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

[diluvian.livejournal.com]

Speaking as an Exceedingly Pale Person, my only hesitations when writing characters who are people of color are when their culture is different than mine and I *know* I'm bound to get something wrong in a way that'll mash toes.

Ronon, Teyla, and Teal'c are from barely-fleshed-out SciFi cultures and I can work with that. Pete Ross from small town Kansas? No problem.

Charles Gunn? Yeeeeeee.

I comprehend nothing of gang culture. I comprehend almost nothing about the -- jeez, I've spent half an hour typing and deleting, trying to articulate and *still* feel like I'm going to offend someone.

Anyway, I don't dare. I've been privy to gay & lesbian culture (multi-ethnic, come to think of it) in ways I've never had access to, for instance, a family in Oakland. Even the family of the guy I dated for a *year* in college.

I'll probably never write about a character who's (very actively) Jewish, or someone Amish, or Mormon, for the same reasons. Don't get the culture. Don't want to offend.

Gah, there went another howeverlong of typing and deleting. Um, seconding the recommendation of conversing with ladyjax who is way keen in any case, and there are a couple of other people I will nudge your way.

::flees::