Nature vs. Culture
| Meta | |
|---|---|
| Title: | Nature vs. Culture |
| Creator: | Merry |
| Date(s): | August 2000 |
| Medium: | online |
| Fandom: | |
| Topic: | |
| External Links: | Avocational Angst - August 19, 1999, Archived version |
| Click here for related articles on Fanlore. | |
Nature vs. Culture is an essay by Merry.
The Essay
Several times, on several lists, I've seen discussions crop up about The Rules of Fandom. The term is treated with either reverence or disdain depending on the user. I've even seen veiled references to the Fannish Police and the Fannish Gestapo, as if wanting people to be decent to each other were the equivalent of bringing back the Third Reich. The utter lack of perspective involved in that kind of comparison aside, it's an interesting viewpoint.
My friend Katharine is fond of saying that Fandom is an anarchy. It doesn't have rules, it doesn't have laws, and it certainly doesn't have a uniformed police force. What it does have, though, is a history and a culture.
Fandom has a lot of different faces. For my purposes here, though, I'm going to talk about fandom as we know it -- slash fandom, specifically. We're a set of tribes, small 'f' fandoms, linked together by common interests into a larger community, big 'F' fandoms. Would that we had better terms, but as an anthropologist I'm accustomed to cultures naming themselves willy-nilly without regard for the convenience of those who study them.
Imagine a house with many rooms, a house that has been generously opened up at a central location for an enormous, unending party. In each room the party takes on a different sound and flavor. There aren't any hosts, so the participants can do whatever they like.
Some of them enter through an outside door and find themselves in a room they like, and stay there forever after. Others will stay for a while, and then venture out into the hall to check out other rooms. Some find another room and stay there forever after, some cycle between a few rooms and occasionally check out another, and some find they like just wandering the hallways.
If you never leave the first room you enter, it's easy to believe that there aren't any other rooms. Reports of those rooms are surely exaggerated, if they exist at all. And what goes on in those other rooms doesn't affect you, surely, so why should you care? Those hallway wanderers, bringing back news from strange rooms you never heard of, seem a little alarmist.
So what if the sky is falling in other fandoms. The sky where you are continues to defy gravity.
I wander hallways. And I don't have a uniform, or a night stick, or a badge, but I know what fandom looks like in other places. I say: Fandom is the sum of its parts (fandoms) just as fandoms are the sum of their parts (fans). What you do, what your fandom does, affects others.
And that is the essense [sic] of Fannish culture. Note the big 'F'. When someone talks about Fannish rules, when someone tells you something "isn't done" in Fandom, those rules boil down to one thing and one thing only.
Fans protect Fandom. Fans don't do those things that might hurt other fans, or Fandom as a whole.
You can ignore this premise. You can pretend that the sky won't fall where you live, and so the falling of the sky is not your concern. You can decide that what you want is more important than what's good for your fandom, or for Fandom as a whole.
This is not about changing your priorities.
It's about letting you know: Fans notice your priorities. And if your priorities conflict with what's good for your fandom, for Fandom, or for other fans, this will reflect on you. More people wander the hallways than you might think, while you hang out in the one room with the party you love best. If you copy a zine, because you want to, fans will notice. If you take on another pseudonym and use it to fight your battles from another front, fans will notice. If you lie to other fans, if you steal from them, if you plagiarize them...
Fans will notice. And more importantly, they'll *remember*.
It's human nature to want things the way we want them. In our lizard-brains we crave instant gratification, and our own desires are more important than anyone else's, and the future doesn't exist. There's just *Me* and *Here* and *Now*.
Culture demands that we set something above that lizard-brain response. It demands that we value something above ourselves, and align our own needs with the needs of a larger world. This doesn't mean that those needs don't change, or that that larger world should never respond to the needs of one of its members. What it does mean is that the guidelines that have served that larger world so well for so long should be treated with respect, and shouldn't be broken lightly. Casting aside the ethics of Fandom is not something one does because one wants to read a story in a zine one can't afford, or wants more people on one's side of an argument, or wants to strike out at another fan. If done at all it should be done with care for those around you, who depend on Fannish culture to define their community -- and only because of a true belief that the change would benefit Fandom as a whole.
Anything else is pure self-interest. And like everything else in life, that has consequences.