Works Cited

This paper drew on the following works of theory:

Falzone, P. J. “The Final Frontier Is Queer: Aberrancy, Archetype and Audience Generated Folklore in K/S Slashfiction”. Western Folklore 64.3 (Summer/Fall, 2005), 243-261. JSTOR. Web. 2 Apr. 2013.

Kirby, Alan. Digimodernism. New York: Continuum International Publishing Group Inc., 2009. Print.

Leow, Hui Min Annabeth. “Subverting the Canon in Feminist Fan Fiction: ‘Concession.'” Transformative Works and Cultures 7 (2011). Web. 2 Apr. 2013.

Lipovetsky, Gilles. Hypermodern Times. Cambridge: Polity Press, 2005. Print.

Lothian, Alexis, Kristina Busse, and Robin Anne Reid. “‘Yearning Void and Infinite Potential’: Online Slash Fandom as Queer Female Space”. English Language Notes 45.2 (Fall/Winter 2007), 103-111. Queer Geek Theory. Web. 2 Apr. 2013.

Samuels, Robert. New Media, Cultural Studies, and Critical Theory After Postmodernism: automodernity from Zizek to Laclau. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010. Print.

Schwabach, Aaron. Fan Fiction and Copyright: Outsider Works and Intellectual Protection. Surrey: Ashgate Publishing Limited, 2011. Print.

Toth, Josh. The Passing of Postmodernism: A Spectroanalysis of the Contemporary. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2010. Print.

and the following fan works:

“An Open Letter to the Wizards” by Hank Green

Harry Potter and The Methods of Rationality by Less Wrong

“This is Not the End” by anenko

“The Bechdel Test” by Frea_O

“Hermione Granger: Minister of Magic” by Icarus

“Women’s Work” by sockkpuppett and sisabet

“Goodbye, Irene” by marysutherland

“An Uncomplicated Social Call” by amorremanet

“don’t need another perfect lie” by ChristinasInferno

“bloody knuckles” by chasingtides

“Passing” by xenoamorist

In addition, I absolutely owe a debt to the wider world of fan community, debate, and creation, which undoubtedly helped shape many of my ideas as contained in this paper.

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Some Closing Remarks

This paper has attempted to convey, in some sense, both the current scope of fan works and their potential. Fan works are almost quintessentially post-postmodern, not only in their desire to reuse, repair, recycle, and remix, but also in their particular ethics. Toth’s “ethics of indecision” do much to explain the need creators of fan works feel to repeatedly address issues of representation, rather than simply accepting or condemning the canon source. Samuel’s emphasis on “social constructivism” explains why so many fan work creators feel representation is an important element to critique, while Lipovetsky points towards “human rights” as the basis of those critiques.The examples discussed within this paper are all examples of fan works which challenge their canon sources on the grounds that they contain representations which are harmful and reductive, and they are certainly not the only ones.

This is not to conflate these types of fan works with forms of political and social activism, as “this rebellious and playful remixing of culture does very little to change the dominant social systems” (Samuels 41). Fan communities have always been primarily a space for people to discuss things that they already have in common. However, with the advent of fan-based groups like the Harry Potter Alliance, the relationship between activism and these types of fan works may be growing closer.

Finally, this paper has been heavily focused on the intersection of fan works and post-postmodern ethics, and was still unable to do more than touch on various aspects (for example, the way that fan works might confront similar ethical concerns in other fan works or in the very conventions of fan works). Fan works are a broad and fascinating topic, and scholarship is beginning to take a more general interest in the community and works. However, true to its DIY roots, some if not all of most well-informed and most prolific writers on the topic are members of the fan community themselves. I look forward to the continuing discussions, which promise to be, like fan work itself so often is, collaborative, passionate, and intelligent.

