Job or Prometheus?

[sistermagpie]

I was reading/having a conversation today about fandom that made me see a sort of pattern to the way I fall on certain fandom questions. In this case, I think I was talking about fanfics and writing IC or OOC and things like that. It wasn't that simple, but I wound up saying something about how I really don't think I read fics hoping they will be IC. That is, of course you appreciate being able to recognize the characters you like, etc. A certain level of IC-ness is expected. But in some vague way I like feeling like I'm reading X's fic, and listening to what X has to say, rather than going for any sort of simulation of canon. It's not that I read fic for meta, exactly, but I feel like the fics I like best probably give me the feeling that author just knows his/her take on canon well enough and is now telling a story, as opposed to somebody who's really trying to fit itself into canon or fill a hole. Because really I'm still getting what X is saying and not canon at all.

What's interesting about that is that often that's what fanfic will be described as, specifically when it's being defended to people who don't like it, you know? Like I've seen people reject slash or porn or weird or fanon-ized and say no, fanfic is a testament to the author because people are filling in those moments the author didn't write about, or it's speculating or whatever--it's just those fringe weirdoes who have the boys kissing. The rest of us are showing respect. And I realized that it's not just fanfic where I fall on this side (and ironically, whenever I hear people describing their own superior work that way my possibly unfair thought is that it sounds like their stuff sounds really boring). In fandom in general I tend to always lean towards whatever side of the issue says fandom is about fan reaction to the source material rather than the source material itself, if that makes sense.

It reminded me of something I seem to remember reading by Joseph Campbell where he was talking about different types of spiritualities, and he compared Middle Eastern religions to Western religions by comparing

Job vs. Prometheus.

In the story of Job, Job is tormented, after God and the devil make a bet. The devil hopes that if Job is tormented enough he'll reject God. Instead Job falls down and praises God anyway. Prometheus, by contrast (the way Campbell was laying it out), steals fire to give to man and is punished by being chained to a rock and having his entrails eaten every night. All he has to do to be freed is to apologize and submit to Zeus for doing this--and he won't do it. Looking at these two stories, I think Campbell was noting the different attitude towards the Deity. Once you make gods separate from humans, so that the two are interacting, you have to pick a side. Are you on God's side or humans' side? Job is on God's side--it doesn't matter what God does, you worship him because it is his due. Prometheus is on man's side--he's not going to submit to Zeus.

Okay, it's not exactly the same thing, but when I was thinking about fandom I thought hmmm, I'm definitely with Prometheus/the humanists on this, and if the author is God in fandom, I'm still with Prometheus.:-)

It's not just a case of wanting to say hey, the creator *isn't* God that it's blasphemous to criticize and not liking something or criticizing it isn't some terrible thing to do in fandom--it's a normal part of it. Fandom's really more about how often and how closely you look at the source material, not how pretty you think it is. A Snape and a Sirius fan whose views of canon are totally at odds and liable to erupt into flamewar at any moment are still closer in understanding to each other than they are to any random HP reader who thinks Snape is funny or it was a shame when Sirius died.

I do believe those things above about criticism not being a bad thing or making you not a fan, but for me the issue also often bleeds into the sense that claiming the creator is God is sometimes the first step to attempting to get closer to that God whatever way you can. Sort of, perhaps, the way the many very religious people will seem to blur the line between saying God is always right and saying whatever they say is right is what God says is right.

I can just think of fandoms I've been in and felt oversensitive to this sort of thing. For instance, I remember this one girl in XF fandom who lived for the spoilers she could get hold of and dole out to people. She loved speaking as some sort of voice of authority. She'd be the first to point to someone else as being a crazy stalker type if they said they loved David Duchovny, but also flew to California and bid a fifty dollars so that she could own a crumpled cigarette wrapper used on the show. I'm not trying to now turn around and say that *she* was a crazy stalker and the David Duchovny lover was superior, or that I'm superior to either, it's just that I myself couldn't see the appeal of doing that sort of thing. It just often seemed like she was making this big distinction between herself and other fans, in that she had maybe a foot over that line that separates the fans from the people involved in the movie or show.

But this is not to say that someone like that has a swelled head while I'm this wonderfully humble fan--the opposite is true, in fact. I think part of the reason I want to distance myself from creators etc. is that I don't like feeling like the relationship is unequal. Like, if I'm going to meet the star of a TV show I like, I'm probably not going to want to do it as fan to actor. I consider myself an equal, so would want to meet them as such.

Really, it maybe comes down to that same Prometheus thing. I want to be God too. Only rather than doing that by identifying someone else as God of fandom and trying to put myself in line with his/her thinking or get closer to him/her so that I can speak for them or give myself authority through them, I want to just declare myself a God as a fan.

