The Harry Potter Lexicon and the World of Fandom: Fan Fiction, Outsider Works, and Copyright
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| Academic Commentary | |
|---|---|
| Title: | The Harry Potter Lexicon and the World of Fandom: Fan Fiction, Outsider Works, and Copyright |
| Commentator: | Aaron Schwabach |
| Date(s): | September 26, 2008 |
| Medium: | |
| Fandom: | Harry Potter |
| External Links: | https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1274293 https://law.pace.edu/sites/default/files/CLE/2-6-14_HP_LawReview_Article.pdf |
| Click here for related articles on Fanlore. | |
The Harry Potter Lexicon and the World of Fandom: Fan Fiction, Outsider Works, and Copyright is an article by Aaron Schwabach published in the University of Pittsburgh Law Review.
Excerpts
Larger, more current fandoms make possible a marketing synergy unknown to pre-Internet content owners. Harry Potter fandom is perhaps the best known example: fans who might otherwise have read the books and talked them over with a few friends found an entire universe of fanfic, fan art, and commentary online. What might have been entertainment for a few hours became entertainment for days and weeks. Fans who might have spent a few dollars on books--or taken the books out of the library-became fans who spent thousands of dollars on books, movie tickets, DVDs, and merchandise. J.K. Rowling made canny use of the Internet with a series of teaser games on her own website and carefully-timed releases of information to major fan sites, promoting upcoming books and movies. The incredible success of the Harry Potter phenomenon-the books alone have sold more than 400 million volumes-would not have happened without a devoted online fan following, and fanfic is part of that. Even critical fanfic serves a valuable purpose, allowing fans to blow off steam about character or plot developments they dislike without abandoning the work altogether. For example, many readers of the Harry Potter series were dissatisfied with "Nineteen Years Later," the epilogue to the seventh volume, in which Harry is seen at King's Cross Station, complacently married to Ginny Weasley, with three children named, rather disturbingly, after other characters who have died. One fan wrote "Five Years Years Even Later", a short fanfic in which a middle-aged, not at all complacent Harry is again seen at King's Cross, talking to an equally middle-aged Hermione. This time, though, Hermione is complaining about her marriage to Ron. Harry, it turns out, has had an affair with Luna Lovegood and is divorced from Ginny. The author's exaggerated mimicry accurately parodies J.K. Rowling's writing style[...]
The fanfic serves as a useful antidote to the anodyne, even saccharine, epilogue in the book. Other fan works are more silly, such as the Potter Puppet Pals puppet skit "The Mysterious Ticking Noise". [...] While the skit provides no deep insight into the characters or the story, no one who has seen a dozen schoolchildren spontaneously begin snapping their fingers in unison and chanting, "Snape, Snape, Severus Snape" can doubt its market-building power. Ultimately fandom is about shared experience, and the more experience the fans can share, the deeper their attachment.