Help me, Obi-Fan!

[rivkat]

Okay, so I am going to this conference, and Madhavi Sunder and Anupam Chander have a paper, The Right to Mary Sue (28 pages long, pdf), which will be published in a major law review.  They use Mary Sue as a shorthand for much fan fiction, and also they argue that self-insertion into copyrighted works is a good thing.  I am very sympathetic to their argument towards the rehabilitation of Mary Sue, though I have serious doubts about using her as the representative creation of fan fiction.  Part of this may well be the usual fear that fandom will be misrepresented or misunderstood by outsiders.  Chander & Sunder are very sympathetic – in fact, I think they overstate the liberatory potential of fan fiction – but there’s always that worry.

Anyway, I have an opportunity to offer comments, and I have plenty about Mary Sue as feminist heroine and slash as feminist liberation of the original text.  What I lack, shamefully, is a comparable ability to discuss race in fan fiction/media fandom.  Chander & Sunder argue that fan fiction allows marginalized groups to insert themselves in the text or reorganize the narrative around themselves, and couple that with discussion of the underrepresentation/misrepresentation of characters of color in TV/movies, but how often does that happen with race?  We have plenty of gender-swaps; does anyone know of a race-swap story?  Any good discussion of Teyla and Ronon as characters of color in SGA fanfic? 

Things I already know I want to show them: Mimisere’s Jesus Walks (found a copy on YouTube, by the way; that result came up before any LJ result).  Remember Us, the archive.  (No SGA section, interestingly.)  Coffeeandink from 2002.  Them Mean Ol’, Low-Down, Lando Calrissian Blues.  Blaise Zabini is black (oh darn, am I going to have to explain FandomWank to them?).

I have been reading cultural appropriation posts with interest, but I didn’t realize I’d need to try to do some outreach.  So if anyone has links to good discussions of race in fandom that could help explain us – the good and the bad – to some smart, capable people, I’d really appreciate it. 

Comments

[batdina.livejournal.com]

I can't tell whether you have her friended or not, but when I have questions viz race in fandom, my first port of call is ladyjax. I'll point her thissaway, but you might want to track her down yourself as well.

[rivkat.livejournal.com]

I am extremely hesitant to impose on someone I don't know on this topic, but if she is interested in pointing to places I could show the authors of this paper, I'd love to do so.

[liviapenn.livejournal.com]

Not discussions, but this story was an answer to a self-insertion challenge:

Just as Foxy As Can Be, by Te
http://teland.com/foxy.html

And it might be interesting to search out recs or discussion of this one:

Wesley's Liberal Guilt, by Jessica Harris
http://gunnwesley.populli.net/wesleysliberalguilt.htm

[rivkat.livejournal.com]

Okay, silly person here. Replace previous reply with general "thanks." I'd forgotten what Jessica's story was.

[margueritem.livejournal.com]

I must admit something, which I've... never really tried to discuss at large (maybe I've mentionned it to some close fanfriends). I get the impression that fandom (slash part) is very... caucasian-leaning. Part of it is statistics, of course, but I wonder if there's not a tiny part... well... I don't know what to call it, since I'm not sure if it's real.

I'll try to be clearer. This hit me with the movie Gladiator and the slash that was written for it: Russel Crowe's character (Maximus?) was slashed with Joaquin Phoenix's character or with the man with a scar. And yet, there was this man, who actually cared for (physically) Maximus, with whom Maximus had a conversation about family, with whom Maximus fought, and there was none (or barely) any slash with *that* character. The difference between this character and the others? That character was black.

I want to underline this: this is an impression and I'm in no way saying that fandom is racist. It's just something that for some reason struck me as peculiar when it happened. Or more accurately didn't happen.

The impression I get from fandom by large is that race is a non-issue. Not that there isn't racism (since statistically there will be racist people everywhere, just as there are "homophobes" that read slash), but that race isn't an issue for most people.

*re-reads self* Okay, this is probably of no help to you. Sorry about that. :( Hope you find some interesting links. I'd be interested in reading that.

[liviapenn.livejournal.com]

You're not the first person to notice things like this; it happens all the time. There've been whole panels at Escapade and other cons about race in fandom and why certain characters and pairings just seem to... slip through the cracks.

