I think fandom will always have issues because it is half literature (which is half philosophy, half theology, half poetry) and half play. I don't want to fight off any pro-fic people - it's my more or less steady opinion at this point, after ten years in fandom, and being on the verge of thinking of fic as As Legitimate As Anything in the past but getting past that, so, I'm just saying that to bracket what I will say next, which is:
Liking characters the way we do in fandom is weird, right? For me, anyway, you end up identifying more with a character, entering into that character more, than you might in, say, James Agee's "A Death In the Family." I'm picking that at random because I know there is no fandom for "A Death in the Family." So it takes something a little more than "interesting" or "well-written" to give birth to a fandom. But the communal aspect is also inflammatory. Somebody else liking a character can make you see things about the character, enter into him/her more, or just chase after their experience and make it your own by liking that character.
That tangled mess is really why I've never gotten into dealing with the race/gender discussions about characters in fandom (other than commenting on how the show creators might treat those issues) because, yes, we can track statistical problems or focus on certain kinds of explanations that we think are disingenuous or just make excuses, but... we're playing. There has to be something free when we play. I don't mean "you are free to go on pretending you hate female characters because they are X and Y", but, if it's all pre-planned in accordance with political ends and social consciousness, it's not really what it was, anymore. You can teach kids on the playground about what is off-limits, the parameters of civility, but you can't write their lines for them; there has to be something unthinking, investing, PLAYful about it. They have to indulge the secondary reality for long enough to get the satisfaction from it.
So uh, that's a ton of blathering about just one of the things you mentioned in this post.
I am not "girly" and have trouble even interacting with basic girly things - but for me it's more about not being trivial. I have buckets of scorn for trivial male activities, as well. I'm basically the snob everybody hates. *g* No, that's not true, there are exceptions. I like baseball, inside jokes, knowing lots of details about a given thing... okay, my attempt to come up with things has ended.
But I love Liz Lemon! Her whole life is sort of trivial. Yay Liz!
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Date: 2011-07-02 02:18 am (UTC)Liking characters the way we do in fandom is weird, right? For me, anyway, you end up identifying more with a character, entering into that character more, than you might in, say, James Agee's "A Death In the Family." I'm picking that at random because I know there is no fandom for "A Death in the Family." So it takes something a little more than "interesting" or "well-written" to give birth to a fandom. But the communal aspect is also inflammatory. Somebody else liking a character can make you see things about the character, enter into him/her more, or just chase after their experience and make it your own by liking that character.
That tangled mess is really why I've never gotten into dealing with the race/gender discussions about characters in fandom (other than commenting on how the show creators might treat those issues) because, yes, we can track statistical problems or focus on certain kinds of explanations that we think are disingenuous or just make excuses, but... we're playing. There has to be something free when we play. I don't mean "you are free to go on pretending you hate female characters because they are X and Y", but, if it's all pre-planned in accordance with political ends and social consciousness, it's not really what it was, anymore. You can teach kids on the playground about what is off-limits, the parameters of civility, but you can't write their lines for them; there has to be something unthinking, investing, PLAYful about it. They have to indulge the secondary reality for long enough to get the satisfaction from it.
So uh, that's a ton of blathering about just one of the things you mentioned in this post.
I am not "girly" and have trouble even interacting with basic girly things - but for me it's more about not being trivial. I have buckets of scorn for trivial male activities, as well. I'm basically the snob everybody hates. *g* No, that's not true, there are exceptions. I like baseball, inside jokes, knowing lots of details about a given thing... okay, my attempt to come up with things has ended.
But I love Liz Lemon! Her whole life is sort of trivial. Yay Liz!