"Moralists have no place in an art gallery."

[tocryabout]

Here's a question I have for everybody currently writing re Robin Hobb's frothy anti-fanfic rant: if you did encounter a good argument for fanfic being morally wrong, something you couldn't answer, would you stop writing it? Seriously? Would you feel guilty? Just how concerned are we about the possibility that we're doing something wrong?

I suspect that the answer for many people is "not very", which is why I'm less than impressed with a lot of these metawanks about the ethics of fanfic.

Some people have dealt with the topic in a mature way, admitting that some fanfic can in fact be ethically dodgy, but I've noticed something about these discussions, and it is this: if we go very far in the direction of asking for responsibility and consideration from fanfic writers, the reaction from some corners seems to be "HURR BLURR I AM LIBERATED IN MY SEXUALITY/CREATIVITY/MORALITY AND CAN DO WHAT I WANT, STOP CENSORING ME!!!" Some writers will cleverly leave out the "hurr blurr" in an attempt to throw us off the track, but it amounts to the same thing. When a segment of the community refuses to consider changing its behaviour, ethics begins to be a very low-stakes thing to debate.

The thing is that the argument is about more than copyright: particularly in the case of erotic fanfic, it becomes a question of whether morality ought to have anything to do with art. If we're concerned about what the source's original author thinks of chan, then we might have to be concerned about what readers and people on the street think of chan, and then it's no longer just about the ficcer and how she likes to get off.

And once the militant fetish ficcers get going, the whole argument becomes annoying very quickly.

So in conclusion, all this moral meta is a waste of everyone's time unless and until you admit the possibility that some art can be Bad -- in the sense of morally wicked -- and that Bad fic (as opposed to harmless badfic) should not be displayed to the public.

(For the record, I more or less agree with scott_lynch's arguments against Hobb's rant.)

Comments

[to-cry-about.livejournal.com]

But at that point, it was a matter of mutual respect...

I've seen that in fandoms for some indie musicians, where fans would religiously respect the bands' feelings on bootlegs, downloading music, and so on. They scoured interviews and articles to find out what the artists thought, and showed genuine concern for those artists' feelings and opinions.

And definitely there are lots of ficcers who care in the same way about whether the original creators are hurt by fics. The ones who don't can stop writing their apologias altogether, as far as I'm concerned. If they don't think it's possible to be bad, I'm not sure what the point is of talking about morality.

[talktooloose.livejournal.com]

Robert Fripp of King Crimson has this (http://log.on.ca/hotwacks/zfripp.html) to say about bootlegging and some of these marks are germaine to the discussion.

If someone makes money on his compositions, Fripp expects to be paid. However, he says, "I have great sympathy for amateur bootleggers. With them, enthusiasm for the music is the motive."

Though this is a different case than fanfic which is about new creation riffing off old, the remarks about enthusiasm for the creation apply. I have to believe that, in aggregate, we X-fanficcers are increasing the richness and actual monetary longevity of the franchise. Paramount made a huge mistake in banning Star Trek sites. Yes, the fans infringed on copyrighted images, etc., but they were also creating free, self-perpetuating advertizing and they deepened the world of the franchise for the creators and consumers. Can you imagine any X-ficcers missing X3 when it comes out? Now, can you imagine that many wouldn't go if they hadn't been sucked into this world by intriguing and powerful fic? I can. Though I grew up with X-Men comics, I now find them shallow for the most part. My loyalty to the creations have more to do with your work and Minisinoo's than with my fading nostalgia.

[to-cry-about.livejournal.com]

While we're in the music metaphor, I notice that most bands seem to see covers as incredibly flattering. The Rheostatics first met the Local Rabbits through a cover of "Record Body Count" that Pete's boys were doing, and the Rheos loved it. Fanfic could perhaps be more profitably compared to covers, rather than bootlegs.

I've also come to like some fics better than the original material. But the core ideas, the universe itself, are still intriguing to me. An old fandom like X-Men (or Star Trek) has been made over so many times that you can see the constant characteristics that recur, the "mythical" aspect that remains the same. In a newish single-creator fandom, the smaller details seem more important and a fanfic can seem like more of a butcher job.

[to-cry-about.livejournal.com]

Also, I somehow thought that I already had you friended on this journal, but apparently I'm an idiot. I was thinking, "Man, talktooloose never posts!"