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Not Gay: Dean Winchester and Bisexuality

While the examples in the previous section offer critiques of the way women are represented, fan works can also criticize a lack of representation. The T.V. show Supernatural has frequently been criticized by fans for its overwhelming straight white male cast, including the two lead characters, Sam and Dean Winchester. As is usual for a fandom with attractive male leads, there are copious amounts of slash fan works for Supernatural. However, Dean Winchester’s sexuality in particular has become a topic of fan discussion and fan works, due to subtext within the canon, and to bisexual fans identifying with the character. These fan works are concerned with Dean’s sexuality beyond the bounds of a slash pairing (where the sexualities and genders of the characters are often minimized) and recognizes “tension between various levels of real-life queerness” as a “highly contested aspect of the slash fan community’s self-perception of its queer [largely] female space” (Lothian, Busse, and Reid 107). As such, these fan works tend to have several elements in common. Firstly, they frequently depict Dean as closeted. While this is partially a convention of slash (Lothian, Busse, and Reid 107) and partially a reflection of lived bisexual experience, it is also a recognition that Dean’s character is “assumed straight” or essentially closeted by the canon source. Secondly, although Dean is often closeted, it is simultaneously obvious to those around him that he is bisexual—just as it is obvious to the fan who reads Dean in this way. Finally, most of these fan works use canon elements as evidence of Dean’s bisexuality, even if they invent others. These commonalities point to what amounts to a serious queer reading of Dean Winchester’s character that stems from the canon source itself, and simultaneously from the canon’s denial of Dean Winchester as a representation of a bisexual man.

“An Uncomplicated Social Call” by amorremanet is not slash, but represents Dean as bisexual and closeted. While he struggles to reveal his identity to Charlie Bradbury (the series’ only recurring LGBT+ character), Dean simultaneously “just assumes Sam [his brother] knows”. In a similar case, “don’t need another perfect lie” by ChristinasInferno presents Dean as bisexual and closeted, but when he comes out to his brother, Sam responds with, “Everyone’s known that forever”. The story is written from Sam’s point of view, and two of the things which Sam counts as “evidence” of Dean’s bisexuality in the fic—knowledge of a gay bar called “Purgatory” and “forced laughter when Sam had mentioned him looking butch”—are drawn from canon elements.

“bloody knuckles” by chasing tides represents Dean as more self-aware, and not precisely closeted. However, he still emphasizes that he is “not gay” and seems to shy away from discussing his relationships with men on romantic terms. Other canon male characters are also depicted as bisexual and gay in this fic, but these things remain “unspoken”, paralleling the way mainstream media shies away from explicit representations of LGBT+ characters. Like “don’t need another perfect lie”, “bloody knuckles” is also from Sam’s point of view, and again he draws on canon for “evidence” of Dean’s sexuality, saying “Your goddamned siren was a guy!” in reference to the fact that a siren luring men by becoming the perfect woman appeared to Dean as a man.

Another particularly interesting example is the fanfiction “Passing” by xenoamorist (which also critiques Orientalism in the canon source). Supernatural canon includes a character who is both a prophet of God and an author. He writes a series of books, also called Supernatural, based on the visions he has on the Winchesters’ lives, until he finds out that the Winchesters are real. This series of books has its own fans within the canon. “Passing” takes advantage of this, and has Dean meet a bisexual fan of the Supernatural books who reads the character of Dean Winchester as bisexual. Again Dean is represented as bisexual and closeted, and is in this case so closeted that he cannot even admit his orientation out loud. Dean’s orientation is not obvious to those around him, but it is obvious to the bisexual fan, who again quotes canon elements, such as “the siren being a man when it was a woman for other men like Dean” and Dean’s reaction, “like a schoolgirl”, to meeting one of his favorite actors, as “evidence” of Dean’s bisexuality. The metafictional element allows the author to openly criticize the idea that Dean Winchester should not, could not, or will not be canonically bisexual, since the character of the bisexual fan is an almost exact stand-in for a bisexual fan of the show. She says “You don’t want to accept the idea that maybe, just maybe, there’s a popular series with a main character who’s male and bisexual. I mean, is it so awful of a concept? Is bisexuality that terrible?”, and the emotional pain it causes her is clear.

These representations of Dean Winchester demonstrate that such fan works simultaneously draw from and challenge the canon source. By attempting to “rewrite” Dean as bisexual, they may also attempt to hold the canon source accountable to what they see as a “closeted” bisexual character. Proponents of slash fan works and queer readings alike have claimed that “queering of the narrative is important because it represents a clear and conscious break from the status quo—from embedded assumptions that result in oppressive identities” (Falzone 249). Many fan works, including slash, critique the canon’s insistence that Dean Winchester is straight. However, by specifically by coding him as bisexual, which does not invalidate his canon relationships with women, these fan works can  be seen both as a more fluid or complex representation of sexuality, and as a call for such representation in canon sources (and even in other fan work).

