fandom slut, or, The Tolkien Rant
Feb. 18th, 2003 01:43 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rushthatspeaksI seem to have spent an entirely too large amount of time in the last couple of days reading fanfic on the Internet. Mostly slash. It appears to be my preferred way of relaxing at the moment. This, of course, leads me to the question of *why* it is my preferred mode of relaxation at the moment. Why do I read this stuff, anyhow? I mean, granted some of it is very well written, but most of it isn't, and I have a disturbing tendency to read stuff written about series and novels and things that I have personally never interacted with. I have read approximately twice as much Buffy slash as I have seen episodes of Buffy, and then one gets to things like Smallville, where I have never actually seen so much as a commercial for the show, but am willing to read stuff when I am sent a recommendation from someone I trust.
The simple 'why do I read slash' answer is the one that has applied since high school: because it's fun, and it's interesting, and the that-is-just-*wrong* factor can be highly amusing, and it is the only place in this day and age to consistently run across literate, non-sexist, not-treating-women-as-objects, non-offensive, well-written, and occasionally moving or hilarious pornography, which, back when I was in high school, was a saving grace, as it helped assure me that the world could contain more than had had the grace to drift across my personal horizons. I am in full agreement with Samuel R. Delaney when he says that pornography is a genre like any other genre, like 'mystery' or 'romance novel' or what-have-you, and that like any other genre it can vary in quality and content from absolute trash to absolute genius as long as it contains the identifying characteristics of the genre. In the case of a mystery, the genre demands that there be some kind of crime. In the case of pornography, the genre demands that there be some kind of sex. Or, as Roger Ebert always says, a work of art is not about what it is about; it is about how it is about what it is about. Except, given some of the more pernicious cultural attitudes we seem to have in this country, it's really difficult to find work that deals honestly and interestedly with human sexuality and rises above the level of trash. And frankly, sex is one of the more interesting things in human existence, always has been, so this lack of art that talks about it in the way great art can tell the truth about things is a crying shame. That's one thing slash is good for, that it occasionally produces works of genuine art like Natalie Baan's 'Sakura and Snow', which made me cry, and Les Societe des Femmes Dangereuses' 'The Fire and the Rose', which does the most interesting things with gender I have ever seen done in fiction, besides capturing perfectly what the last few moments of conversation are like with someone one loves very much and is probably not going to see for an appallingly long length of time. So there's that.
And then there's the other reason, which is the same reason I find myself going to movie adaptations of books I like with unwarranted quantities of hope in my heart: I always go to movies in the hopes of seeing something I hadn't imagined, if possible something I couldn't have imagined. That's the treat; to be shown things I would never, in a million years, have thought up for myself. It doesn't happen very often. And with an adaptation, what I always hope is that the writers and so on involved with the movie will have seen things in the work that I haven't, but that were there to be seen. That's really rare. That's why I liked the second Harry Potter movie so much; I didn't see in the book half of what they did, but I recognized what they brought out in it. It's possible for fanfiction to do that, to show me something that was there, and was real, and that I simply did not, could not see. I treasure that.
This second reason is why, as people have been asking me to explain for quite some time now, I hate Tolkien slash with an unreasonable and passionate hatred that knows no boundary nor obstacle. Many things that people write slash for are multi-author works-- television shows, movies, comic books in perpetual serial. Those that aren't multi-author tend to have stretches of loose ends, places you can fit a story in, around the edges, if you understand the basic postulates of the author's universe and how the author runs things. Tolkien is not in either of these categories. Tolkien had a vision, and lived with his universe inside his head for possibly as long as fifty years. He made his languages; he made the people to speak them. He designed cosmology, he designed geography, he knew what kind of food his people ate and what clothes they were wearing. And he wrote it down in vast quantities of notes, anecdotes, and vignettes, so many, indeed, that they are still being collated and published to this day. It is an act of deep presumption on the part of a writer of fanfiction to presume that they can enter that vision, add something to that world if its creator had not intended it to be there. I cannot think of anything else that people try to slash on a regular basis that is as personal and complete a secondary creation as Middle Earth is. I can put up with people slashing Les Miserables before I can put up with Tolkien slash, because at least France during the Napoleonic Wars existed and historical events bore some resemblance to those recounted in Hugo's masterpiece; this edges it somewhat towards being common property.
Tolkien's works belong to Tolkien, and I am grateful that he let us read them.
