre. The story’s usually (not always) incidental and superfluous, but the smex is hawt, no? It doesn’t matter if you prefer het or gay “bodice rippers,” the mainstream understanding should be the same: bodice ripper = sex, explicit, graphic, delicious sex. Can this be used to describe fanworks? I think it can. After all, there are people who, say, see The Empire Strikes Back and see the infamous Leia kiss Luke in front of Han scene who think, “Ha! Way to make him jealous! And look at that Luke looking all smug!!” These people tend to forget that later we find out Luke and Leia are siblings. But fandommers? Fandommers see that scene, knowing what comes later in the series, and think “Skywalker!cest!!!!!” and thus are born cest fics and art, or OT3 fics and art, or L/L pr0n with voyeur!Han. And we glee because, come on, there’s just too much subtext in that scene to let it go. It’s a fandommer’s dream come true.
See what I’m getting at? Perhaps instead of continuing to bang our heads against walls by trying to get outsiders to understand fandom using fandom terms, we ought to mix in some mainstream examples, pointing out that what fandom is doing is not all that different from what’s available in the mainstream reading world, or even in the mainstream TV world (QaF, L-Word, Sex in the City, hell, daytime soaps anyone?). It might help them get their heads around our gleeful use of the word ‘pr0n’ to mean ‘delicious and raunchy sex’ not ‘illegal and harmful content.’ With fictional characters no less. I’m just saying.