So to get back to fanfic writers, for instance, I don't think of people being good because they're in character, nor do I think of people as being good because their version of characters are just as good as/better than/a fabulous spin on the author's. I think I just want to take the canon as understood to be the basis for everything and not call much attention to it. It's like canon is the paint, the raw materials we know everyone is working with. So rather than say, "Your Hermione is so in character!" I'd think more, "I like what you've done with Hermione," and say what it says to me meta-wise about canon and how it works within the story. If I'm reading crackfic or whatever then I probably assume that whatever cliché is being used already says something about canon (Veela!Draco, Sickly!Frodo, etc.).

I mean, so many fandom discussions boil down to the idea of knowing your place, don't they? Like whenever somebody gets into a twist because it's so wanky somebody said they preferred whatever fanfic to canon—well, does that really matter? Can you really force yourself to enjoy one thing over another? Does that really mean you've overstepped your place? Can't you acknowledge the author/creator's unique contribution of original work without doing that? Fanfic and Original Fic are just totally different animals. If I enjoyed reading a certain fic to a certain episode or book in a canon, should that matter? Not really to me, because hey, I'm a god. If I enjoyed it more, I must have a perfectly divine reason for it.;-)



p.s. I finally saw one of the clips of my friend and me on AMC. If you watch that channel, sometimes they do these fast montages of "Movie People" talking about different movies. I think they've used several different clips of us at different times, talking about different movies, but this is the first time I've seen one even though we taped it a long time ago. At first I totally didn't realize it was us. I was looking at myself and I seemed like some other person.

Anyway, it was a good clip, part of a montage where people are talking about horror movies. In our bit I guess I'm going through the Rules of Slasher movies and how important they are in life because they tell you how to survive psycho killer attacks. I'm telling them to my friend, who is less familiar with them. So the clip is:

Me: ...the virgin always survives.... See, you wouldn't have known that.

Her: No, I wouldn't have known that!

(to the camera)

I wouldn't have survived either!

What sells it is that she delivers those lines with totally clueless sincerity and genuine alarm. She's totally not acting.

Comments

[cressida0201.livejournal.com]

I honestly have a hard time imagining what it is that they were hoping to get out of the discussion in the first place. Why would someone go out of their way to seek out other people's responses, if not to learn about, well, other people's responses?

Speaking as someone who's had the experience of feeling upset by other people's interpretations of canon, I may be able to answer your question, at least partially.

One of the major reasons why I go looking for discussion of something I like is because I want to deepen my own understanding of it. I tend to think best when I'm talking or writing; the act of composing my thoughts in a post or essay often helps my ideas click into place and expand. I also want to know what other people have seen that I haven't, but that's a double-edged sword. What I really hope for, deep down, is to find things other people have seen that I can take into my own view of canon and deepen it. I'm generally willing to take the risk of hearing negative things in order to find these insights--but it can be tough when I'm forced to see things in a way I don't like.

A lot depends on the tone and context of the discussion. Most of the time ideas are presented in a way that leaves me free to take or leave them. What upsets me, though, is when I feel placed in a position where I either have to refute the distasteful idea or accept it. This can happen especially in the debate-style atmosphere of a mailing list or message board, although sometimes fanfiction can have the same effect. I don't want to feel forced to adopt a reading I don't like, because it would diminish my pleasure in canon.

I'll mention an example of something that happened to me in another fandom. Someone posted on a message board about parallels between two characters--let's call them A and B, for the sake of convenience. I liked the idea and posted in support of it. Now, B is my favorite character in that canon. But then a third poster hopped onto the thread and posted a long essay stating that we other two were wrong, that there could be no comparison between A and B because A was superior to B in every conceivable way. He then gave a lengthy series of reasons for A's superiority.

I was flabbergasted and upset. I was put on the spot, having to defend my opinions. If I couldn't do that, it seemed, then I had to admit that I was wrong and the other person was right. I wasn't able at the time to come up with anything better than "Um--um--A is not either better!" And that, obviously, wasn't much of a comeback. It was such an upsetting experience that I stopped hanging around that board.

The question has gnawed at me, off and on, for over two years now. I've found reasons to laugh off some of the stuff in the essay, but some of it I'm still struggling with. It's colored my relationship with both characters, and not in a happy way. I now somewhat resent A, whom I always used to like. I also feel less secure than I used to about preferring B. Until I can either come up with a coherent alternate view which I can defend or else find a way to be okay with the idea that A really is better, it will keep disturbing me.

(Hello, by the way! I read all the HP essays on your website not too long ago. I didn't agree with everything, but none of it traumatized me!)

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

You know, I know exactly the type of thing you're talking about. I think the key to that specific situation is the "this character is superior," thing. That's not analysis, imo, that's just setting up one character over another, and it happens all the time. It drives me crazy in HP fandom as well. Far too much time seems to be spent on explaining how whatever character you like is "human" for whatever flaws they have, while any explanation of another character's actions don't matter because they are bad because of X, Y and Z.