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What Kinds of Women

Fan works are often particularly interested in the representation of minority and marginalized groups. Given the number of women involved in the creation of fan works (not to mention potential deficits of women involved in the canon source productions, such as T.V. shows), it is unsurprising that representations of women are frequently examined. Fan works often criticize representations of female characters that are underdeveloped, stereotyped, and non-essential to the narrative (making them disposable in a way male characters are often not). The tone, style, and approach of these fan works are widely varied, but they share common goals.

“The Bechdel Test”, by Frea_O, for example, is a semi-absurd fanfiction which breaks the fourth wall and points to the failure of the recent Avengers movie to pass the Bechdel test by having Tony Stark confront two of the female characters, Maria Hill and Natasha Romanov, with the fact that they have not had a conversation about something other than a man.This can be read not only as a critique of the canon source’s failure to pass the fairly simple Bechdel test, but also, given the dismissive way Hill and Romanov treat the test, as an indication that the test is a somewhat reductive or arbitrary measure of representations of women.

“Hermione Granger: Minister of Magic” by Icarus, from the Harry Potter fandom, has a similar light-hearted tone and plot, but the issue it raises—that of the lack of female leaders in the canon source—is treated more seriously. The story takes place post-series, and describes Hermione’s election to the post of Minister. Hermione says of her election “All I can think is what the hell took them so long to elect a female Minister of Magic! There have been great sorceresses in the past. Qualified witches. Half the founders of Hogwarts were women! What’s wrong with them?”, and the summary for the story reads “It only took thousands of years, Voldemort, a Wizarding war, and a major election scandal for a woman to finally come in third”. There are, in fact, several female Ministers of Magic in the canon source. However, the story can nevertheless be read as a reaction to the canon source, in which few female characters are presented as leaders (as opposed to male characters like Harry, Dumbledore, Voldemort and others).

In other cases, fan works dealing with the representation of women may be much darker. The extremely and intentionally disturbing fan vid “Women’s Work” by sockkpuppett and sisabet examines the treatment of women within the show Supernatural, drawing attention to the fact that female characters are frequently sexualized, victimized, portrayed as evil, and/or killed off.

While the show as a whole is violent, there is discrepancy between the treatment of male and female characters (for example, several of the recurring male characters are repeatedly saved or resurrected by God and angels). “Women’s Work” intentionally draws attention to the way the canon source represents women as stereotypes, often as love interests or motherly figures, and as disposable.

While the examples above explore general representations of women in the canon source, fan works may also challenge particular representations. When the BBC Sherlock episode “A Scandal in Belgravia” aired, there was immediate criticism of the representation of Irene Adler, who is ultimately outsmarted by, and then saved by, Sherlock Holmes. This criticism drew much of its strength from the fact that in her original incarnation in “A Scandal in Bohemia”, Irene Adler outsmarts and escapes Holmes. “A Case of Identity” by marysutherland is a fic which “rewrites” the ending of “A Scandal in Belgravia”. In this narrative, not only does Irene not need to be saved—she exclaims “Oh God…You’re doing your bloody rescuing damsels in distress act again, aren’t you?” when Sherlock interrupts her in the process of faking her own death—but it also denies that Sherlock ever outsmarted her in the first place. The story is largely a platform for Irene Adler to explain her side of events, while Holmes, seeing things from a view more in line with the canon source, is one step behind her.

All of the fan works above could potentially be classified as “feminist fan fiction” which “capably explores feminist concerns by drawing attention to the presentation of patriarchy in the source text and by re-presenting the canon based on a more explicitly woman-oriented worldview” (Leow 1.4). Certainly they all challenge representations of women, and, in addition, recenter the narrative on women and women’s voices.

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How Happy They Appear: House-elves in Harry Potter

The canonical representations of house-elves in the Harry Potter series are certainly troubling from a contemporary ethical standpoint. House elves are one of several sentient magical species that exist alongside humans in the series. They are enslaved to wizarding families as domestic servants; however, they are overwhelmingly portrayed as happy in their enslavement, and even naturally suited to it. No independent house-elf society, culture, history, or language (their English is poor) is ever presented in the books. In Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, Hermione Granger forms an organization to work for the rights of house elves, but the house elves at Hogwarts show no desire to be freed (with the exception of the already-free Dobby, who previously worked for an abusive family). Throughout the series, house-elves are portrayed as naturally preferring their enslavement, as having no identity outside of their work and owners, and as simply needing “benevolent” masters.

