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Re: why I don't want to send fanac to the creators
Thursday, 13 April 2006 18:29I put this in my LJ so I can (ha ha ha!) find it later. I'm reposting(in edited to omit references to OP fashion) from comments on a flocked post inspired by this open post and comment thread.
You know, my actual problem with giving TPTB our stuff is that 90% of them won't know how to read it.
I believe wholeheartedly that fanfic, fanvideos, and, to a certain extent but much less so than the other two, meta constitute a genre, and you have to learn the generic conventions before you have the ability to engage interestedly in most of the stuff worth engaging with.
Which isn't to say that TPTB are incapable of learning and that some of them don't already know, but fanfiction, in particular, takes a very specific kind of suspension of disbelief that I don't think most professional television/movie people know how to do. It's hard to live in a world where every story is true, but one story (canon) is truer than all the others. It's a learned skill, and most of the professional media don't have, want, or need that skill. [Yes, the editing and rewrite process familiarizes and contextualizes the idea that stories can be told in many different ways, but they have the idea that 'this particular way' is the real story, even if maybe that wasn't the way that made it onscreen. What the hell would they do with first time stories, just for one for instance?]
And, good god, vidding? Vidding, where sometimes you take a clip for what they're doing and sometimes you take it for what it looks like they're doing and sometimes you take it because they're walking across the room in the right direction? And the lyrics are so important, except for that five seconds/2 bar interlude where it doesn't make any sense, but what can you do since you're vidding? And, yes, probably people who work in screened media would have an easier time than I do with vids (I'm non-visual to the point where I don't read most comics because they have too many pictures), but I've been watching vids for...6 or 7 years now, and there's still a lot about reading them I don't understand, just a lot of subtlety that flies right the hell over my head.
To make my point about TPTB and we fans living in separate creative worlds, let's look at Shakespeare, sort of the head of the English lit canon. If Shakespeare came back to life, would anybody shove a short postcolonial essay about The Tempest, suitable for teaching to high school seniors, at him? Would he have any context for understanding, oh, the history of Britain that was relevant, or the changes in the status of women, or the debate over standardized English and the oppressiveness thereof? He knows something about imperialism, yes, and the struggle of women in traditional roles, certainly, and a hell of a lot about language and class, of course. But the debates have kinda moved on since he last wrote, and the premises and jargon of current debates would be, well, not Greek, but maybe Sanskrit to him.
I'm not saying that producers and actors are as far out of the fannish loop as a four hundred years dead guy, but it's the same issues. They don't have the background to play in our reindeer games.
You know, my actual problem with giving TPTB our stuff is that 90% of them won't know how to read it.
I believe wholeheartedly that fanfic, fanvideos, and, to a certain extent but much less so than the other two, meta constitute a genre, and you have to learn the generic conventions before you have the ability to engage interestedly in most of the stuff worth engaging with.
Which isn't to say that TPTB are incapable of learning and that some of them don't already know, but fanfiction, in particular, takes a very specific kind of suspension of disbelief that I don't think most professional television/movie people know how to do. It's hard to live in a world where every story is true, but one story (canon) is truer than all the others. It's a learned skill, and most of the professional media don't have, want, or need that skill. [Yes, the editing and rewrite process familiarizes and contextualizes the idea that stories can be told in many different ways, but they have the idea that 'this particular way' is the real story, even if maybe that wasn't the way that made it onscreen. What the hell would they do with first time stories, just for one for instance?]
And, good god, vidding? Vidding, where sometimes you take a clip for what they're doing and sometimes you take it for what it looks like they're doing and sometimes you take it because they're walking across the room in the right direction? And the lyrics are so important, except for that five seconds/2 bar interlude where it doesn't make any sense, but what can you do since you're vidding? And, yes, probably people who work in screened media would have an easier time than I do with vids (I'm non-visual to the point where I don't read most comics because they have too many pictures), but I've been watching vids for...6 or 7 years now, and there's still a lot about reading them I don't understand, just a lot of subtlety that flies right the hell over my head.
To make my point about TPTB and we fans living in separate creative worlds, let's look at Shakespeare, sort of the head of the English lit canon. If Shakespeare came back to life, would anybody shove a short postcolonial essay about The Tempest, suitable for teaching to high school seniors, at him? Would he have any context for understanding, oh, the history of Britain that was relevant, or the changes in the status of women, or the debate over standardized English and the oppressiveness thereof? He knows something about imperialism, yes, and the struggle of women in traditional roles, certainly, and a hell of a lot about language and class, of course. But the debates have kinda moved on since he last wrote, and the premises and jargon of current debates would be, well, not Greek, but maybe Sanskrit to him.
I'm not saying that producers and actors are as far out of the fannish loop as a four hundred years dead guy, but it's the same issues. They don't have the background to play in our reindeer games.
