Shaping the tide of fannish peer pressure

[sqbr]

There's a very interesting post Why we do what we do: riding the wave riffing off another post which I didn't find all that interesting. Anyway, her point (as I see it) is to ask: Why are fans so hesitant to admit they get into fandoms partly due to peer pressure, and given that this peer pressure exists, do we have a responsibility to consider the social consequences? I started writing a comment and it expanded into this post. The context is fanfic writers but I think a lot of this applies to scifi fandom too.

First, two things which I think are important to get straight before we discuss this sort of thing:

On peer pressure
While the two blur into each other, I think it's worth distinguishing peer pressure from "People with similar taste to me like this, maybe I should check it out". This is especially apparent to me since "people with similar tastes to me" and "my friends" are often two very different groups :) That said I think a lot of the time both are in play simultaneously but people tell themselves they're following the herd just because they trust their friends judgement.

Also I think it's important to remember that "What sources get popular" isn't arbitrary (though it's certainly not just based on quality of writing etc). I'm inclined to think that if you isolated a group of fanficcers for a year with that season's tv shows and watched what they wrote fic about the results would bear a moderate resemblance to the rest of fandom. I was listening to a podcast about group psychology the other day and it said that group decisions tend to be much more polarised than the aggregate of the individuals opinions, and perhaps that what happens here: the most popular shows are more popular due to innate "quality", but peer pressure causes more clumping.

And of course peer pressure doesn't work in a simple way. It's important not to fall into the trap of thinking of "fandom" as one coherent whole, people join for many different reasons in many different ways, and divide into semi-distinct subcultures.

I know peer pressure affects me. I mean I hate SGA the show, but I still read the fic, because EVERYONE writes and recs it and what are you going to do. I read the last few Harry Potter books just as the came out entirely because of wanting to be in with fandom and my friends. I might have read them anyway, but not anywhere near as urgently.

Finally: in and of itself peer pressure to like the same stuff as everyone else isn't necessarily a horribly bad thing. But given that it exists it's worth considering the consequences.

Objectivity
Unfortunately, as with the original post, a LOT of the time when people try to bring attention to problematic aspects of fandom/canon, they concentrate on the stuff they don't personally enjoy. Which just alienates the people who do enjoy it, and very easily turns into yet another "My taste is better than your taste" fannish argument. For example, I like both femslash and period romance. So on the one hand I tend to be worried/annoyed by the lack/portrayal of women in slash/gen, yet read in a genre which itself is incredibly prone to sexism/rigid gender roles etc. If I'm going to talk about this sort of thing, I should write about the issues in regency romance, not in slash. It should as much as possible be "Is it ok for us to embrace X" not "Is it ok for them to embrace Y?" or it's just too easy to say "No".

Where this is difficult for me personally is that, on the whole, I have higher (or at least different) standards than fandom-as-a-whole. For example I found SGA unwatchable both for reasons of quality and offensiveness pretty much from the get-go. So it's easy for me to point fingers and say "Well you guys shouldn't watch SGA!" because I have no temptation to do so myself.

Now to actually try to answer the question:

Is critiquing from within enough?

I think you have to let people have the option to stick with problematic canon, or if they love it too much to let it go their only option is to go into denial and say they're not problematic. That and well most canon is pretty problematic.

And certainly critiquing within is a bare minimum. I have no sympathy for people who get angry at anyone who points out that the source is racist/sexist etc. I have more sympathy for people who don't want to hear other people's critiques of the writing quality etc, as long as they don't say those people "aren't really fans" or prevent them from discussing those things in open spaces.

Is there enough space for this critcism? I tend to think not, no. And I think miriam_heddy is right, this is partly because fandom is about the joy of fannish love, and some people would rather go into denial than admit their love has flaws, even when maintaining that denial means making fandom unpleasant for other fans (this is particularly bad from white fans towards POC complaining about racism). I haven't experienced it much myself, but I get the feeling there's a LOT of negativity blasted at anyone who tries to criticise the source from within a fandom. But being uncritical is not the only way to show love.

Also something I've noticed is that as well as being offended at being criticised themselves, in any conversation about racism etc people are always incredibly quick to shift the topic to how bad some other group is (bring up racism in a group of Australians and wait to see how long it takes to get around to "Those wacky racist americans"). Heck I found this in myself: trying to think about how my favourite fandoms are problematic I kept sliding back to thinking about stuff like SGA and SPN that I don't like.

Do we make a deliberate attempt to choose canon which is less problematic, and avoid that which is particularly bad?

My natural reaction is to make the argument miriam_heddy was particularly critiquing: this is a matter of personal choice. One can definitely be horribly offended by certain aspects of a source but love other parts enough to stick with it. Poking at the assumptions and attitudes underlying my reaction is interesting but tricky and I'm still pondering it. (If you're interested, read her post if you didn't already)

As for the shape of fanfic fandom as a broader social structure I don't feel I can really comment since I always feel like somewhat of an outsider, I don't feel like I relate to fanfic the same way most other people do.