In his fan song “Open Letter to the Wizards” (embedded below), Hank Green lists a number of problems with the wizarding world, including that they have “known racists playing politics / and slaves making [their] food”.

Even referring to the house-elves as slaves is relatively rare in the canon source. The lyrics seek to trouble the idea that ethical questions are simple within the world of Harry Potter, reflecting Toth’s ethics of indecision.

Likewise, several fanfictions note the problem of the house elves in passing, even if it is not central to the narrative. Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality by Less Wrong, an extremely popular 500 000 word fanfiction, contains the relatively unimportant line, “Whoever had created house elves in the first place had been unspeakably evil, obviously”, which simultaneously paints the enslavement of house elves in unambiguous ethical terms, and revokes the idea that their enslavement is natural rather than created and constructed.

Other fanfictions center solely on the question of the house elves. “This is Not the End” by anenko tells an short alternative version of the events of the seventh book, which is entirely focused on a house-elf rebellion. This rebellion, which seemingly originates with the elves themselves, inherently challenges the idea that their enslavement is natural and preferred. Additionally, the fic provides three versions of the moment in which the elves were magically bound to wizards, and questions the “truth” of these “recorded histories”, which also serves to emphasize their slavery as constructed and historical rather than natural. The line “They are more than House Elves—they are the People”, on the other hand, explicitly gives the elves their own history, identity, and agency independent from their enslavement, although it does not elaborate on this.

All of these fan works engage ethically with the representation of house-elves in the canon source material. The representation of the house-elves, combined with a knowledge of historical slavery, has implications related to human rights, and these fan works not only highlight these implications, but offer alternatives by “rewriting” the representation.

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“Kids Today Have No Sense of Right and Wrong” and Other Myths

Explorations of both the community and the legality surrounding fan works hinge upon the form of fandom and fan works; similarly, Kirby writes of digimodernist texts (although he does not address fan works specifically), “The distinctiveness of their functioning interests us, not their ostensible content” (Kirby 51). This paper, on the other hand, is absolutely concerned with content—”ostensible” or not— and specifically with the way the content of fan works clearly demonstrates a contemporary, post-postmodern (variously theorized as hypermodern, automodern, etc.) sense of ethics. While alarmists might like to claim that postmodernism ripped us away from the idea of moral certainty that modernity preserved and left us adrift in the amoral sea of postpostmodernism, alienated from even our shipmates, Gilles Lipovetsky rightly points out that:

Without a system of values there is no social body capable of reproducing itself. Hypermodern society does not escape this law. Far from having caused the annihilation of all values, the debacle of the great political messianic dreams has enabled democracies to become reconciled to their basic moral principles: human rights…We need to stop singing the old refrain that we live in a nihilistic, anarchic universe, delivered from all moral meaning, all belief in good and evil: the decadence of values is a myth, and one that, incidentally, is far from new…[contemporary ethics] even if they are not ‘obligatory’, are nonetheless real. (81)

This emphasis on human rights and the democratic is echoed by Robert Samuels, who notes that “automodern” ethics are based on “secular humanism” and are “dependant on a social constructivist view of social change” (113). Josh Toth presents a slightly different view with his idea of an “ethics of indecision” in which “indecision is the burden of uncertainty and, therefore, of responsibility”, but the emphasis on active ethical behaviour remains (70). All of these conceptions of ethics in a post-postmodern context center on complex social issues that would actually seem to lend themselves not only to ethical thought and behaviour but also to certain forms of activism.

These conceptions of ethics, particularly in a media-saturated culture, also include a concern with representation. In the case of fan works which engage ethically in this way, “individuals use and interpret social representations for their own needs and purposes” (Samuels 39). It is not uncommon to see fan works described as “subversive”, as they use the canon source in ways that are not “intended”. While “issue fic” is frequently used as a derogative term for overly moralizing fan work, many fan works deal with elements of racism, sexism, homophobia, heteronormativity, and other issues which fall broadly under the purview of human rights and social constructs. These fan works not only allow for discussion and criticism of these elements, but also for Toth’s burden of uncertainty and responsibility by offering up multiple (and often multiplying) interpretations and “rewritings”. Fan works are of course produced by fans, who simultaneously enjoy and critique the canon source. Furthermore, fan works that challenge the canon source “may actually enhance the fan author’s and reader’s attachment to the original text, by allowing them an ‘out’ from some unwelcome aspect of the original” (Schwabach 18). In fact, fan works seem in many ways to be the perfect mode to address issues of representation as recognized by post-postmodern ethics.