Beyond that, as well, I have a secondary objection. In order to write a piece of good fanfiction, it is necessary to comprehend the rules of the original work, to know what people would be likely to do and to some extent why. Nobody I have yet encountered, in Tolkien fic, has grasped what I believe to be the most significant thing about Tolkien's universe: The Lord of the Rings is *an epic poem*. Its characters follow the ancient code of how epic heroes behave toward one another. This code is *intrinsically different* from our present one, as it was in effect before the invention of such categories as sexuality, sexual orientation, and the modern concept of romance. People have been arguing for about a hundred years now over whether Achilles and Patroclus were lovers. Not in any sense we'd understand the term. The relationship those two are depicted as having, in the Iliad, is a kind of relationship that became obsolete with the invention of categories of sexual orientation, though it persisted right up until the Civil War in some circumstances (I recommend the lovely book that came out recently of photographs of groups of Civil War soldiers for a good illustration of what I mean-- it is obvious from these that the presence or absence of sex in a friendship, to some of these people, was as irrelevant as the ability of Martina Navratilova to play the concert piano-- it would certainly be interesting and pleasant if she could, but who would think to really let it worry them?). Then there's the fact that in Tolkien's universe, sex itself, along with most other details associated with physicality, is not a subject of discussion or a subject of surmise. Love, yes, and romance, and marriage; all else is private. The combination of these two circumstances-- epic, and the fact that nobody in Tolkien's universe talks about sex-- mean that any writer who attempts to write Tolkien slash in the way modern people write fanfiction is intrinsically starting with a set of flawed premises and is consequently not going to be able to write anything really interesting or new about the book. Therefore, it's not worth having the temerity to horn in on somebody else's personal artistic vision, to attempt to write something set in Tolkien's own secondary creation, when doing so is not even going to actually work, and the result will be something skewed in significant ways from the thing it is trying to comment on.
As for the movies? Sure, why not? They are a collective version, after all, and one I do not intrinsically disapprove of, since they came very close in at least some ways to the basic premises of Tolkien's universe-- Frodo and Sam in the movie have the correct relationship. But they aren't Tolkien, and while adapting an adapted version can become somewhat redundant, there's certainly a lot to say about the methodology behind the movies. Besides, 'Still Not King' is a great tag-line. I want the T-shirt.
But I wish movie fic writers would make it absolutely clear in their introductions that they are writing about the movie and not the books and know that there is a difference. And even then I have no real inclination to read movie fic, because the sharing of names with the book version of the characters gives me the creeps-- but here we're getting into my personal tastes, as opposed to my ideological crusades in the name of modern-day epic. ^_^
Right. So that is the Tolkien Rant, rebuttal and discussion welcomed. I think I will go read an actual novel. Good night.
The simple 'why do I read slash' answer is the one that has applied since high school: because it's fun, and it's interesting, and the that-is-just-*wrong* factor can be highly amusing, and it is the only place in this day and age to consistently run across literate, non-sexist, not-treating-women-as-objects, non-offensive, well-written, and occasionally moving or hilarious pornography, which, back when I was in high school, was a saving grace, as it helped assure me that the world could contain more than had had the grace to drift across my personal horizons. I am in full agreement with Samuel R. Delaney when he says that pornography is a genre like any other genre, like 'mystery' or 'romance novel' or what-have-you, and that like any other genre it can vary in quality and content from absolute trash to absolute genius as long as it contains the identifying characteristics of the genre. In the case of a mystery, the genre demands that there be some kind of crime. In the case of pornography, the genre demands that there be some kind of sex. Or, as Roger Ebert always says, a work of art is not about what it is about; it is about how it is about what it is about. Except, given some of the more pernicious cultural attitudes we seem to have in this country, it's really difficult to find work that deals honestly and interestedly with human sexuality and rises above the level of trash. And frankly, sex is one of the more interesting things in human existence, always has been, so this lack of art that talks about it in the way great art can tell the truth about things is a crying shame. That's one thing slash is good for, that it occasionally produces works of genuine art like Natalie Baan's 'Sakura and Snow', which made me cry, and Les Societe des Femmes Dangereuses' 'The Fire and the Rose', which does the most interesting things with gender I have ever seen done in fiction, besides capturing perfectly what the last few moments of conversation are like with someone one loves very much and is probably not going to see for an appallingly long length of time. So there's that.
And then there's the other reason, which is the same reason I find myself going to movie adaptations of books I like with unwarranted quantities of hope in my heart: I always go to movies in the hopes of seeing something I hadn't imagined, if possible something I couldn't have imagined. That's the treat; to be shown things I would never, in a million years, have thought up for myself. It doesn't happen very often. And with an adaptation, what I always hope is that the writers and so on involved with the movie will have seen things in the work that I haven't, but that were there to be seen. That's really rare. That's why I liked the second Harry Potter movie so much; I didn't see in the book half of what they did, but I recognized what they brought out in it. It's possible for fanfiction to do that, to show me something that was there, and was real, and that I simply did not, could not see. I treasure that.
This second reason is why, as people have been asking me to explain for quite some time now, I hate Tolkien slash with an unreasonable and passionate hatred that knows no boundary nor obstacle. Many things that people write slash for are multi-author works-- television shows, movies, comic books in perpetual serial. Those that aren't multi-author tend to have stretches of loose ends, places you can fit a story in, around the edges, if you understand the basic postulates of the author's universe and how the author runs things. Tolkien is not in either of these categories. Tolkien had a vision, and lived with his universe inside his head for possibly as long as fifty years. He made his languages; he made the people to speak them. He designed cosmology, he designed geography, he knew what kind of food his people ate and what clothes they were wearing. And he wrote it down in vast quantities of notes, anecdotes, and vignettes, so many, indeed, that they are still being collated and published to this day. It is an act of deep presumption on the part of a writer of fanfiction to presume that they can enter that vision, add something to that world if its creator had not intended it to be there. I cannot think of anything else that people try to slash on a regular basis that is as personal and complete a secondary creation as Middle Earth is. I can put up with people slashing Les Miserables before I can put up with Tolkien slash, because at least France during the Napoleonic Wars existed and historical events bore some resemblance to those recounted in Hugo's masterpiece; this edges it somewhat towards being common property.
