On fans and fetishes
| Meta | |
|---|---|
| Title: | On fans and fetishes |
| Creator: | cereta |
| Date(s): | November 29, 2002 |
| Medium: | Livejournal |
| Fandom: | |
| Topic: | |
| External Links: | On fans and fetishes.., Archived version |
| Click here for related articles on Fanlore. | |
On fans and fetishes is a 2002 essay by cereta.
Introduction: "Despite being mostly focused on what I'm guessing is the final BoP episode Wednesday night, I did happen to catch Josh's fan/fetish speech. It was pretty much the only part of the episode I did catch, which says something about my timing.
Mostly I'm with tizkeh in wondering what the hell Sorkin's deal is. I mean, dude: once can be forgiven as a temper tantrum. We all have them. Fortunately, most of us don't have national television shows on which to air them. But twice is just unseemly."
Some Topics Discussed
- violating the fourth wall, and how it is perhaps not a great idea
- George Lucas liking only "worshipful" fans
- JMS and Aaron Sorkin as clumsy soreheads
From the Essay
In all of this, I'm reminded of another creator, namely George Lucas, and in particular of the Star Wars fan film festival. First was the Lucasfilm comment to the effect that being a fan was about appreciating the text as it was, not about trying to add to it or change it, etc.
More than that, though, were the results of the contest itself. I happened to see the Kevin Smith-hosted results (I was stuck in a hotel room with the Other Half, who really wanted to see them). There were many different categories, and the winners are listed here. Among the winners were an animated short in which Lucas "fires" Jar Jar and a spoof called "Troops," which overlaid the formula of Cops onto stormtroopers on Tattoine. Both were clever, funny, and had a neat ironic sensibility.
Lucas's choice? "Christmas Tauntauns," a claymation music video in which a little girl sang about all the Star Wars toys she wanted for Christmas. I suppose there's a lens through which it could be viewed as an ironic comment on the commercialism of Star Wars, but I'm guessing that it was intended (and certainly was read by Lucas) as completely sincere. Don't get me wrong: it was good claymation set to a cute ditty, but there wasn't a trace of anything less than worshipful – in fact, it didn't really even comment on the text of the movies at all, only on how great the merchandise was.
In short, it was everything Lucasfilm said fandom should be.
My brilliant insight last night: if this is what Sorkin is expecting his fans to be like, no wonder he's so put off by internet fans.
It's not just, I think, that we're not sufficiently worshipful (although I'm sure that's part of it). Those things Josh listed in his speech: making top ten lists, making charts, endlessly discussing things. They're all ways in which fans interact with a text, and more importantly, in which they take control of their own textual experience. Those discussions are ways in which fans construct the meanings of the text without the creator being involved beyond what he/she has put on the screen. They are ways in which fans demonstrate that once you release a text into the world, you cannot control what the audience makes of it.
Which, judging from his experience at TWOP, is not something Sorkin quite knows how to deal with.
In fairness, very few people do. JMS's internet interaction with fans is littered with small (and not so small) struggles over who is final authority on what something means. And actually, pretty much all internet interaction is littered with those struggles: one of the interesting things about the internet is that it has moved questions of just who gets to determine what any text means from the academic to the immediate.
It's actually why I'm not sure increased interaction between creators and fans is necessarily a good idea. Part of the fannish experience is to some extent making something new out of the text, seizing control of it, "poaching," etc. And while there are certainly creators how have an easier time accepting this, I'm guessing that for most, the temptation to assert their "Author-ity" (sorry: old lit theory pun, there) and say, "No, you're wrong, it doesn't mean that." And that way could easily lie madness and authorial temper tantrums.
Oh, and Mr. Sorkin? There is, actually, a term for people who make lists and charts and analyze texts and dissect and interpret them. They're called "English Majors."
Comments at the Post
[calystarose]: I actually recall JMS being involved in the fandom for B5 on a newsgroup. It was very strange indeed.
It was definitely harder for me to conceive of writing fan fiction in the B5 fandom because of the perception of his involvement. B5 seemed very much to be a one author sort of thing, even though other writers did some episodes, and that was a stumbling block for me personally. For the same reason, I can't really get into lit fan fiction. Not that I'm saying it's wrong, just that it's difficult for me to write/read fan fiction based on a single author's work.
[elynross]: Couple of thoughts spinning off this.
1) I think it's probable that the fans who were impacted by the "fetish" remark are a small subset of WW fans, and maybe Sorkin is more likely to have run into the other type of fans, in general, the ones who just receive the text and don't reflect it back.
2) I'm not really all that interested, in general, in what the original creators think of what I think of what they've created, you know? In the same way that observation changes the experiment, introducing the creator into the fannish discussion changes the discussion, whether you want it to, or not. In just the same way, having the author of a piece of fanfiction enter into an ongoing discussion of her work changes the conversation. It can be illuminating, but it's seldom on the level of simply having a discussion with another fan, since the creator cannot be simply another fan, when their work is under discussion, and since what the creator intended isn't necessarily going to change how I view what they said and how I received what they said, it is just as likely to cause problems as it is clarification. I really don't consider the author as necessarily any greater authority on what a text says than any other reader -- and sometimes less. They're operating from a different playing field than any other reader is, having created the work, and while that can be illuminating at times, it can also muddy things unnecessarily.