Ομολογώ δεν είχα ακούσει αυτό τον όρο. Έμαθα γι' αυτόν και το περιεχόμενό του διαβάζοντας την παρακάτω βιβλιοπαρουσίαση που σας επισυνάπτω από το TLS:
Have you ever wondered what would have happened if Miss Havisham’s wayward fiancé had returned, begging for forgiveness? Or if Sherlock Holmes had been on the Titanic, or something more than friendship had blossomed between Mr Darcy and Mr Bingley? If so, you need look no further than your web browser: someone may well have constructed these narratives for you and published them online. He or she will be a member of the growing band of “fan fiction” writers –amateur authors who borrow established characters and build on (or reimagine) the plotlines of existing novels, films and television programmes. They continue stories, fill in missing plot details, devise alternative endings, and invent romantic liaisons between characters who may have been enemies in the original text.
Fan fiction is not new. Lord Byron’s epic adventure Don Juan inspired countless anonymous writers to contribute “lost cantos”. These unauthorized continuations of the poem were published cheaply and hungrily consumed by Byron’s fans, eager to read more of Juan’s adventures. But the internet has allowed this once niche form of fiction to be written and read by millions of fans, whose source material now ranges from Victorian novels to teen soap operas. In many ways online fan fiction taps into the oral storytelling of our past, in which we relied on a familiar stock of mythical characters. It is a peculiarly collective mode of reading and writing that sits outside conventional publishing: fans talk to each other in online forums, request stories, debate the success of their efforts, and collaborate on multi-author works.
Aaron Schwabach’s Fan Fiction and Copyright is the first book to address the legal issues surrounding “outsider works” and to describe how the law is struggling to adapt to these products of the internet age. Much of the book is devoted to explaining why professional authors would, for the most part, have little legal ground on which to prosecute their fans for commandeering their plots and characters. As non-commercial works of “commentary”, almost all fan fiction falls under the rubric of “fair use”. It is published free online, written for the love of writing and reading alone. Its purpose, as an exercise in imaginative fantasy, is to amuse fellow fans. With clear and accessible case studies, Schwabach explains what fair use and other “haphazardly defined” legal terms mean for writers.
Aside from legal considerations, many professional authors feel uncomfortable about their characters being used in ways they cannot control, especially when it involves pornographic or disturbing scenarios. Some have requested that fan fiction websites ban any use of their work although, in doing so, they risk pushing their readers away. Indeed, Schwabach suggests that fan fiction only enhances sales of the original works. Harry Potter-related fan sites, for example, have now amassed around a million stories, and are visited by hundreds of thousands of readers every day. By “continuing the story” of Harry Potter they help keep the lucrative franchise ticking over now that the official series has ended. Having once encouraged fan fiction, J. K. Rowling is now notoriously litigious. Things soured between the author and her fans when details of her later books started to be anticipated by online writers; she was accused of stealing their plots rather than the other way around.
For anyone interested in the nature of fiction, Schwabach’s book helps to tease out the entwined concepts of imitation, allusion, homage and plagiarism. A good proportion of it is dedicated to the problem of identifying “original” characters when authors have for centuries borrowed ideas from their predecessors. Much of the amusement of the book comes from Schwabach’s descriptions of the ineffectual ways in which law courts deal with complicated literary concepts. A New York judge, for example, defined the character of Tarzan as athletic, innocent, gentle and raised in the wild. Yet these characteristics could be applied to countless characters from Romulus onwards; indeed, the only definition that the judge could settle on that was unique to Tarzan was that “He is Tarzan”. It is easy to see how an immediately recognizable image like Mickey Mouse can be copyrighted, but characters become more nebulous when they are written rather than drawn, created in part in the mind of the reader.
Like many academics who write about fan culture, including Henry Jenkins (whose Textual Poachers: Television fans and participatory culture, 1992, is still the defining text in the field), Schwabach makes it clear that he is a fan. He directs his book unashamedly at fan fiction writers themselves. In doing so, he creates a problem: while on one hand he attempts to make outsider culture more acceptable to mainstream thinking, on the other he reinforces the idea that only true fans can understand this new genre. By casually using terms such as “squick” (to denote themes that may offend some readers, such as incest, rape, or torture), and indulging in humorous asides assessing the relative merits of different fandoms, Schwabach risks alienating readers who are not already well versed in fan idioms. This is a shame. Fan Fiction and Copyright is necessary, if only to help us realize that the democratization of literature on the internet is, slowly but surely, changing the way we read and write.
CORIN THROSBY
TLS March 23, 2012
Εκ των υστέρων βλέπω ότι η Βικιπαίδεια έχει ένα λήμμα πολύ ενδιαφέρον: Fan fiction. Υπάρχει μάλιστα και δίκτυο FanFiction.Net, στο οποίο καταθέτουν οι μυριάδες των θαυμαστών τα δικά τους πονήματα από την ποπ κουλτούρα, το σύμπαν της τηλεόρασης, των κόμιξ και των ηλεκτρονικών παιχνιδιών.
Είδες δόξες ο εκδημοκρατισμός της κουλτούρας;
Υ.Γ. Πώς θα το πούμε ελληνικά;
He Tarzan
AARON SCHWABACH
Fan Fiction and Copyright
Outsider works and Intellectual Property protection
192 pp., Ashgate, £55 (US $89.95).