[rivkat.livejournal.com]

I myself think there should be more Johnny/Bruce Dead Zone slash, but it's not a popular pairing in an already small fandom, so there you go. I do think white fanwriters are often hesitant to give characters of color larger roles in fan fiction than they have on the shows. SGA is a big exception, and that may well be because everybody's got as good a shot at defining Ronon and Teyla's cultures as anyone else. (Though SG1 seems to have much less Teal'c fic, proportionately. Who knows, with SGA?)

Race isn't an issue for white folks because we/they're white. I have the privilege of not thinking about it, but it's there.

[forked.livejournal.com]

Really late to this party, mostly because I didn't have much to say on it. But this reply reminded me- I've never figured out why there isn't more 'I Spy' fic, especially when compared to 'Man from Uncle' fic.

Same general time frame, a similar vibe and subject matter. Yep, there are differences, and I can see how some of them might matter. But the similarities always struck me as much more pervasive. Yet 'I Spy' fic is in very short supply, at least as far as I can tell.

I always wondered if part of the difference was race.

[monimala.livejournal.com]

Oh my God.

I'm sorry. I didn't mean to just randomly spam your LJ, but I KNOW Anupam Chander and I believe Madhavi is his wife (whom I've never met)! LOL! His family and mine go way back. I haven't seen him since I was a kid and I had no idea that his area of legal expertise forayed into things like the copyrighting of fan fiction and that he was interested in the cultural implications of it. It's truly a small world. That's fascinating.

[rivkat.livejournal.com]

They're wonderful folks. They both do intellectual property, and they're fan-types but not in fandom, so that's how they got into it, I think.

[abbylee]

Most of the discussion I've seen on my own friends list, re: Ronon and Teyla seems to bemoan the discussion of them as characters of color. That is, those who seem to focus on it manage to completely miss the point that for most of them, what's differentiating isn't that they're not white, but that they're not from Earth. They face hurdles, but it's discussed more in terms of culture than in terms of race. Which I suspect might actually be more freeing for authors, and also make it blend in to the story better.

Sort of related, isn't there an SG-1 episode where they end up in some underground genetic lab and all the people are wary about Teal'c? Jack etc, writes it off that Teal'c makes them uncomfortable because he's Jaffa, but later on we discover that they're evil and their real problem with Teal'c is that he's not "pure" or some such?

[liviapenn.livejournal.com]

That is, those who seem to focus on it manage to completely miss the point that for most of them, what's differentiating isn't that they're not white, but that they're not from Earth. They face hurdles, but it's discussed more in terms of culture than in terms of race.

In the world of the story, yes. In the world of fandom? I'm not so sure people *are* looking past their skin color. I mean, maybe it's just me, but when Markham and Stackhouse get more fic than Ford, and Kavanagh gets more fic than Bates, and *Chuck* gets more fic than Grodin, and there's ten times as much Parrish/Lorne as there is Ronon/Teyla... well, you start to wonder, you know?

[liviapenn.livejournal.com]

Also, personally, I think the fact that Ronon and Teyla are aliens makes them harder to write, not easier-- I always say that the difference between John/Elizabeth and John/Teyla is that John/Elizabeth is romance and John/Teyla is science fiction. *G*

But really, you have to look at the casting directors' choices, too. Why is it that Teal'c, Ronon and Teyla are all played by actors of color, and maked as "different" by the way they speak and dress-- whereas aliens like Vala and Jonas, played by white actors, tend to already speak in casual American English, immediately wear "normal" clothes once they become regulars, and generally blend in so well you might not even realize they *were* aliens if you hadn't ever watched the show before? Are the casting directors using Teyla and Ronon's dark skin to indicate that they're "different," -- and if they're not, why is *every other Athosian we've seen* white? Why is it that we see black Satedans in Ronon's flashback, but every Satedan with *lines* is played by a white actor? -- and what does that mean about what they assume is the *default?*

[cesperanza.livejournal.com]

I need to do a bit of searching, but there's a fair amount on modern Klingons as representative of peopleof color, Worf and all that.

[rivkat.livejournal.com]

In fandom, or in the shows? I thought of Klingons, but I don't know enough about the fandom to figure out what representations of Klingons fans create.

[corinna-5.livejournal.com]

I don't necessarily think that the lack of an SGA section in the "Remember Us" archive is telling, since SGA as a fandom seems, shall we say, post-archive? Very LJ-centric, at least on the slash side, for better and for worse.