With regards to scifi fandom...I don't know. Certainly we can try to pressure TPTB to do better on individual issues (Joss Whedon and casting choices for example) I personally make a minor effort to boycott whitewashed adaptations (Earthsea etc), but I must admit none of them have looked very appealing anyway. A lot of the time really egregiously offensive stuff just isn't enjoyable for me so choosing not to engage isn't really a socially conscious choice on my part.

And once again, I have no conclusion, I have just run out of things to say :)

Comments

[ataxi.livejournal.com]

It's all true. There's a place for consuming media just so one can be part of the conversation (because the conversation is arguably important). There's a place for doing it because someone told you to. I don't think this part of tv / film / literature consumption should be anywhere near as big as the part where you read or watch because you think it's good though.

And there's an overlap, and there's things that are only mildly popular with your peers that you take on because you think they have some other commendable quality, and there's things that are awful that you refuse to get interested in no matter how much your pals try to get you to.

No universal bads or goods on either side of the argument. Otherwise, it all seems obvious enough?

I do think the types of text that get popular in fandom are worthy of investigation ... sometimes I get a distinct feeling that mediocre texts become the focus of conversation just so fans can have a walled garden in which to practise a fairly poor standard of criticism and fanfic / riffage. When the text is politically questionable or just garbage, but the community is so obscure no one sensible is there to call it for what it is, it can be a bit worrying. I've always felt that way about the exploitative-of-women market niche in sword and sorcery comics and fantasy fiction, for example.

[alias_sqbr]

sometimes I get a distinct feeling that mediocre texts become the focus of conversation just so fans can have a walled garden in which to practise a fairly poor standard of criticism and fanfic /riffage

I do sometimes get that feeling too, that's one of the ways in which I feel a disconnect from fanfic fandom as a whole. Though I think it's also that fanfic tends to grow from stories which (in the fanficcers mind) don't fulfill their potential. Harry Potter is a very good example of this: she created very engaging characters and backstory, but did a lot of really annoying things with the plot, which inspired people to "fix" it.

One of the problems with fandom (scifi/fanfic, whatever) imo is that there are sensible people, but there's a huge pressure not to rock the boat and harsh the squee. Ask strangedave about trying to critique steampunk...

[ataxi.livejournal.com]

Steampunk, don't get me started. Hobby "steampunk" art consisting of non-working collages of things lifted from op-shops is one of my pet dislikes. Plus there's very little in the way of an actual body of literature. Real steam engines are quite inspiring things.

[alias_sqbr]

I find I'm happier with steampunk if I see it as an off shoot of gothic style rather than a genuine subgenre of science fiction/fantasy.

On the one hand I have a definite soft spot for it but on the other hand it makes no sense, these two responses make me very conflicted :)

[ataxi.livejournal.com]

Meh Harry Potter. Let's not talk about that.

So do you think that fandom naturally gravitates to "crippled" canonical texts? I don't think I've ever heard of a fandom developing with a lot of people being engaged (euphemism for "obsessed" in many cases) by the characters, so I'm assuming there won't be much fic out there for texts that are oversupplied with quality in the plot and setting departments and undersupplied on the characterisation side (e.g. most hard sf).

[alias_sqbr]

So do you think that fandom naturally gravitates to "crippled" canonical texts?

Yes. And I've encountered lots of fanfic writers who want to make it clear that the texts the enjoy are often much better quality than the ones they are inspired to write for.

I'm assuming there won't be much fic out there for texts that are oversupplied with quality in the plot and setting departments and undersupplied on the characterisation side (e.g. most hard sf)

I think the issue is less the quality of the characterisation and more whether or not there's something about it that pings for people. I've come across the odd bit of Asimov fanfic, and while his characters are usually fairly thin they have some engaging interactions and relationships. Also there's the fact that fanfic writers (at least the ones I hang out with) tend to be female, and the fans of hard sf tend to be male. I have sometimes heard tell of mostly-male-written hard sf fanfic out there somewhere but have never encountered it.

[danamaree.livejournal.com]

and the fans of hard sf tend to be male.

How do you define hard science-fiction? I always think of Asimov, Heinlein, Clarke etc as Golden era science-fiction (60s and 70s), which is a fairly distinct style.

I guess by your definition, writers like Alistair Reynolds, Stross, Kim Stanley Robinson would be contemporary hard sci-fi writers (but writers like Iain Bank, CJ Cherryh, Peter F Hamilton and Neil Asher would be closer to the space opera genre).

(stopped reading Asher and Hamilton because of their problematic writing of female characters).

[alias_sqbr]

Well, my definition of "hard sf" shifts with context. In this particular case I was thinking of authors whose works are basically ideas with a thin shell of story over the top like Egan, Asimov, and Baxter. To know that's what I meant you'd have to be psychic :) Basically the characters are the least important aspect of these stories, and as a result I think it's unlikely they'd get much fanfic.

[danamaree.livejournal.com]

Ah OK, I was think more that you meant the stories are based on realistic scientific fact or theories, and those writers are usually scientists who are writing their theories into their stories. :)

I'm alway fascinated by the line drawn between sciene-fictional stories and science-fantasy.

[alias_sqbr]

Yes, that is a more common definition. Thus, to understand my comment, you needed to be psychic :D

[alias_sqbr]

Wait, we've had this conversation! Why do we fan things we think are crap?.