Biographies, Fandom and Fanfiction

[selenak]

More on Katharine Hepburn; this review of KATE REMEMBERED makes it sound as if the author managed to strike the delicate balance of frankness and respect. Biography is an inherently problematic genre, as Janet Malcom pointed out in the highly readable The Silent Woman, taking Sylvia Plath biographies as her example. As someone who read quite a lot of biographies, memoirs, etc. as a matter of research in her professional life, I concurr. There is no such thing as an objective pov. By the very choice of which areas in your subject's life to emphasize, and which to regard as less important, you already paint a subjective picture. Your view. Which is why, imo, novelists are in a way more honest; they never claim to present THE truth, just their personal interpretation of it. But back to biographies: It occured to me biographers can have quite a lot in common with modern fandom. There is the character bashing variety; there's the sanctification variety; then there are those who aim for the middle and end up worthy, but dull, or manage to actually pull it off, give the reader the idea that he/she got to know these people and their friends/antagonists/family in a more than superficial way and without too obvious a bias.

Above all, there is possessiveness. Which ticks me off both in fanfic and in biographies, and yet I know I'm a hypocrite; I've felt quite possessive about a few characters, historical and fictional, in my life. Still, using Plath biographies as Malcom did: one of the reasons why I dislike Paul Alexander's Rough Magic and Ronald Hayman's opus so much isn't just the sanctification/vilification going on but also the undertone of "I would have understood her so much better - he just wasn't worthy!" Which is exactly the same thing as the "character X doesn't get appreciated enough by Y" complaints cadesama was talking about recently.

In the spirit of exposing my above mentioned double standard: I'm also a Ricardian, which is a shorthand for someone who believes Richard III was framed. For a brief and entertaining introduction into the controversy, see Josephine Tey's The Daughter of Time; lovers of lengthy historical novels should go for one of my all time favourites, The Sunne in Splendour, by Sharon Penman. Incidentally, Penman and Tey come to different conclusions regarding the identity of the person who did kill the Princes in the Tower. Anyway, no matter who it was, the guy mainly responsible for blackening Richard's reputation for propaganda purposes was Henry Tudor, aka Henry VII. The Richard III society, which has a website, also provides a public service for Ricardians in the form of allowing them to rearrange Henry Tudor's face..

pandarus has some smart thoughts on various fandoms - Jossverse, LotR, Harry Potter, Sandman and Smallville among them. Why do we sometimes fall for canon, and sometimes for fanon? (Not that I ever fell for fanon, except in the sense of liking Susan Kay's Phantom better than Gaston Leroux' Phantom of the Opera, but it's a fascinating phenomenon - paging hmpf here.)

Something which also didn't happen to me me was the denial about someone's death thing. Oh, I've mourned my share of characters. Absolutely. But I never felt tempted to go into "it didn't happen in MY world" mode. However, mourning and denial aren't the only two reactions caused by the recent death in the Potterverse. A while ago, musesfool wrote a post about why The Death doesn't make literary sense to her (which is a very different objection than "but I didn't want X to die!"). Tabellae wrote a well-argued post about why it makes complete literary sense here. Alternatively, you could go and read Te's story in which said character...let's just say I suspect the influence of the Jossverse here..

In earlier entries, I vented some of my frustration about the lack of Londo, G'kar and Vir stories online and the dominance of 'shipper fic in Babylon 5. I still haven't found something about these three gentlemen, but deborah_judge wrote a stunning, sensitive and beautiful exloration of Lennier post-Objects at Rest. If this doesn't make you curious enough - the narrator is none other than the late Mr. Morden. Read and admire, here.




Sweet! You're Frodo's Ass. Work it baby!


Which Hobbit Body Part are You?
brought to you by Quizilla

Comments

[deborah-judge.livejournal.com]

*folds hands and bows*

Thank you very much!

[angeyja.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the links, especially the Kate Hepburn and musesfool.

You're Frodo's ass?! ROFLOL!

[hmpf.livejournal.com]

>paging hmpf here

Ah, frell. You know, I should be working. I have a hundred thousand more important things to do than debate fanon vs. canon right now. But I can't resist posting some superficial thoughts. (Can't really go into it now - I *really* don't have the time.)

Well, why do we become fans, anyway? It's not just - IMO - about appreciating something as a work of art, it's not just about reading or seeing something and going 'wow, this is *great*!' Quality, in fact, doesn't even come into it all that much. Many things of high quality don't have fans; many things of rather lower quality have.

No; we don't become fans because something blows us away due to its outstanding quality - we become fans because something *touches* us inordinately.

We all have certain emotional triggers, I suppose - situations, emotions, types of people that fascinate us to the point of obsession. (Well, okay, maybe not everybody has, but most fans certainly do.) Fandom has little to do with the aesthetic pleasure of the enthusiast, and a lot with the obsession of the fetishist. It's an emotional thing, often also an erotic thing (which is why so many people are fans first and foremost of certain characters instead of whole shows, books etc.)

Speaking for myself, I get a kick of a nature I cannot easily define here but which certainly has an erotic component out of the underlying feeling of exile and angst in Lord of the Rings and Farscape. (It would be interesting to find out why exactly I get that feeling. I don't think it's a feature of the 'normal', healthy human psyche. It's probably a kind of perversion, but a harmless one, I think.) I also get a kick out of other elements of the emotional grounding of those two universes, and out of the underlying feeling of those vast, wild universes themselves. Most of my 'emotional triggers' in LotR and Farscape are tied to / embodied by Frodo and John, but the universes as a whole play an important part in my fascination, and the elements that fascinate me are an integral part of the universes, and so I'm a fan of LotR and Farscape as a whole, and not just of Frodo and John.

In Harry Potter and Highlander fandom, however, I'm a fan only of a single character / two characters. That is because my 'emotional trigger' there is hit very precisely by Sirius (and sometimes Remus), and Methos, but their stories and *themes* are not as central to the universe as John's and Frodo's. They're only side characters, and the main emotional themes of the universes are different from theirs, whereas in Farscape and LotR the elements that trigger my fascination are interwoven with the whole.

[ginmar.livejournal.com]

Ah, the glories of Sharon Penman. I was so disturbed to see that she'd moved to light mysteries, and so delighted when she returned to serious historical fiction.

By the way, you should read Elizabeth Peters' fluffy treatment of the Ricardians---she's Ricardian----which is still in print. I believe the title is, "The Murders of Richard the Third." There's a scene with what can only be described as a Ricardian groupie that involves the reading of a 'sensitive' poem that had me screeching.

Sharon Penman

[selenak.livejournal.com]

I never saw the mysteries as a goodbye, or "When Christ and his Saints Slept" as return. It's the stuff one does in between, as an author; I can understand she wanted to try the short form, as well as dabble in the detective story.

This being said: of course I love her epics more!

Thanks for the tip. I shall certainly look up Ms. Peters' take on the Ricardian scene. *g*

Umm . . .

[(Anonymous)]

Awwww! You're Sam's Heart. *hug*


(http://quizilla.com/users/Krystlein/quizzes/Which%20Hobbit%20Body%20Part%20are%20You%3F/)


Does this mean I need to grab you?

Katie

This does look suspicious to me.

[selenak.livejournal.com]

Does either of us know this person?

OTOH, if this was destiny (or Destiny): well, you already signed up for sidekick duty...