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darkemeraldsI think I now understand why professional fiction writers are up in arms about fanfic. And it's not what any of them are actually saying.
In July 2008, The Atlantic published an article by Nick Carr entitled "Is Google Making Us Stupid?" in which Carr argued that because of the internet, people are losing the ability to engage with long works of literature.
Clay Shirky, in a pair of response posts, says, basically, "so what?"
The real anxiety behind [Carr's] essay is that, having lost its actual centrality some time ago, the literary world is now losing its normative hold on culture as well. The threat isn’t that people will stop reading War and Peace. That day is long since past. The threat is that people will stop genuflecting to the idea of reading War and Peace.
Shirky goes on his second essay to say something that made me go, "Ohhh! So that's what's really going on!" [Bolding is mine.]
Whenever the abundance of written material spikes, the average quality of written material falls, as a side-effect of volume. New forms start out tentative and incomplete, and can only compete for attention with older literature among people who prize experimentation...The abundance itself creates a distraction...Institutions built around previous scarcities warn, often correctly, of the end of society as we know it.
Fanfic is one of the distractions drawing the attention of people who prize experimentation (i.e., us) away from the old norm of published literature and OMFG It's TEOTWAWKI!!!!
Sure, that pencils out to lost sales, but as others have pointed out, the most anti-fanfic pro authors are the most monetarily successful. It's not about money; they just don't like the idea of having finally climbed aboard the Published Express, only to find it running slowly down a side track to marginal relevance.
It must gall them to see some of the the most experimentally minded readers out there haring off to tentative, incomplete new forms. They focus on the tentativeness and incompleteness of fanfic as a literature and willfully ignore the whole point.
Fanfic apologists, for the most part, seem to have missed the point, too: they argue for quality, they argue for passion, they're defensive of their little corner of the old written world, when in fact the only really valid answer to anti-fic authors is, "It's new, it's changing, it represents something that nobody fully understands yet, and we can't quite explain it, but it's not going back in the bottle."
In July 2008, The Atlantic published an article by Nick Carr entitled "Is Google Making Us Stupid?" in which Carr argued that because of the internet, people are losing the ability to engage with long works of literature.
Clay Shirky, in a pair of response posts, says, basically, "so what?"
The real anxiety behind [Carr's] essay is that, having lost its actual centrality some time ago, the literary world is now losing its normative hold on culture as well. The threat isn’t that people will stop reading War and Peace. That day is long since past. The threat is that people will stop genuflecting to the idea of reading War and Peace.
Shirky goes on his second essay to say something that made me go, "Ohhh! So that's what's really going on!" [Bolding is mine.]
Whenever the abundance of written material spikes, the average quality of written material falls, as a side-effect of volume. New forms start out tentative and incomplete, and can only compete for attention with older literature among people who prize experimentation...The abundance itself creates a distraction...Institutions built around previous scarcities warn, often correctly, of the end of society as we know it.
Fanfic is one of the distractions drawing the attention of people who prize experimentation (i.e., us) away from the old norm of published literature and OMFG It's TEOTWAWKI!!!!
Sure, that pencils out to lost sales, but as others have pointed out, the most anti-fanfic pro authors are the most monetarily successful. It's not about money; they just don't like the idea of having finally climbed aboard the Published Express, only to find it running slowly down a side track to marginal relevance.
It must gall them to see some of the the most experimentally minded readers out there haring off to tentative, incomplete new forms. They focus on the tentativeness and incompleteness of fanfic as a literature and willfully ignore the whole point.
Fanfic apologists, for the most part, seem to have missed the point, too: they argue for quality, they argue for passion, they're defensive of their little corner of the old written world, when in fact the only really valid answer to anti-fic authors is, "It's new, it's changing, it represents something that nobody fully understands yet, and we can't quite explain it, but it's not going back in the bottle."
(no subject)
15/5/10 11:28 (UTC)I happen to think that those who hate fanfic are wrong to do so, but that doesn't mean I think they're lying about their reasons. Surely we all know what it's like to love a character and be protective of him and think we know best what he's really like, and hate it when other people write him 'wrong'? Half the wankstorms in fandom are caused by that feeling - so why shouldn't that feeling be behind profic authors' outbursts too?
(no subject)
15/5/10 17:33 (UTC)*This is not to say that Gabaldon and company aren't genuinely disgusted by a lot of fanfic. Hell, so am I. But disgust doesn't explain their whole reaction, any more than it explains the religious right's reaction to gays. I sense a "threat to my way of life" reaction going on here, and Shirky's piece gave me something to hang that on.
All the digging into Gabaldon's past history, the stated fannish source of her main character, etc., is just fandom reacting to her threat the same way she's reacting to theirs. It's gleefully mean-spirited and unpleasant (though not, perhaps, entirely beside the point). It's just that if I accept that her (and others') only reason for writing a diatribe against fanfic is to say, "I'm personally disgusted by fanfic and would like to request all of my readers to respect my wishes and not fic my work" then that's probably what they ought to say.
No, writing fiction isn't a rational business. But since most of the authors posting anti-fanfic essays elevate their own legitimacy over that of fanfic writers by saying what they do is harder, they set a higher standard for themselves and their writing. I don't think it's unreasonable to expect them to uphold it in their public writings, or to get a little muddy in the melée that ensues if they don't.
(no subject)
15/5/10 19:00 (UTC)Having said that, I certainly wouldn't rule out the idea that it's also an unconscious reaction to the terror of the new. I imagine that for those authors who haven't done a stint in fanfiction themselves it looks like a huge and scary sort of movement that they don't understand and don't want to. I'm not sure how they could possibly see it as a threat, but then that's because I'm coming from a fanfic background myself, and maybe it is. Maybe they fear it will also steal their readers... I don't know about that one.