Tolkien's works belong to Tolkien, and I am grateful that he let us read them.
Beyond that, as well, I have a secondary objection. In order to write a piece of good fanfiction, it is necessary to comprehend the rules of the original work, to know what people would be likely to do and to some extent why. Nobody I have yet encountered, in Tolkien fic, has grasped what I believe to be the most significant thing about Tolkien's universe: The Lord of the Rings is *an epic poem*. Its characters follow the ancient code of how epic heroes behave toward one another. This code is *intrinsically different* from our present one, as it was in effect before the invention of such categories as sexuality, sexual orientation, and the modern concept of romance. People have been arguing for about a hundred years now over whether Achilles and Patroclus were lovers. Not in any sense we'd understand the term. The relationship those two are depicted as having, in the Iliad, is a kind of relationship that became obsolete with the invention of categories of sexual orientation, though it persisted right up until the Civil War in some circumstances (I recommend the lovely book that came out recently of photographs of groups of Civil War soldiers for a good illustration of what I mean-- it is obvious from these that the presence or absence of sex in a friendship, to some of these people, was as irrelevant as the ability of Martina Navratilova to play the concert piano-- it would certainly be interesting and pleasant if she could, but who would think to really let it worry them?). Then there's the fact that in Tolkien's universe, sex itself, along with most other details associated with physicality, is not a subject of discussion or a subject of surmise. Love, yes, and romance, and marriage; all else is private. The combination of these two circumstances-- epic, and the fact that nobody in Tolkien's universe talks about sex-- mean that any writer who attempts to write Tolkien slash in the way modern people write fanfiction is intrinsically starting with a set of flawed premises and is consequently not going to be able to write anything really interesting or new about the book. Therefore, it's not worth having the temerity to horn in on somebody else's personal artistic vision, to attempt to write something set in Tolkien's own secondary creation, when doing so is not even going to actually work, and the result will be something skewed in significant ways from the thing it is trying to comment on.
As for the movies? Sure, why not? They are a collective version, after all, and one I do not intrinsically disapprove of, since they came very close in at least some ways to the basic premises of Tolkien's universe-- Frodo and Sam in the movie have the correct relationship. But they aren't Tolkien, and while adapting an adapted version can become somewhat redundant, there's certainly a lot to say about the methodology behind the movies. Besides, 'Still Not King' is a great tag-line. I want the T-shirt.
But I wish movie fic writers would make it absolutely clear in their introductions that they are writing about the movie and not the books and know that there is a difference. And even then I have no real inclination to read movie fic, because the sharing of names with the book version of the characters gives me the creeps-- but here we're getting into my personal tastes, as opposed to my ideological crusades in the name of modern-day epic. ^_^
Right. So that is the Tolkien Rant, rebuttal and discussion welcomed. I think I will go read an actual novel. Good night.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
This is not a rebuttal.
Date: 2003-02-17 10:56 pm (UTC)The closest I get to rebuttal is, thank you for stating why I avoid Harry Potter fic like the plague.
no subject
Date: 2003-02-18 06:06 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-02-18 05:48 pm (UTC)Of course I *would* add certain rather amusing Tolkien-trivia, like how Tolkien says that the elves celebrated their "conception-day" rather than their birthday... :-)
History of Middle earth v.10, "Morgoth's Ring", says a lot about how Tolkien thought elves saw/viewed sexuality. From what I remember it seems that for them, the desire for sex was just one among many bodily/spiritual desires that people could grow more or less interested in. So the desire "I want to have fun making some babies" wasn't particularly different (for an elf) from "I want to have fun composing a lyrical poem".
And then he also says several other things, about how elven body and spirit coexisted in better accord than in mortals, so that "deeds of lust were rarely recorded among them". Ofcourse in these cases, it's always the exception that make the better reading material - I don't think there's *any* reader who'll doubt that Maeglin's incestuous lust for Idril is behind much of the Gondolin tragedy.
And going to mortal affairs, in "Unfinished Tales" we see Forweg and Androg (in Turin's little group of bandits) pursue a woman with the purpose of raping her, before Turin stops this by killing Forweg and taking his place of leadership among the bandits.
Rush-that-speaks, assuming you've read the Silmarillion, may I suggest this site here for some fanfic I'd like to know what you thought about? http://members.bellatlantic.net/~vze3b4pq/ (and scroll a bit down until you get the list of fics)
Besides the page's centerpiece story of "The Script" (http://members.bellatlantic.net/~vze3b4pq/thescript.html) (about Beren&Luthien) another story I loved there was about Haleth and Finrod, here (http://members.bellatlantic.net/~vze3b4pq/short/brethil.html).
-Aris