rivendellrose | the guardian, hp fen, and brilliant lack of insight

Fanthropology seems to be developing some mainstream media focus, lately. NPR hosted an interview yesterday with a woman who wrote a whole book about fanatics of one variety or another (entitled "Who Are You People?"), and today I found a link to The Guardian's article on Lumos 2006. "Interesting!" thought I - "it'll be great to get an outsider's impression of something as fannish as a convention!"

Or maybe not.

Let me start this off with a quote.

This is Harry Potter for adults. A concept that I'd always thought of as one of those minority tastes like quantum physics for children. Or Star Trek for girls.

Straight off, you should have a pretty good idea of why I'm now about ready to jump down this writer's throat. Bitch all you want about the weirdness of grown women dressed as students and witches. Gripe vociferously, if you so desire, about the uber-intellectualization and analysis of a children's book series. I'll just sit back and smile about still further proof that most people (even writers) don't understand the one great truth of literary analysis: you can analyze anything. Seriously. Put me in a room with a TV for the span of one segment of any (fictional) tv show and a commercial break, and I could come back to you with at least... oh, three subjects for literary analysis papers. And given a bit of time, I could write a fair amount of highly intellectualized analysis on any of those subjects. It's not hard, people. You just have to have the training, the will, and a little bit of instinct for intellectual and artistic bullshitting. The inherent value of the subject matter isn't what matters (although you'll get more out of some things than others, naturally, and you'd do better to start with something either well-written or voluminous), it's what you can pull out of it, and how skilled you are at doing so. A good essay-writer can pull off a fabulous analysis of just about anything.

But, and here's where I get angry, don't you dare start pulling that 1970s "sci-fi is for boys" shit. Not here, not now, not in the 21st fucking century. We have been fighting that for way the hell too long, and - silly me - I thought we'd finally gotten past it. For god's sake, how many female writers and scriptwriters, readers and die-hard fans do we need before people are convinced that looking into the future (or any other speculative genre, or, for that matter, any genre at all) is not a sex-based concept?! Shall I list names? Or point out that back in the days when I went to cons and such, I saw just as many women as men? Or note that I actually know more female sci-fi fans than I do male, and considering I'm in the right age bracket for serious geekiness, I don't think that's completely an issue of selection bias?

Next quote.

It started with Kirk in Star Trek, she says. Fan fiction writers needed a romantic partner for him, and since there wasn't a suitable female character, he got paired off with Spock.

I know about 90% of the folks on my f-list write fic of some kind and occasionally venture into writing relationshippy stuff of the homosexual variety, so let me pose this question - how many of you write a given pairing because there's no other "suitable female (or male) character" for one of the two?

I thought not.

Now, being as how I wasn't born yet, I can't comment on the whole thing with K/S. Squicks me like nobody's business, anyway, because... well... it's Kirk. But I seriously doubt anybody came to the idea of writing the two of them together just because there wasn't a suitable female to pair him up with. It's been years since I watched TOS, but I know Chapel was after Spock, and it's not like there was a shortage of scantily-clad women for Kirk, even working on the assumption that people were too terrified of interracial couples to consider Uhura.

The writer does actually encounter another English major, an academic no less, who challenges her... but not in the way I'd have liked to see her do so. Forget the "major philosophical themes" and the cries of literary significance. And forget how every naysayer who speaks eventually comes 'round to the "but at least they're reading!" argument. Forget all of it, except the fact that this art that we English majors spend four years of our lives having drilled into our brains is just as applicable to a Lysol commercial as it is to Nabokov or Dickens. Get used to the idea that it won't kill us - it will, in fact, do a lot of anthropological and psychological good - for us to analyze popular books and media. And deal, openly and realistically, with the fact that fandom and all its eccentricities are here to stay.

And the next time I catch someone making a crack about sci-fi being only for boys, I swear I'll throw a capslock hissy fit that'd make Book 5!Harry cover his eyes and whimper.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

theladyfeylene.livejournal.com

I know about 90% of the folks on my f-list write fic of some kind and occasionally venture into writing relationshippy stuff of the homosexual variety, so let me pose this question - how many of you write a given pairing because there's no other "suitable female (or male) character" for one of the two?

That actually is the reason a lot of old-school Kirk/Spock slashers give. (And the same reason for why there were so many OCs in early fiction.) Whether or not this came out of women being ashamed of just admitting they like it, out of them needing to justify it or downplay it or whatever, I don't know. But it was a reason that was offered. However, it wasn't the only reason offered. Methinks a fan skimmed an essay on the early days of fan fic and latched onto one point and wouldn't let go.

I could actually get into a very interesting tangent on how it's very interesting that there was a sect of early K/S ficcers who felt that a male alien was more 'suitable' for Kirk than Uhura, but I'll save that for another day.

The article came across to me, when I read it, as someone who was paid to write about the 'crazies'. Especially since she went out of her way to make it seem as strange and bizarre and foriegn as she could. I'd bet any amount of money that the author doesn't believe half of what she's writing, doesn't care how it comes off, and is just milking the angle she was given. So much of what she said is so stereotypical and cliched, it's like she spouted rhetoric and interlaced it with a handful of personal experiences from the con.

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