ISBN 978 0 754 67903 5
AARON SCHWABACH
Fan Fiction and Copyright
Outsider works and Intellectual Property protection
192 pp., Ashgate, £55 (US $89.95).
ISBN 978 0 754 67903 5
Have you ever wondered what would have happened if Miss Havisham’s wayward fiancé had returned, begging for forgiveness? Or if Sherlock Holmes had been on the Titanic, or something more than friendship had blossomed between Mr Darcy and Mr Bingley? If so, you need look no further than your web browser: someone may well have constructed these narratives for you and published them online. He or she will be a member of the growing band of “fan fiction” writers –amateur authors who borrow established characters and build on (or reimagine) the plotlines of existing novels, films and television programmes. They continue stories, fill in missing plot details, devise alternative endings, and invent romantic liaisons between characters who may have been enemies in the original text.
Fan fiction is not new. Lord Byron’s epic adventure Don Juan inspired countless anonymous writers to contribute “lost cantos”. These unauthorized continuations of the poem were published cheaply and hungrily consumed by Byron’s fans, eager to read more of Juan’s adventures. But the internet has allowed this once niche form of fiction to be written and read by millions of fans, whose source material now ranges from Victorian novels to teen soap operas. In many ways online fan fiction taps into the oral storytelling of our past, in which we relied on a familiar stock of mythical characters. It is a peculiarly collective mode of reading and writing that sits outside conventional publishing: fans talk to each other in online forums, request stories, debate the success of their efforts, and collaborate on multi-author works.
Aaron Schwabach’s Fan Fiction and Copyright is the first book to address the legal issues surrounding “outsider works” and to describe how the law is struggling to adapt to these products of the internet age. Much of the book is devoted to explaining why professional authors would, for the most part, have little legal ground on which to prosecute their fans for commandeering their plots and characters. As non-commercial works of “commentary”, almost all fan fiction falls under the rubric of “fair use”. It is published free online, written for the love of writing and reading alone. Its purpose, as an exercise in imaginative fantasy, is to amuse fellow fans. With clear and accessible case studies, Schwabach explains what fair use and other “haphazardly defined” legal terms mean for writers.
Aside from legal considerations, many professional authors feel uncomfortable about their characters being used in ways they cannot control, especially when it involves pornographic or disturbing scenarios. Some have requested that fan fiction websites ban any use of their work although, in doing so, they risk pushing their readers away. Indeed, Schwabach suggests that fan fiction only enhances sales of the original works. Harry Potter-related fan sites, for example, have now amassed around a million stories, and are visited by hundreds of thousands of readers every day. By “continuing the story” of Harry Potter they help keep the lucrative franchise ticking over now that the official series has ended. Having once encouraged fan fiction, J. K. Rowling is now notoriously litigious. Things soured between the author and her fans when details of her later books started to be anticipated by online writers; she was accused of stealing their plots rather than the other way around.
For anyone interested in the nature of fiction, Schwabach’s book helps to tease out the entwined concepts of imitation, allusion, homage and plagiarism. A good proportion of it is dedicated to the problem of identifying “original” characters when authors have for centuries borrowed ideas from their predecessors. Much of the amusement of the book comes from Schwabach’s descriptions of the ineffectual ways in which law courts deal with complicated literary concepts. A New York judge, for example, defined the character of Tarzan as athletic, innocent, gentle and raised in the wild. Yet these characteristics could be applied to countless characters from Romulus onwards; indeed, the only definition that the judge could settle on that was unique to Tarzan was that “He is Tarzan”. It is easy to see how an immediately recognizable image like Mickey Mouse can be copyrighted, but characters become more nebulous when they are written rather than drawn, created in part in the mind of the reader.
Like many academics who write about fan culture, including Henry Jenkins (whose Textual Poachers: Television fans and participatory culture, 1992, is still the defining text in the field), Schwabach makes it clear that he is a fan. He directs his book unashamedly at fan fiction writers themselves. In doing so, he creates a problem: while on one hand he attempts to make outsider culture more acceptable to mainstream thinking, on the other he reinforces the idea that only true fans can understand this new genre. By casually using terms such as “squick” (to denote themes that may offend some readers, such as incest, rape, or torture), and indulging in humorous asides assessing the relative merits of different fandoms, Schwabach risks alienating readers who are not already well versed in fan idioms. This is a shame. Fan Fiction and Copyright is necessary, if only to help us realize that the democratization of literature on the internet is, slowly but surely, changing the way we read and write.
CORIN THROSBY
TLS March 23, 2012
Εκ των υστέρων βλέπω ότι η Βικιπαίδεια έχει ένα λήμμα πολύ ενδιαφέρον: Fan fiction. Υπάρχει μάλιστα και δίκτυο FanFiction.Net, στο οποίο καταθέτουν οι μυριάδες των θαυμαστών τα δικά τους πονήματα από την ποπ κουλτούρα, το σύμπαν της τηλεόρασης, των κόμιξ και των ηλεκτρονικών παιχνιδιών.
Είδες δόξες ο εκδημοκρατισμός της κουλτούρας;
Υ.Γ. Πώς θα το πούμε ελληνικά;