That having been said, I now totally want the story where Teyla comes to earth and doesn't understand why people treat her so differently when she's with John and when she's alone.

[harriet-spy.livejournal.com]

I've been waiting for the story where Teyla finds out about Western European enslavement of blacks, period, but...yes...very tricky.

[kaseido.livejournal.com]

you may want to check out minisinoo, who writes OC Native Americans in the X-Men movieverse ("The Medicine Wheel (http://www.themedicinewheel.net)), her essay on Mary Sues (http://www.themedicinewheel.net/marysues.html), and her story "Letters and Papers From Prison (http://www.themedicinewheel.net/shorts/lpfp.html)," and a number of essays on ethnicity in fanfiction here (http://www.themedicinewheel.net/diaryentries.html)....

[rivkat.livejournal.com]

Thanks! That's very helpful.

[daegaer.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure if it's the kind of thing you're looking for, but viridian5's excellent WiP Glass Houses (http://www.livejournal.com/tools/memories.bml?user=viridian5&keyword=Glass+Houses+WIP&filter=all) takes a character from the anime Weiss Kreuz, whose background in canon is only described as "American", and gives him an Asian-American background (his father is given a North European-American background, his mother, Japanese-American). The canonical character, Brad Crawford, is one of a group of assassins based in Japan, and is one of the characters in the anime who looks most Japanese, something which fans often note.

The image of the character in my icon is from the manga, where he is drawn to look rather younger than his appearance (two storyline years later) in the anime, where he looks like this (http://pics.livejournal.com/daegaer/pic/0000hpwb/g2), this (http://pics.livejournal.com/daegaer/pic/00009txk/g2) (the other character in that picture is canonically Japanese), and this (http://pics.livejournal.com/daegaer/pic/0001ak1k/).

[rivkat.livejournal.com]

Thanks! That's helpful.

[ide-cyan.livejournal.com]

Do you know deadbrowalking?

[rivkat.livejournal.com]

I have just been pointed to it. Thanks!

[rydra_wong]

Seconding (thirding, fourthing) everyone who's pointed you towards deadbrowalking, and ladyjax is uber-smart.

For what it's worth, I have a collection of links to pre-IBARW stuff here, with lots of discussions of under-representation/mis-representation of characters of colour in fanfic:

http://rydra-wong.livejournal.com/7386.html

IBARW produced some interesting stuff, including an excellent post from jalabert on her POV as a black fan on the under-representation of characters of colour (specifically Aiden Ford in SGA) in fanfic:

http://jalabert.livejournal.com/17343.html

Which nudged me into posting about being a white fan writing characters of colour (if that's of any interest/relevance):

http://rydra-wong.livejournal.com/9939.html

[rivkat.livejournal.com]

Thank you! This is very helpful.

[bravecows.livejournal.com]

how often does that happen with race?

*snort*

[coffeeandink.livejournal.com]

I have been wondering about this re: anime and manga in general and the popularity of AU settings for anime/manga fic. I know Americans tend to read a lot of manga/anime signifiers as "white", but I've been wondering if that's mistaking signifiers of "default" as signifiers of "white"; it seems to me that a lot of the racial markers read as "Japanese" if you're Japanese. (There are a lot of weasel words like "seems" and "wonder" and a marked overuse of the conjectural in that because I'm not convinced and because even my basic thoughts on race in anime may take up to 5000 words.)

And you, of course, are neither Japanese nor American. So: what's your take on Bleach? Do you see the characters as one way in canon and in another way in, say, Regency or Ancient Roman AUs?

(You are not required to answer just because I'm curious!)

Hitting it from another direction, and talking more to Rivka than Afrai: I know Elizabeth did a popslash AU set in Heian Japan -- how were the characters envisioned in that? How were they envisioned in *her* Regency AU?

During the POTC discussions, a lot of people said they didn't read Jack Sparrow as white. Is there discussion of that or any reflection of it in fic?

[coffeeandink.livejournal.com]

Wow, I had completely forgotten that post. I guess it is less embarassing than it could be, although I only agree with three-quarters of it now.

[veejane.livejournal.com]

In cynical mode, I would say that fanfic does no race-swap stories because race affect the ability to have competent sex. (Anyway, not until after the plumbing problems have been solved.) Everything in fanfic is about having sex! Didn't you know that?!

