Camille Bacon-Smith
| Name: | Camille Bacon-Smith |
| Also Known As: | |
| Occupation: | academic |
| Medium: | |
| Works: | Enterprising Women (1992), Science Fiction Culture (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2000), other works |
| Official Website(s): | |
| Fan Website(s): | |
| On Fanlore: | Related pages |
Camille Bacon-Smith is an aca-fan who has written about fandom. Her book Enterprising Women, Television Fandom and the Creation of Popular Myth is often cited in other works.
From the start, there were tensions between the fannish community and academics who studied fandom. Enterprising Women created a strong negative reaction among the female fans who were the subjects of the book. Among the areas of contention were what may perceived as shallow, or incorrect, gender assumptions: "Some of Bacon-Smith’s theories concerning slash writing include: 1) that the male characters are actually surrogate women and, 2) that slash writers are afraid to write about heterosexual sex because they’re afraid they’ve been doing "it" wrong all these years; that women aren’t really expected to know the mechanics of gay, male sex so essentially anything is allowed and accepted."[1]
On Mary Sues
Camille Bacon-Smith includes a subsection on the "Mary Sue" concept in her book, Enterprising Women[2], tying it together with the Canon Sue issue. While not denying that such characters exist, she observes that fear of creating a "Mary Sue" may be restricting and even silencing pro writers, not just fan writers. She mentions "Mary Sue" paranoia as one of the sources for the lack of "believable, competent, and identifiable-with female characters." At Clippercon 1987 (a Star Trek fan convention), Smith interviewed a panel of women authors who say they do not include female characters in their stories at all. She quoted one as saying "Every time I've tried to put a woman in any story I've ever written, everyone immediately says, this is a Mary Sue." Smith also pointed out that "Participants in a panel discussion in January 1990 noted with growing dismay that any female character created within the community is damned with the term Mary Sue."[3]
Several other writers quoted by Smith point out that James T. Kirk is himself could be considered a "Mary Sue," or Canon Sue, and that the label seems to be used more indiscriminately on female characters who do not behave in accordance with the dominant culture's images and expectations for females as opposed to males.[4]
External Links
- Science Fiction Culture commentary from the blog, Stromata, by Tom Veal
- Enterprising Women Review by Anne Collins Smith
- Henry Jenkins and Camille Bacon-Smith at Gaylaxicon, 1992: Part One, [Part Two, TBA]
References
- ↑ Academia Explores the Final Frontier, Strange World, 1994.
- ↑ Bacon-Smith, Camille, Enterprising Women, Television Fandom and the Creation of Popular Myth. Univ. of Pennsylvania Press, 1992.
- ↑ Smith, p. 110. A footnote states this was reported to her by Judy Chien, who attended the panel at MostEastlyCon 1990 in Newark.
- ↑ Smith, p. 97.
