Chels

Last week, I talked about the complex relationship between fanfiction and copyright law. Archive of Our Own is still down, and people online are still using their newly free time to argue about fanfiction, so I’m still inclined to talk about the culture surrounding fanfiction and published literature.

Part of what influenced the legality of fanfiction is the attitudes towards fanworks. On the one hand, fanfiction is often created by amateur writers, for no profits, and many creators do not see fanfiction as copyright infringement for this reason, however, some are against fanfiction because of its amateur nature – they don’t want their characters and worlds to be handled by anyone but themselves.*

*They are, however, okay with adaptations that will make them profit, because one can only be so protective over their characters before money calls.

Fanfiction is seen as lower quality, and fair enough, with virtually no barrier to entry, of course there will be works of varying quality. Plenty of fanworks are written by young people at the beginning of their writing journey, and ultimately, it’s a hobby. That’s not to say all fanfiction is low quality. It’s also seen as less meaningful or worthwhile, as if a story told through borrowed characters cannot be important or somewhat unique.

This disparaging attitude towards fanfiction is often met with pushback, with defenders of fanfiction often going as far as to label classic works of literature as fanfiction. This brings me to my question – what is fanfiction, and what isn’t fanfiction?

The original definition of fanfiction was amateur fiction published in fanzines, from as early as the 1930s. It was only in the 1960s and 70s that the term became used to describe works written using preexisting worlds and characters, by fans of the original work.

Fanfiction has also been known as derivative work, although not all fanfiction is derivative, and not all derivative work is fanfiction. This distinction is key when it comes to examining classic literature as fanfiction.

The Examples

The most commonly cited works of literature as examples of fanfiction are Dante’s Divine Comedy, Milton’s Paradise Lost, and Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys. Each build on ideas from earlier literature – the Bible, in the case of the first two works, and for the latter, Jane Eyre. Each work is, to an extent, derivative. This being said, all work is inevitably derivative – any novel or poem builds on pre-existing character archetypes, tropes, and concepts, some more explicitly than others.

Presumably, Milton and Dante were ‘fans’ as it were of the bible; they certainly took inspiration for their own writing, but why are we so resistant to refer to their works as fanfiction? Is it only because their works were published? This then raises questions about fanfictions that become published – did Fifty Shades of Grey cease to be Twilight fanfiction the moment that names were changed and the book was traditionally published?

A good portion of contemporary romantasy literature borrows from Greek mythology and fairytales – some directly using characters from mythology. Is this not fanfiction? Perhaps it is that there’s no sole copyright holder for Greek Gods? Again, though, this point brings other works into question – the entire Sherlock Holmes canon is public domain, but how would we respond to the release of a novel utilising the characters in their original setting? Would we consider this to be fanfiction?

There is, of course, resistance to the fanfiction label for these works of literature. Again, though, much of the resistance comes from the idea that fanfiction is of a lower quality in comparison to published literature, which is, I think, a less helpful line of argument. Some fanfiction is incredibly high quality, and some published literature is not so great, so it’s not a particularly sound argument to make. Instead, we must return (as I often do) to Michel Foucault and discourse theory. That is, the idea that things do not exist until we define them with language. The term fanfiction did not exist in the 14th century when Dante completed The Divine Comedy, nor did it exist in the 17th century when Milton wrote Paradise Lost. These works cannot be fanfiction, because fanfiction simply did not exist.

It’s a more complex case with Wide Sargasso Sea. Published in 1966, the same year that Star Trek premiered, fanfiction as we know it today had begun to emerge. Granted, it was not as well known, and it was still largely associated with sci-fi at the tail end of its previous definition. Yes, fanfiction existed, but it was a niche term used by a small in-group, and had not yet become part of the public lexicon. Wide Sargasso Sea is the work of the three that could be most easily argued to be fanfiction – it acts as a prequel, of sorts, to the original novel, rather than simply being inspired by it. Still, this is the work that is most strongly defended online over the ‘fanfiction’ label.

There’s a resistance to label classic works as fanfiction because of the stigma around fanworks – Wide Sargasso Sea is seen as dealing with too important topics, and being too meaningful, to merely be fanfiction. Again, I think this is a less helpful way of determining where the distinction lies. Much like Sherlock Holmes, Jane Eyre was in the public domain at the time, and as such there were no copyright holders of the characters or setting, so while it is certainly a work derivative of Jane Eyre, it is not necessarily a work of fanfiction.

Our attitudes to pastiche and borrowing have shifted over time – before the introduction of copyright laws, creatives were granted more freedom to create works that acted in conversation with other works. Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale was loosely based on Pandosto, a Romance by Robert Greene. Both works draw on the Greek mythological figure, Pygmalion (who also served as inspiration for the George Bernard Shaw play of the same name). None of these works are considered to be fanfiction of those that came prior, because borrowing elements of a story was not noteworthy in the way that it is today.

We tend to ascribe the ‘fanfiction’ label to classic works of literature in defence of the medium, but ultimately, many of these works cannot be considered fanfiction simply because fanfiction as a concept did not exist. Of course, for works published after the term was coined, the answer is more complex, but I think that intention is a good point of division – a work intended to act as fanfiction is fanfiction, and a work inspired by, or in response to, another work is simply a derivative work.