OTW Guest Post: Emmanuelle Debats
| Interviews by Fans | |
|---|---|
| Title: | OTW Guest Post: Emmanuelle Debats |
| Interviewer: | |
| Interviewee: | Emmanuelle Debats |
| Date(s): | May 15, 2016 |
| Medium: | online |
| Fandom(s): | Castle and fan documentaries |
| External Links: | OTW Guest Post: Emmanuelle Debats, Archived version |
| Click here for related articles on Fanlore. | |
OTW Guest Post: Emmanuelle Debats is a 2016 interview with Emmanuelle Debats.
It was done as part of a series. See OTW Guest Post.
Introduction
Emmanuelle Debats is a French independent filmmaker who directed 2 documentaries about fandom and fanworks. Both were coproduced by France Télévisions. Citizen Fan is available online without geoblocking until 2020. Last month a follow-up documentary, Fanfiction, ce que l’auteur a oublié d’écrire, (Fanfiction, what the author forgot to write), aired on France 4 TV. Today, Emmanuelle talks about how documentaries must allow silent voices to speak in our public media, and why the stories have to go on. [1]
Excerpts
How did you first get into fandom and fanworks?
I was very late to get into fanworks: I was 40 years old and I had no idea of what a fandom might be. Besides, at that moment, I had no knowledge of canons from American pop culture. Luckily, I became a fan of Castle …And that’s how I discovered fanfiction, searching the web for more info about the series. If it hasn’t been for Castle, I would have missed it. I would have seen fanworks, maybe, at random, on the internet but without understanding what they were, exactly, where they came from and why they existed.
My first reaction to fanfiction was surprise and shock. I mean I had the basic French reaction: “How can someone write from a work belonging to someone else?” Then, I discovered fansites, generosity, enthusiasm. I made my own interpretation of fanworks as an instinctive resistance to some kind of starvation. Fanworks appeared to me as a victory, a very smart tactic. Taking stuff from the canon and changing them is very wise: it means accepting being a fan, instead of fighting against it.
I am very aware of all this, since when I became a fan, I first tried to hide it as much as I could. Being a fan of an imaginary world was something very new to my me and to the way I envisioned my relationship to culture. It made me a bit ashamed of what I thought was a weakness. I didn’t have the great idea of writing fanfiction.
I discovered the fandom, in real life, a bit later. I met about a hundred fans in France, and while I was traveling, I was reading Henry Jenkins‘ and Hellekson and Busse‘s books.
Could you tell us about your current project?
Fanfiction, what the author forgot to write is a documentary I shot mainly in Salt Lake City and Paris and it just aired in France. It will be online, not geoblocked, until May 19th. This film is in two parts. The first part was shot in the USA and gives the audience solid historical and literary references. I wanted French people to feel all the strength and all the passion shared by people like Jacqueline Lichtenberg, Christina and Lauren or Anne Jamison. The University of Utah gave us permission to shoot during one of Anne Jamison’s classes. She is an example of how well intellectuals can explain and even forecast major cultural phenomenons. I thought she would be a very convincing guide for some people in France who are not seeing fanfiction as a part of literature.
At the beginning of the second half of the film, I wanted the audience to wonder if we are doing something about fanfiction in our country or not. I hope they can hear an echo between both parts of the film. I did all I could to be positive and to say “Look! They are all interested in this! So why not change our law, now?”
Due to our “droit d’auteur” (rights of the creator), fanfiction’s status in France remains fragile. Although it is a very popular hobby among young people, it remains totally illegal. In my opinion, that means people writing fanfiction are pretending they live in another country or simply ignore the law, and the European members of the Parliament pretend this popular culture (along with all the people involved in it) does not exist.
I worked this French half of the film, very differently than what I did for Citizen Fan. I made certain things happen, so I could prove my point. I kind of pushed the “reality”, a little, towards where I wanted the film to go. I received a lot of support from most of my Citizen Fan participants and I met Magali Bigey, who is teaching at Université de Franche Comté and is one of the French scholars that are making things move. After the film aired, she told me she thought a door just opened in France. There were some good articles in the French press, so maybe she is right.
What fandom things have inspired you the most?
In Citizen Fan, there was a moment when Madoka, a fanfic writer in her late thirties was talking to me about her 14-year old “protégée” who she beta-read for. One day, the teenage girl told her that her readers had asked for a love scene and that she didn’t know how to write that.
Madoka, as a good mentor, said to her “It’s alright not knowing anything about it at your age! And it’s alright, as well, for your readers to ask for it!” And Madoka added, pragmatical: “Well, then, someone has to write down this love scene for her!” (which Madoka did). A teenage girl who has to write some creative writing, in order to please her demanding readers or maybe to satisfy her own curiosity, is conversing with an overwhelmed mother of 3 kids, who has two different jobs and is always in a rush. And this conversation happens in order to…what? To learn something? What is it about? About writing? About love? About life?
It reminds me of One Thousand and One Nights: the story must go on. If you do not know how to write it, then I will write it for you, it is not a big deal. They don’t know each other well. They know each other’s fanfiction. They know the canon. To me, this conversation is poetry of life, poetry of fandom. A bit of fiction in a lot of reality and humanity. I was very moved when I heard it.