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

[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.)