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alias_sqbr(separated out as a tangent from Old school fandom: Can we fix it?)
There's a difference between "here are some flaws in X group"/"Here are some awesome things about my group" (both of which are valid) and "Let's think about the differences between X and my group. Well.. X has all these flaws. And my group is awesome. Because we are awesome people, and they are flawed people (apart from the ones who eventually realise how awesome we are and change sides)."
There is a jump from "there is an undertone of misogyny to some slash"/"There is an undertone of homophobia to some non-slashers behaviour" to "slashers are misogynistic"/"non-slashers are homophobic" to "If you really cared you'd write (fem)slash"(*).
One of things which made me feel excluded from fanfic fandom for years was this attitude that "A lot of fanfic works this way"->"This is What Fanfic Is"->"Everything that is not This sucks and is probably written and enjoyed by misogynistic and/or dull men". Yes, a lot of fanfic takes canon characters and puts them into a romance, but that doesn't mean that I'm Missing The Point of fanfic if I take the setting and write gen about some original characters. And the fact that male dominated fandom tends to be sexist and dismissive of fanfic doesn't mean there's a direct correlation between having tastes in line with conventional fandom and being sexist/narrowminded. Acting this way means female fans with "male" tastes get treated badly in both fandoms.
I'm not sure I've ever seen any "Let's compare stuff from fanfic fandom to equivalent stuff made by people outside" meta that didn't spend every second paragraph talking about how much more awesome and creative and feminist and postmodern "our" stuff is.
One of the things about online fandom (especially on lj) is it's much bigger and more finely delineated which makes it easier to avoid really obnoxious people and create your own space but also makes it easy forget that your like-minded friendslist is not all there is to fandom. When I see a comment like Ursula LeGuin fans could demonstrate a little of the progressive social values of Stargate:Atlantis fans I have to wonder if they count all the fans in mainstream male dominated fandom who think Teyla is hot and enjoy the explosions or whatever. And if they don't count, why don't I get to redefine "Ursula LeGuin" fans the same way? (And here I start shading into my next post :))
nb: I realise one of things fanfic meta does is tend to focus exclusively on fanfic (and specifically, boyslash) to the exclusion of other sorts of fannish creativity and I've kind of done that here. I guess I can't break out of the very mindset I'm criticising!
(*)These arguments annoyed me a lot less once I wrote some femslash, since now I'm one irrational-smug-moral-superiority level above the smug m/m slash writers :)
There's a difference between "here are some flaws in X group"/"Here are some awesome things about my group" (both of which are valid) and "Let's think about the differences between X and my group. Well.. X has all these flaws. And my group is awesome. Because we are awesome people, and they are flawed people (apart from the ones who eventually realise how awesome we are and change sides)."
There is a jump from "there is an undertone of misogyny to some slash"/"There is an undertone of homophobia to some non-slashers behaviour" to "slashers are misogynistic"/"non-slashers are homophobic" to "If you really cared you'd write (fem)slash"(*).
One of things which made me feel excluded from fanfic fandom for years was this attitude that "A lot of fanfic works this way"->"This is What Fanfic Is"->"Everything that is not This sucks and is probably written and enjoyed by misogynistic and/or dull men". Yes, a lot of fanfic takes canon characters and puts them into a romance, but that doesn't mean that I'm Missing The Point of fanfic if I take the setting and write gen about some original characters. And the fact that male dominated fandom tends to be sexist and dismissive of fanfic doesn't mean there's a direct correlation between having tastes in line with conventional fandom and being sexist/narrowminded. Acting this way means female fans with "male" tastes get treated badly in both fandoms.
I'm not sure I've ever seen any "Let's compare stuff from fanfic fandom to equivalent stuff made by people outside" meta that didn't spend every second paragraph talking about how much more awesome and creative and feminist and postmodern "our" stuff is.
One of the things about online fandom (especially on lj) is it's much bigger and more finely delineated which makes it easier to avoid really obnoxious people and create your own space but also makes it easy forget that your like-minded friendslist is not all there is to fandom. When I see a comment like Ursula LeGuin fans could demonstrate a little of the progressive social values of Stargate:Atlantis fans I have to wonder if they count all the fans in mainstream male dominated fandom who think Teyla is hot and enjoy the explosions or whatever. And if they don't count, why don't I get to redefine "Ursula LeGuin" fans the same way? (And here I start shading into my next post :))
nb: I realise one of things fanfic meta does is tend to focus exclusively on fanfic (and specifically, boyslash) to the exclusion of other sorts of fannish creativity and I've kind of done that here. I guess I can't break out of the very mindset I'm criticising!
(*)These arguments annoyed me a lot less once I wrote some femslash, since now I'm one irrational-smug-moral-superiority level above the smug m/m slash writers :)
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no subject
Date: 2009-06-10 03:43 pm (UTC)That's an interesting suggestion.
Writing is always an attempt to pack as much information as possible into as few words as is practical. As such, writers use a lot of shorthand symbols and messages to avoid having to spell out every last detail. And these shorthands include both archetypes and stereotypes so it is inevitable that in clumsy hands (and which if us is a perfect writer?) those stereotypes will on occasion tip over into the offensive. Really, considering the generally low quality of so much fanfic the miracle is not that offensive stereotypes don't occur but that they aren't even more common than they are.
Does this, however, then spill over into the mindset of the writer his or herself and make their own thinking about real humans more stereotypical? Hmm. Not sure. I certainly can't think of an example from my own experience because while I do use stereotypes all the time, part of my preparing to write a new stereotype will involve a fair amount of research into that character type, so I will probably then end up knowing more about the subject not less. I may well stereotype them in a clichéd and possibly offensive fashion, because that is often the neatest and most information-dense shorthand, but I'm not sure that will then infiltrate my own understanding of the people concerned. It might affect my readers' view of course, but that is a different matter.
But on the whole I would say my experience runs counter to your hypothesis: Writing about a character type leads one to a better understanding of that character type, not a more stereotypical misconstruction.