Aaand ... that’s not even mentioning porn, which I think [personal profile] stultiloquentia mentioned to essentially this effect in a really interesting meta, which you’ve probably read, but if not – um, ok, here.
Ooh, yes, I love that meta (though apparently I never commented on it at the time... I think Stulti knows - we've had chats sort of around this topic). And I'm with you on the way that fandom could lead us to really interesting places in terms of thinking about canonicity. The only problem I see is that some people, both inside and outside of fandom, can be very resistant to anything that erodes the idea of authorship as ownership (of interpretation), which copyright just compounds. I don't know if there's a generation gap somewhere (though I did once get very shirty with someone once who boiled down people arguing against the idea of authors being able to 'decide' whether fanfic can or cannot be written about them as 'young people whinging because they can't do what they want'), but, yes, for young readers it could be great.
Re Herrnstein Smith, oh yeah, it's very 80s in its extremity (don't know why you would have ever read it, but it reminds me a little of Eva Keul's 1985 book The Reign of the Phallus about classical Athens - mostly art - and how it was the most ev0l phallocracy in the world ever, where women were either prostitutes or not-prostitutes, etc. etc. - a necessary reaction to everything else, but, well, EXTREME). I do, however, quite like the idea of understanding all value as contingent on context, rather than seeing a Henry Moore or whatever as intrinsically valuable, even when you're starving to death in the middle of the desert or whatever. Taking that sort of view wouldn't mean that everything immediately loses its value, because so much of what we deal with is connected with a number of other things (frex: people share fanfic, perhaps, to reflect their own love of canon and invoke it in others (in one respect out of many), so some works can be more valuable than others when they succeed in that more fully by reflecting canon more accurately; similarly, people in it for the bodies in space/free porn will attribute more value to the decent porn). Maybe that observation doesn't take you anywhere in itself, but it lets you qualify other thoughts and observations, because it opens up the evaluative process to an understanding of different perspectives. A bit like what Stulti was saying in her meta.
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Date: 2010-09-25 07:04 pm (UTC)Ooh, yes, I love that meta (though apparently I never commented on it at the time... I think Stulti knows - we've had chats sort of around this topic). And I'm with you on the way that fandom could lead us to really interesting places in terms of thinking about canonicity. The only problem I see is that some people, both inside and outside of fandom, can be very resistant to anything that erodes the idea of authorship as ownership (of interpretation), which copyright just compounds. I don't know if there's a generation gap somewhere (though I did once get very shirty with someone once who boiled down people arguing against the idea of authors being able to 'decide' whether fanfic can or cannot be written about them as 'young people whinging because they can't do what they want'), but, yes, for young readers it could be great.
Re Herrnstein Smith, oh yeah, it's very 80s in its extremity (don't know why you would have ever read it, but it reminds me a little of Eva Keul's 1985 book The Reign of the Phallus about classical Athens - mostly art - and how it was the most ev0l phallocracy in the world ever, where women were either prostitutes or not-prostitutes, etc. etc. - a necessary reaction to everything else, but, well, EXTREME). I do, however, quite like the idea of understanding all value as contingent on context, rather than seeing a Henry Moore or whatever as intrinsically valuable, even when you're starving to death in the middle of the desert or whatever. Taking that sort of view wouldn't mean that everything immediately loses its value, because so much of what we deal with is connected with a number of other things (frex: people share fanfic, perhaps, to reflect their own love of canon and invoke it in others (in one respect out of many), so some works can be more valuable than others when they succeed in that more fully by reflecting canon more accurately; similarly, people in it for the bodies in space/free porn will attribute more value to the decent porn). Maybe that observation doesn't take you anywhere in itself, but it lets you qualify other thoughts and observations, because it opens up the evaluative process to an understanding of different perspectives. A bit like what Stulti was saying in her meta.
Prufrock = HEE!