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

[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!

[rivkat.livejournal.com]

"To read makes our speaking English good!"

Actually, I think most genderswap stories are pretty dishonest about the ease with which most men could deal with a swap. Helen, I think, has a great popslash story that ends badly, but it's the only one I can think of offhand. It's the driving force of the happy ending more than the sex, I think. Is it harder to imagine a black Superman than a female Clark Kent? Maybe it is. (Supreme Power does a really cool job with Batman and Flash types, though.)

What's annoying about the nonwhite/alien thing in Stargate, specifically, is that they refuse to sustain it. So we see white doctors etc. on Sateda, wise white Jaffa, etc. On the one hand, Earth has many different shades, so other planets could too, but on the other, they use race to signal exotic for the first encounters and then go back to standard casting where everyone is white unless specifically indicated otherwise.

[veejane.livejournal.com]

Well, the myths of race in America are predominantly "we're all alike under the skin" -- but the myths of sex, even among the thoughtful, tend to be differential rather than sameness-seeking.

You're right, that sex-swaps are driven by happy endings (and comedy, it seems), and that the problematic parts of sex-difference are not played seriously most of the time.

What's annoying about the nonwhite/alien thing in Stargate, specifically, is that they refuse to sustain it.

I suppose it's an attempt to improve on the "Chinese people are aliens! Look, they are Romulans, right there!!" thing, but, in the interest of making race seem unimportant, it makes it either exotic or invisible.

[havocthecat]

I suppose it's an attempt to improve on the "Chinese people are aliens! Look, they are Romulans, right there!!" thing

I'm jumping in with one, tiny point that may not have much bearing, but... I always mentally coded the Romulans as 'not human,' but never associated them with a specific ethnicity. Possibly this is because I read and reread (and re-reread, and so on) Diane Duane's Romulan-centric novels, which expanded on the culture in far greater ways then (I feel) any of the series or the movies ever did, and the culture simply felt alien to me.

Because now you're making the point that Romulans = Chinese and...I'm going, "Wow, how did I not see that one before?" (Whereas I watched whatdoyoucallit, that first of the new SW trilogy that featured Anakin, and facepalmed my way through the whole thing at the stereotyping. Yeah, I can't remember the title. Bad sci fi fan, no biscuit.)

[veejane.livejournal.com]

FWIW, my Flatmate is a Trek fan, and she comes from the TNG and novels perspective as well, and is constantly surprised at things from the original Kirk and Spock series that I bring up as fannish history. So, "How did I not see that?" is answered with "I was looking in the place where complexity was available!" I have heard nothing but good things about Diane Duane.

But, yeah. The reruns of TOS you see? Embarrassing. Even in 1966, I have to think they were embarrassing.

[rivkat.livejournal.com]

I like the first Romulan novel, and The Wounded Sky, and her original Door Into ... books, but the later Romulan books and her original cat-fantasy seemed embarrassingly bad. But when I reread The Wounded Sky and My Enemy, My Ally, I still loved them.

[executrix.livejournal.com]

veejane said: 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.

Ah, yes, the mindset that says white actors can play Othello but black actors can't play Lear.

[ravenclaw-devi.livejournal.com]

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 know, but would making them all-white be better?

You know, I always hated the "humans have different races and cultures, but every alien species has one race and one culture and one religious across their entire planet" trope. Which is why I liked it when ST:Voyager showed us that yes, there are black Vulcans. Though logically (no pun intended), all Vulcans should be dark-skinned, given that they live on a desert planet and need the protection from the sun. Plus, given their different physiology, they likely don't need vitamin D either, so there really was no reason for white people to evolve on Vulcan. (Pardon the Trek-geeky digression.)