RPF, HPF, and Based On A True Story, or What if Hollywood ficced them First?

[elspethdixon]

I myself have never participated in any real RPS fandoms—I couldn’t tell N’Sync and the Backstreet Boys apart even back when they were all over MTV and the radio, which should give you some idea of the level of my interest in boybands, and when it comes to television and movies, I’m far more interested in the characters than the actual actors. I’d rather read about Jack Sparrow having sex with Will and Elizabeth Turner than about Johnny Depp, Keira Knightly, and Orlando Bloom performing the exact same sex acts, because Jack, Will, and Elizabeth are the ones I saw on screen and got all fangirly over. Mr. Depp, Ms. Knightly, and Mr. Bloom may be the talented and pretty people who helped create Jack, Will, and Elizabeth, but are they 18th century pirates?

Not that I’m totally against actorfic. When someone writes orgy fic featuring Shakespeare and the Lord Chamberlain’s men, then I’ll be all over actorfic like white on rice. Especially if they throw Marlowe into the mix as well. Mmmm… Marlowe.

And that begs the question: when exactly is RPS “RPS,” and when does it become something else? Sitting down at a computer and writing Depp/Bloom or Sean Bean/ Viggo Mortenson fic could theoretically get me sued for libel (though not for slander; to quote J. J. Jameson, “Slander is spoken. Libel is printed.”), but I could not only freely pen Marlowe slash, I could actually get it published. I submit as evidence Melissa Scott & Lisa A. Barnett’s Armor of Light. For that matter, I give you Shakespeare in Love, which might not be slash, but is certainly some degree of RPF. and totally stole the Oscar that should have gone to Saving Private Ryan

Granted, Mr. Mortenson et al are currently alive and well with their own agents and lawyers and press people to perform the aforementioned suing, and Christopher Marlowe has been dead for several hundred years, and moreover, left no descendants, but that’s the legal reasoning, not the moral argument. Why is Depp/Bloom squicky and wrong, and Shakespeare/Marlowe less so? Hell, I consider historical RPS less squicky than RPS with modern celebrities (as well as more interesting, since I’m a history geek), but I don’t know why.

And what about fic written for films and television series that are based on real people and events? To what extent is, say, a Doc/Wyatt slash fic based on Tombstone regular fanfic, and to what extent is it historical RPS? Wyatt Earp and John H. Holliday were, after all, real people. What about fic for a miniseries like Band of Brothers, which was based on a book that told the story of a real life army unit? What if I wrote fic for Good Night and Good Luck or Walk the Line or Capote?

Not only did Hollywood do the film equivalent of RPF in those movies, they used actual footage of Senator Joe McCarthy in Good Night and Good Luck, completely without his consent and permission, since he’s dead, and probably would have refused to give the film his blessing even were he alive to do so. His Hed Was Pastede On Yay! Granted, it was footage from a public broadcast, and therefore presumably up for grabs to anyone who cleared it with CBS first, but you see where I’m going with this, right?

If Hollywood or some published author has “done fic” about a celebrity or historical person first, does it absolve RPS writers who choose to write about those people of fic-writing sin, or does my Doc/Wyatt slash earn me a place in the Special Hell right next to the Timbertrick people?

Comments

[sodzilla.livejournal.com]

Yes, that's pretty much it. I have no doubt that Shakespeare had a good notion of period politics, but I also have no doubt that he had a sense of self-preservation, which would've governed how he dared portray or allude to those in power. Plus which, he - like everyone - is sure to have had his own bias.

[seanchai.livejournal.com]

Oh, very much agreed. But that's the nice thing about research- you don't have to use it, 'cause sometimes it's better to let historical fiction be, well, fictional. After all, sometimes, fleas and lice and rotten teeth just get in the way of the fun. And anyway, it;s not like Dumas spent much time on those details himself.

