Awesome letter on fan fiction
I don't know who you are, thesmallmachine, but you wrote an amazing response to Laura Miller's article on the Russian LotR reworking.
Here's a big chunk:
It was also nice to hear Ms. Miller's acknowledgment that she isn't in the best position to judge what fanfic is and what it's worth. This doesn't change the derision of her tone -- particularly in the bet-hedging use of the word "stereotype," which allows the review to essentially blame an amorphous community of stereotype-mongering Others for the ensuing, memorable, never-really-questioned definition of fic as the domain of teenage girls who earnestly write their romantic stories about a patronizingly quote-marked "canon."
Those quote marks really get me. They block off the term's irony, reserving it for the reviewing voice. In fact, I think most people in fandom are aware that they are not speaking of the canon of Harry Potter in the same sense, and with the same seriousness, that one might speak of the Western Canon (though the Western Canon's seriousness is increasingly dented now, and will probably dent deeper as the years go by).
One more word on that "stereotype" of fanfic as the domain of female teenagers -- of course it's an insult to adults who find fanfic to be a unique mode of criticism or a zero-g literary playspace or, sure, a sexual outlet; it's also an insult to female teenagers, a group who've seen enough insults, I think. The teen fic writer is finding her literary voice, learning to comment on mainstream fictions, finding a way to express her sexuality that's not entirely about recreating herself as a visual object for others' consumption. She is rarely a very good writer, because she's usually a very new one, but it's harsh to make her up into a symbol of writing as "fantasies" of "unlikely romantic pairings" and nothing more. She has an intellectual life, even if it's sometimes more potential than realized.
comments on DW | reply there. I have invites or you can use OpenID.
Here's a big chunk:
It was also nice to hear Ms. Miller's acknowledgment that she isn't in the best position to judge what fanfic is and what it's worth. This doesn't change the derision of her tone -- particularly in the bet-hedging use of the word "stereotype," which allows the review to essentially blame an amorphous community of stereotype-mongering Others for the ensuing, memorable, never-really-questioned definition of fic as the domain of teenage girls who earnestly write their romantic stories about a patronizingly quote-marked "canon."
Those quote marks really get me. They block off the term's irony, reserving it for the reviewing voice. In fact, I think most people in fandom are aware that they are not speaking of the canon of Harry Potter in the same sense, and with the same seriousness, that one might speak of the Western Canon (though the Western Canon's seriousness is increasingly dented now, and will probably dent deeper as the years go by).
One more word on that "stereotype" of fanfic as the domain of female teenagers -- of course it's an insult to adults who find fanfic to be a unique mode of criticism or a zero-g literary playspace or, sure, a sexual outlet; it's also an insult to female teenagers, a group who've seen enough insults, I think. The teen fic writer is finding her literary voice, learning to comment on mainstream fictions, finding a way to express her sexuality that's not entirely about recreating herself as a visual object for others' consumption. She is rarely a very good writer, because she's usually a very new one, but it's harsh to make her up into a symbol of writing as "fantasies" of "unlikely romantic pairings" and nothing more. She has an intellectual life, even if it's sometimes more potential than realized.
comments on DW | reply there. I have invites or you can use OpenID.