Recently, too, I've been reading a discussion on a mailing list that's driving me crazy because it seems bent on twisting the meaning of a scene just to make sure one character is totally blameless and the other person is completely at fault. What drives me crazy in this case isn't that any character involved is a favorite, but that it's all about twisting canon and ranking characters rather than dealing with the scene that's there. There's a lot of jumping around to make sure the one character always comes off blameless, and there's no point to that. And yet part of why it irritates me is because this kind of debating style does seem to make me have to take this sort of thing more seriously than I should, if you know what I mean.

[cressida0201.livejournal.com]

I think the key to that specific situation is the "this character is superior," thing.

I can imagine it happening about other types of questions, though. To take an example from Elkins' essays, the Point Award scene at the end of PS/SS. I had read that book something like 5 times and seen the movie 3 or 4 times when I came across her interpretation (that it was a biased and unfair move on Dumbledore's part), and I can honestly say that I had never seen it that way before. I can also honestly say that I don't want to see it that way. Of course, now it's going to be in the back of my mind the next time I reread the book. Maybe I'll find a concrete reason for why I've never seen it as unfair; maybe I won't. If I don't find that reason, then I hope I'll be able to keep from feeling like I have to adopt it against my will--and I think I'll probably succeed at that. But I can do that mental balancing act largely because I encountered the idea in a non-confrontational way, I think. If I'd been getting into the thick of mailing list discussion at the time, I might very well have met that theory in a "Refute it or accept it" context.

[skelkins.livejournal.com]

I always found that frustrating as well, and it seems to tie into a lot of the other dynamics that seem to arise from a highly competitive and debate-driven approach to canon discussion. It's as if people think that they can't discuss a scene, or a character's behavior, or whatever, unless they first pick a side.

It seems to me to tie into a lot of other issues revolving around issues of factionalism and partisanship. It's like the "How can you say that X did something wrong, when Y did something even worse!" argument, which seems so prevalent both in fandom and in politics, and which never makes very much sense to me in either context.

I haven't been following HPfGU lately, but back in my day there, it was really popular for people to argue, for example, things like "Hagrid can't be a bad teacher because Snape is a bad teacher!" I always found that incredibly frustrating, because to my mind it was self-evidently illogical, and yet it seemed to make perfect sense to those who were arguing it. Arguments like that just make my head hurt, honestly. I feel I can't even engage with them.

[skelkins.livejournal.com]

Thank you so much for your thoughtful response! That does make a great deal of sense to me, and it really helps. Thank you.

I also want to know what other people have seen that I haven't, but that's a double-edged sword. What I really hope for, deep down, is to find things other people have seen that I can take into my own view of canon and deepen it.

::nods::

I think that what most people are looking for in other people's reader responses is something that will deepen their own reading, something that will add depth and resonance, and meaning. I'm sure that nearly everyone has had that experience of reading some fandom discussion or another and thinking it "irrelevant" or boring or nonsensical - basically, feeling that it adds nothing to ones appreciation of the source material.

In my experience, one all-too-frequent problem in fandom discussions comes up when people differ over what they find meaningful or enhancing or significant. But I guess there's another problem as well, a slightly different one, the one you've so clearly described, which is what happens when an opinion or argument does seem to have meaning to you, it does add something to your own experience of the text, but what it adds is unfortunately not at all something that you wanted.

A lot depends on the tone and context of the discussion. Most of the time ideas are presented in a way that leaves me free to take or leave them. What upsets me, though, is when I feel placed in a position where I either have to refute the distasteful idea or accept it.

Oh, I know exactly what you mean! Sometimes debate can be fun, but it is not the only type of discourse that exists, and I find myself getting very irritated and bored with it after a while. It can be frustrating if you want to have a conversation, while everyone else is far more interested in having a debate. And also, as you point out, it does tend to create this weirdly competitive atmosphere where if you don't care to argue or refute a point, the other person seems to have "won," and you therefore feel compelled (either by yourself or by other people on the boards) to accept their reading as your own when - well, really! Why should you? That's a dynamic that can really get under my skin as well, as does the corresponding dynamic, where everyone is supposed to "take a side" on whatever the big fandom debate of the moment is, and if what you want to do instead is to talk about where the readings might actually be coming from, rather than which of them you think is "correct," then people look at you as if you've grown a second head. That's my own personal "drives me nuts" one, myself. :-)

I don't want to feel forced to adopt a reading I don't like, because it would diminish my pleasure in canon.

That's fair enough. I fear that I can sometimes be a bit insensitive to that dynamic, perhaps because I myself find it quite easy to appreciate a nasty, horrible, no-good reading that I don't like on a purely intellectual level, while simultaneously not feeling particularly compelled to adopt it myself. So it's all too easy for me to miss how easily a spirited attempt to communicate a reading can cross over a line somewhere and come to feel to others like an attempt to insist on it - almost like a conversion attempt.

(Hello, nice to meet you! I'm very glad that you found nothing on the site traumatizing. :-D)