[elspethdixon.livejournal.com]

Dumas preferred to ignore all the blood-and-gorey aspects of period warfare and focus on the gloriousness of it all

Yes, he does that. I was seriously considering sticking blood poisoning in my pastiche fic, but I eventually decided not to drag it on that long (basically, I couldn't come up with a good reason to keep Porthos and Aramis wandering around in the woods for an extra day, or I'd have been there with the septicemia. Walking around with a musketball stuck in your shoulder is practically a recipe for it).

I'm sure Aramis at least bathes regularly. He's got a vested interest in keeping his hair/teeth/skin/etc. pretty. And Porthos cares deeply about appearances and the importance of nice clothing--not a man to go too long without donning a fresh shirt.

[sodzilla.livejournal.com]

I had one plotbunny wherein one of the guys took a bullet in the leg or something, and had to hide his condition lest he be given over to the surgeons, on the basis that the infection might kill him but the amputation surely would. *grins*

[azarias.livejournal.com]

*fangirls you*

[seanchai.livejournal.com]

Pimping people into things is one of my great goals in life, Of course, I also owe elspethdixon for introducing me to Barbara Hambly, Sharpe, and Tombstone, amongst other things.

Also *fangirls right back*. I thought I recognized your name- you've been writing the Authority fic for [Bad username or site: http://community.livejournal.com/fanfic100 @ livejournal.com], haven't you? I have to say- your take on Jenny Q is just utterly adorable.

[seanchai.livejournal.com]

And that's supposed to be *[Bad username or site: http://community.livejournal.com/fanfic100/ @ livejournal.com]*. Cause I really ought to be able to remember how to link to the damn place, as often as I've ended up visiting it.

[azarias.livejournal.com]

Eee, thanks. I'm still writing for that, though I'm really very slow. The WIP file, it fills so quickly, and empties never so slowly.

(And elspethdixon is in large part responsible for pimping me into Sharpe, too, so fair's fair.)

[sodzilla.livejournal.com]

Doesn't that happen to everyone? My usual ratio is 10 plotbunnies/WIPs to every one completed, and at that I do pretty well compared to some people on the flist.

[kyuuketsukirui.livejournal.com]

I simply don't give a damn about his personal life, including who he has sex with

Neither do any of the RPS writers and readers I know. Writing fiction about someone does not imply that you have any interest in their actual personal life.

[azarias.livejournal.com]

Then why write RPS about him?

Honest question. When I write about a character, it's because I'm interested in that character -- his whys and wherefores, his backstory and his potential. If you're not interested in a person, why write about that person?

[kyuuketsukirui.livejournal.com]

Because I like their personalities? (Or what I've seen of it.) I write mainly Jude Law/Ewan McGregor. I like what I've seen of their personalities (and because Ewan has done a lot of documentaries and written a book and such, I've seen more of his) and they fit the type of guys I like to write about. They're also good looking, which is a plus (but not necessary, as I also write RPS about other actors who I think are completely unattractive), but basically they match the type of characters I like to write about.

But I can honestly say I've never spent any time thinking about their personal lives or their sex lives. I mean, it's got nothing to do with what I'm writing, which is fiction, so it has no bearing on it. Ewan is happily married. The guy I write about just has his face and personality, that's all.

[azarias.livejournal.com]

Huh. Interesting. Possibly my problem with RPF is that I'm too much of a canon-nazi, then.

[kyuuketsukirui.livejournal.com]

I'm a canon nazi with FPS, but for me RPS is something completely different. The entire way I approach writing RPS is different, the way I get plot ideas, everything. Whereas with FPS, I'm inspired by canon events and mainly want to write stuff that fits in the cracks or shows another possible interpretation, with RPS, I have ideas completely divorced from any canon. Just, "oh, I want to write a fic about a guy who walks in to find his flatmate and his flatmate's girlfriend shagging on the sofa, and it's horribly awkward and becomes obvious that the guy has a thing for his flatmate" and then I use whichever of my RPS characters fit in that situation. (This is exactly a fic I wrote last night, btw.)

