The Mainstreaming of Fannish Behaviour
Jan. 7th, 2006 08:29 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
heidiDid you read the article this week about the upcoming episode of Cold Case which is based on a selection of Springsteen songs? The episode, news articles report, was written around, or based on, Springsteen songs through the ages.
Is this the commercial equivilent of songfic?
If someone told you they wrote a story about her family being the inspiration for The Graduate, and that in the movie version she'd be played by Jennifer Aniston, would you say "self-insertion, Mary-Sue"? Would you say "meta"? Would you say "Hey, that's in a theater near me right now!"
The person who wrote in to Since You Asked on Salon Magazine this week admitted to an obsession with celebrity gossip and perhaps an over-reliance on IMDB. The advice columnist responded by saying, Perhaps you could embark on something akin to fan fiction, using the gods and goddesses of our media world as characters in tales of your own creation.
Cary doesn't seem to be aware of the term RPF (real people fanfic, as I am sure some of you are aware), but could her suggestion be read as anything else?
Of course, movies that refer to other films are nothing new - remember Scream? And Miami Vice built a story around Glen Frey's Smuggler's Blues back in, what, 1984? 1985? And I've read novels with celebs are characters - one of my favorite books is Peter Lefcourt's Di and I, about a screenwriter who falls in love with - and runs off with - Princess Diana.
It's not something new to the mainstream. In my estimation (and YMMV) it isn't edgy or subversive, but I know others may disagree. If you still think that it is, why do you think so? In what context is it, because I am sure there are some. Is it the NC-17 arm of things that would still be deemed "unmentionable-in-public"? Or is it sort of like ordinary sexual behaviour before Kinsey - people didn't know what was normal, so they fretted that everything they did was abnormal, wrong, edgy or unmentionable?
Wow, I think this is the most meta I've posted in a year. Or at least six months. Anon posting is on, IPs are being logged but I promise not to check on anything that isn't a full-on threat of death or serious violence.
An ex-jock sits around a bar talking about his athletic glory days as we hear "Glory Days." Four high school friends skip school and drive around listening to "No Surrender," a song about skipping school and driving around. A couple enters an unhappy marriage to the sounds of "Brilliant Disguise," a song about a young couple keeping secrets from each other. The husband leaves the wife and steals a car as we hear "Stolen Car," a song about... well, you get the idea. Though "Cold Case" takes place in Philly, the plot veers off to the Jersey Shore just long enough so "Atlantic City" can pump up a scene about a mob shooting.
Is this the commercial equivilent of songfic?
If someone told you they wrote a story about her family being the inspiration for The Graduate, and that in the movie version she'd be played by Jennifer Aniston, would you say "self-insertion, Mary-Sue"? Would you say "meta"? Would you say "Hey, that's in a theater near me right now!"
The person who wrote in to Since You Asked on Salon Magazine this week admitted to an obsession with celebrity gossip and perhaps an over-reliance on IMDB. The advice columnist responded by saying, Perhaps you could embark on something akin to fan fiction, using the gods and goddesses of our media world as characters in tales of your own creation.
Cary doesn't seem to be aware of the term RPF (real people fanfic, as I am sure some of you are aware), but could her suggestion be read as anything else?
Of course, movies that refer to other films are nothing new - remember Scream? And Miami Vice built a story around Glen Frey's Smuggler's Blues back in, what, 1984? 1985? And I've read novels with celebs are characters - one of my favorite books is Peter Lefcourt's Di and I, about a screenwriter who falls in love with - and runs off with - Princess Diana.
It's not something new to the mainstream. In my estimation (and YMMV) it isn't edgy or subversive, but I know others may disagree. If you still think that it is, why do you think so? In what context is it, because I am sure there are some. Is it the NC-17 arm of things that would still be deemed "unmentionable-in-public"? Or is it sort of like ordinary sexual behaviour before Kinsey - people didn't know what was normal, so they fretted that everything they did was abnormal, wrong, edgy or unmentionable?
Wow, I think this is the most meta I've posted in a year. Or at least six months. Anon posting is on, IPs are being logged but I promise not to check on anything that isn't a full-on threat of death or serious violence.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-01-07 09:24 pm (UTC)I think the line between parody and exploitation is very thin when it comes to RPF. Legally I don't think anyone knows where it is, because no celebrity has ever sued a fan over RPF the way people have sued over having their heads affixed to naked bodies of other people (and won). I expect that sooner or later, someone WILL sue, and then we will see if a court rules that fiction falls into a different category.
I worry a lot about the lack of disclaimers and the blurring of reality and fantasy. I freak out when I read that people are writing 12-year-old Daniel Radcliffe getting raped by Alan Rickman and posting in public archives -- if anything is sure to get HP fandom slammed down by the studio, it's something like that. It troubles me that if you type Viggo Mortensen and Orlando Bloom's names into Google, you get RPF archives on the very first page of hits -- my kids could bump into that just doing LOTR research if I don't stand over them to make sure it doesn't happen.
And I've met enough people via RPF who are ABSOLUTELY CONVINCED that Elijah Wood and Dominic Monaghan are lovers, just because there is a public consensus that says so, that I find it a little disturbing, particularly when they accuse other people of being homophobic just for saying that they think it's possibly not true.
Of course, people do the same thing concerning Brad and Angelina via People Magazine innuendo, but I find that rather disturbing too...