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Wait, What Are We Talking About Here?

The “texts” that this paper explores are fan works, and can be defined as  “any work by a fan, or indeed by anyone other than the content owner(s), set in such a fictional world or using such pre-existing fictional characters” (Schwabach 8). These fan works can take multiple forms, including videos, music, art, and text, just as the canon sources that fan works draw from may be books, comics, movies, T.V. shows, video games, and other media. In fact, while fan works do not disregard medium entirely, they show an appropriately post-postmodern tendency towards the interdisciplinary, frequently shifting between mediums as a canon source is reinterpreted. This definition of fan works does exclude non-fictional fan discussion of the canon text (occasionally referred to as “meta” when it takes an essay-like form), but is still extremely broad, and may even trace its history to the practices of authors like Shakespeare, who “borrowed” heavily from their source texts.

However, the particular tradition of fan work that this paper examines “tend[s] to consciously identify with media fandom’s roots as developed in the 1970s and 1980s…An offshoot of organized science-fiction fandom, media fandom formed around (mostly female) creative engagements with Star Trek in the late 1960s” (Lothian, Busse, and Reid 105). These “media fandoms” have flourished on the Web, particularly with the tools provided by social media; while fan communities and fan works have considerable presences on platforms such as Tumblr and Livejournal, other sites are specifically devoted to fan works, such as fanfiction.net, or archiveofourown.org. Other sites or groups may be dedicated to the fan works of a particular fandom. The Web has made the production and distribution of fan work incredibly easy, and created a space where interaction, communication, and feedback on a broad scale happens almost effortlessly.

In both academic and popular discourse, fanfiction and fan works have two well-known features. The first is as “a space dominated by middle-class, educated, liberal, English-speaking, white North American women” (Lothian, Busse, and Reid 104). This is often closely tied to the prevalence of slash fanfiction. These examinations of fan works generally posit them as a permissive and exploratory space, although this idea may be expressed positively or negatively. Spaces in which fan works are produced are generally permissive, and advocate discussion and the use of warnings over censorship.

The second much-discussed feature of fan work is, of course, the question of copyright. The legal status of fan works “remains unclear”, partially sheltered by the non-commercial and often transformational nature of fan work (Schwabach 1). Legal prosecution of fan work is relatively rare, while various content owners of canon source material have widely different views on if, and what kinds of, fan work is acceptable. Ideas of what constitutes “plagiarism” or “stealing” occur both within and without fandom. On the other hand, ethical questions of what it is acceptable for a fan author to “do to” another’s characters are more removed from legal considerations and often echo questions of interpretation and critical theory, specifically those raised by reader response theory.

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Some Preliminary Remarks

Fanfiction and other fan works are flourishing in the contemporary context, and this has been accompanied by an increase in variety of form and content as well as quantity. Fanfiction represents an incredible output of text (and other media in the case of other fan works) that is widely discussed, interpreted, and criticized in discussions within the fan community. In contrast, scholarship on fan works as “texts” in their own right, rather than as a form or a community, is more or less in its infancy (one exception being Transformative Works and Cultures). This discrepancy most likely springs from fan works’ liminal legal and commercial status, from the almost exclusively digital status of fan work, and from the fact that the forms fan works take, and the communities around them, are fascinating in their own right (and must often be understood before fan works can be explored as a “text”).

This paper, much like fan works themselves, makes no generalized claims about the quality of fan works, just as it makes no generalized claims about the quality of novels, plays, poems, or, for that matter, academic scholarship; however, it is concerned with the content of fan works. Although fan works contain as much ethically questionable content as any form of communication made freely available to the public, fan works frequently display a concern with ethics which is very much in line with the ethics espoused by various theorists of the post-postmodern. These ethics are concerned with human rights, and, by extension, with media representations of issues related to human rights. Fan works engage with these representations in their canon source “text” not merely by critiquing them, but often also by actively “rewriting” them. These fan works are not limited by form, medium, style, or tone. Instead, what these fan works have in common is an ethical challenge to the canon source text, and, by extension, to a media which perpetuates certain representations and denies others.

onward to the next section