There's a lot of my RPS that I change the names on and shop around to get published. But I enjoy writing in fandom, the interaction between writer and audience, so I usually post it as RPS first. But even if I weren't, as I said, the actors I like tend to fit personalities that I prefer, so I'd be writing the same thing anyway, even if I called the guys different names from the beginning.

[sodzilla.livejournal.com]

I'm sure Aramis at least bathes regularly. He's got a vested interest in keeping his hair/teeth/skin/etc. pretty. And Porthos cares deeply about appearances and the importance of nice clothing--not a man to go too long without donning a fresh shirt.

Yes! Whereas Athos probably doesn't care how he looks but would scrub down and change his underwear regularly without thinking about it because that's proper, and d'Artagnan would do it because Athos does it which must mean it's the thing to do.

[bladesno1.livejournal.com]

Exactly. That's the essense of historical story telling. At best we can nail down when things happened, mostly. At worst, we're left with patchy, biased accounts that need so much triangulation, they're nearly impossible to substantiate. Umberto Eco wrote wonderfully about this in Travels in Hypereality. The fractured interpretation of historical 'fact'. The idea that we can re-create anything historical or historically is fundamentally flawed. That was 'then'. There is no now that will ever be even remotely like then. For more reasons than can be counted.
I spent a good chunk of my life studying medieval history. My experience is just as you say. I loved learning that Spain stopped drawing England on their maps for something like a hundred years after the sinking of the armada. Talk about revisionist history.

[cupidsbow.livejournal.com]

To give another perspective... I use them as avatars in my writing. I know very little about the celebrities beyond their names, what they look like, what films they've been in and country of origin. I don't even watch or read interviews unless I come across them randomly while in a waiting room or whatnot. But everyone else knows those basic things too (it really is a bit like the pantheon of our times), which means that in terms of story you can skip a whole heap of description and setup and letting the reader know who the characters are friends with and get stright to the plot. Basically, I "cast" the celebrity personas in my stories, and they have no relationship to the real lives of the actors at all. They are as fictional as any roles the actors might play in the movies.

[cupidsbow.livejournal.com]

Yes, these are the issues I've long pondered too. I really don't think there is a clear line of "okay" and "not-okay", and I think part of the reason the line has become so blurred is because of the way the ideology of capitalism seems to encourage people and institutions to sell everything damn thing to us, including history and current events. It's all entertainment now.

I remember as a young adult, thinking the "dead=okay, not dead=not okay" line worked, but since then, there's been this huge explosion of "tell all" style history and celebrity reporting that just makes a nonsense of lines. I actually engage with rpf, in part, as a form of rebellion about being told what I can and can't own, and how much I'm allowed to buy of these things that should never have been made commodities.

The one thing that does make me uncomfortable is the idea that the private people behind the celebrity construct might not understand that rpf isn't about them. But within a generation, I suspect that too will change. It will become just another accepted part of culture, I'm pretty sure. Subcultures tend to get absorbed into the mainstream if they're big enough, and the fanfiction community seems to be right on the brink of that. Ironically, given how so many people think fanfic unoriginal dross, it's actually one of the few grassroots re-invigorations of literature happening in our culture at the moment. The capitalist imperative will kick in at some point (which kind of scares me), although who knows what form it will take.

Thanks for an interesting essay.

from *metafandom*

[my_daroga]

Lawrence is my favorite film, and it has caused me to read a lot and collect a lot of info about the man himself. And I struggle with the "fictionalization" of the film--except my struggle is that I don't see anything wrong with it. I don't see the film as telling use "who" Lawrence was, because he doesn't even know. There is some truth in the film, even if it is not entirely factual. It's a response to the legend of Lawrence, which is as much a part of history as the man.

So why do I feel differently when it's something like Walk the Line, which I'm just not interested in seeing because I doubt I'll learn anything about the real people involved? Why do I adore Good Night and Good Luck and yet am immediately suspicious whenever I see "based on a true story" on a trailer?