I do find that the general equation of not-white = native of another planet both persistent and annoying in science fiction, and I do not see fanfic take that problem on often, if at all.

I do know that a lot of people "knew Earthsea was going to be bad" when the news came out that Ged was going to be played by a white actor. I don't think there is much fanfic for that universe, but, it's a fannish data-point.

[veejane.livejournal.com]

er, that first sentence? "because race does not affect..."

You would think I spoke English or something!

[ravenclaw-devi.livejournal.com]

Chander & Sunder argue that fan fiction allows marginalized groups to insert themselves in the text or reorganize the narrative around themselves, and couple that with discussion of the underrepresentation/misrepresentation of characters of color in TV/movies, but how often does that happen with race?

Yeah. They make some interesting points, but... if Mary Sue self-insertion was really about self-empowerment of marginalised groups, why is the overwhelming majority of Sues still white and, most of all, conventionally beautiful? Where are the Sues of colour, the fat Sues, the lesbian Sues, the Sues with disabilities? If Mary Sue-writing was really about marginalised people wanting to see themselves represented, one should expect to see them, right?

We have plenty of gender-swaps; does anyone know of a race-swap story?

Not that I know of.

Any good discussion of Teyla and Ronon as characters of color in SGA fanfic?

Again, not that I know of.

Thanks for the pdf!

[idlerat.livejournal.com]

Having looked at the article, my question would be, are characters of color really the issue? The authors make a speculative leap- something I have a lot of sympathy for, but it seems like a lot of weight is placed on it without (at least at first glance) an acknowledgement that it *is* a leap- and say that *slash* should be viewed as self-insertion. If that's how they're looking at slash, so that a female writer is inserting herself into the text even in the absence of female characters, then one issue re race would surely be whether people of color are *writing* fan fiction (which, of course, they are). Must a person of color insert herself as a character of color?

There is a chapter in my still-unfinished book on Potter fandom about HP in Taiwan, which raises similar issues about ethnicity and the text to some they discuss. It's not a patch on the Indian case they discuss(I hadn't even heard about that!) but they could probably cite it. Email me if you want me to put them in touch with the author of the chapter- idlerat at gmail.

Re: Thanks for the pdf!

[rivkat.livejournal.com]

Yes, exactly. The way I put it is that they are using fandom/Mary Sues as a metaphor for an operation one can perform on mass culture, but that raises the question of whether it is an operation that *is* being performed with respect to race. (And slash becomes suspect as not liberating enough!)

Belatedly answering--

[cesperanza.livejournal.com]

And also: I didn't read all the threads, so don't know if anyone's said this yet, but I think most fanfiction writers are bodyswappers, and everyone wants to trade UP in terms of power. I'm convinced that there is less in the way of racial fanfic because, in the U.S. at least, the black body is more fraught than the female body which is more fraught than the white male body; fanfic in general and slash in particular allows us to bodyswap into these less fraught bodies and enjoy their pleasures (sex, angst) without our own bodily issues (gender, race, disability, even class; nobody has bad teeth or is fat or whatever); so it doesn't surprise me at ALL that there's not much racial bodyswapping. Furthermore, my guess is that there's MORE fic with black characters if those characters are alien, and thus less subject to historical racial power--so more Ronon fic than Teyla fic and more of both of them than black characters on Earth in the U.S. living with our fraught histories of race.

Re: Belatedly answering--

[rivkat.livejournal.com]

This all makes total sense to me. I'm not sure I'm a bodyswapper as opposed to someone who prefers to take the disembodied position of observer, but even so I can get my voyeuristic thrills by looking at two white guys (or one white guy and one pale-skinned alien, if you like). As someone who considers herself a het writer as well, I particularly appreciate the point that I'm more willing to deal with the fraughtness of (white) female bodies like Dana Scully's than that of black male bodies. There, maybe, identification kicks in -- I do feel like I know what Scully's like.

With all the h/c around, there are plenty of disability stories. But they generally work the way someone identified above with genderswap -- something that is worked around in order to make the sex at the end more rewarding. Non-dyadic-relational stories of disability are fairly rare. I did read one great Buffy story about a blind Slayer, but that's all that comes to mind.