[my_daroga]

I want to point out that while "S.A." does invite slashy speculation (and rightly so), I've read much to suggest that this does not refer to our dear Ali, who was a composite character devised for the movie (sure there were plenty of Sherif Ali's out there, but this one shares a lot of Feisal's role, later given back to Feisel in A Dangerous Man: Lawrence After Arabia). The most convincing argument I've heard is for a friend (named Salim Ahmed) from an archeological dig TEL was on before the war.

Just wanted to provide that tidbit--hope it doesn't spoil anything for you! Doesn't stop me from my wild speculations about the characters played to such perfect tension in the film!

[elspethdixon.livejournal.com]

I actually know that Ali was a character created for the movie rather than a real historical figure (I went and looked everybody up after I saw the movie for the first time), but the fact that they assigned him a name with those particular initials struck me as either significant, or a pretty big coincidence, so my pet interpretation is that the writers intended there to be some level of subtext there.

If all of that romantic subtext in the film is unintentional, then I'd really start to wonder about the writers and actors ^_^.

[my_daroga]

Forgive me, you're aboslutely right; the authors were aware of what they were doing in that instance. Lawrence gets difficult to talk about because of all the layers--I'm afraid I took you to mean "real life" as opposed to "filmic reality." Sorry!

It's just another curious layer to this discussion, though: that there can exist for us a separate world of Lawrence that isn't strictly "real" but that does not offend us in its fictionalization of real people.

[elspethdixon.livejournal.com]

Basically, I "cast" the celebrity personas in my stories, and they have no relationship to the real lives of the actors at all.

So, it would be similar to an original fic author saying "if my novel were a movie, this character would be played by actor X?" I've seen people do this occasionally with original characters in fanfiction (particularly in virtual season episodes). They never use the actor's name or real life persona, though, just create a character and stick something like "and Bob the OMC is played by George Clooney," in their author's notes.

[elspethdixon.livejournal.com]

The one thing that does make me uncomfortable is the idea that the private people behind the celebrity construct might not understand that rpf isn't about them.

I think that right there might be the source of some of my uneasiness with actorfic and/or popslash. I'd be flattered and thrilled to find that someone had written fanfiction for some of my original fic , but finding a story about me would probably creep me out, especially if it had sex in it, and I'm already familiar with the concept of RPF. Of course, I'm also not a celebrity, don't have a publicity agent or anything else, and would probably be far more disturbed to find myself on the cover of the National Enquirer than in the bowls of adultfanfiction.net.

The probability of the actor in question ever finding my particular (hypothetical) story about him would be slim-to-none, but if s/he has been dead since before I was born, it's altogether impossible, and there's far less guilt involved.

Re: from *metafandom*

[elspethdixon.livejournal.com]

I don't see the film as telling use "who" Lawrence was, because he doesn't even know. There is some truth in the film, even if it is not entirely factual. It's a response to the legend of Lawrence, which is as much a part of history as the man.

I think I see what you mean. Tombstone fandom (such as it is, consiting mostly of me and about five other people), has a similar situation regarding historical "canon." So many movies, dime novels, etc. have been made about Doc Holliday and Wyatt Earp that they've become as much mythology as history (much like the American West itself, actually). There's the real historical men, but there's also Stuart Lake's version of Wyatt (Frontier Marshal), John Ford's version of them (My Darling Clementine), John Sturges's versions of them (Gunfight at the OK Corral and Hour of the Gun), George P. Cosmatos's version (Tombstone), Robert B. Parker's version (Gunman's Rhapsody), Randy Lee Eickhoff's version (<>The Fourth Horseman), and a good dozen more, and most of them are as "real" in people's minds as the historical truth.

It gives you a fair amount of leeway as regards strict historical accuracy--no matter how much you fudge details and alter things for dramatic effect or plot convenience, thee's the comforting knowledge that it's damn near impossible to be less accurate than My Darling Clementine.