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]

When writing/reading historical fiction I generally go by how long the participants have been dead. I tend to feel better about it if they and their immediate family are all deceased. Of course, as I've noticed once or twice, there are still people out there capable of taking deep and personal offense at a non-vanilla portrayal of a long-dead historical figure (aka the infamous "Okita wasn't gay, he murdered people!" debacle) but let's face it, those people need lives!

You raise a very interesting point, though, regarding RPF writing about characters who have been more "officially" RPF'd before. Especially when it is, as it were, second-hand. Take the Musketeer fandom, for example - I feel guiltless when writing about d'Artagnan even though he was a historical figure, because the person I'm slashing with Athos ficcing is filtered, in a manner of speaking, through Dumas and Courtilz before him and probably has very little resemblance to the actual Charles Castelmore d'Artagnan.

This argument becomes uncomfortable, though, because it can be argued that the outward persona of an actor doesn't necessarily bear much resemblance to that actor's real self either... which means actor-fic could be justified. And what about, say, those Japanese boy-bands who flirt and carry on with each other on stage as part of their show, more or less?

Which is what bothers me, because in practice I'm uncomfortable with actor-fic to the point where I find it hard to write anything but the blandest sort of genfic for any movie or TV series. Thank god for anime (and text).

[elspethdixon.livejournal.com]

the infamous "Okita wasn't gay, he murdered people!" debacle

Bwuh? What exactly does one half of that statement have to do with the other half?

I'll buy arguments like "X couldn't have been gay; look, he had a wife and kids," but one's level of badass-ness has nothing to do with one's sexuality. Of course, that doesn't mean I haven't seen "Ick. Alexander the Great couldn't have slept with Hephaestion and kissed his slave boy in public; he was a great general! Why do you have to make him gay!" before.

You raise a very interesting point, though, regarding RPF writing about characters who have been more "officially" RPF'd before. Especially when it is, as it were, second-hand. Take the Musketeer fandom, for example - I feel guiltless when writing about d'Artagnan even though he was a historical figure, because the person I'm slashing with Athos ficcing is filtered, in a manner of speaking, through Dumas and Courtilz before him and probably has very little resemblance to the actual Charles Castelmore d'Artagnan.

Just as Dumas' Richelieu is really a "fanon" version of the real Richelieu, and ditto for his Louis XIII, Anne of Austria, and George Villiers. They're as much fictional characters as they are historical figures, and Dumas certainly felt no guilt about attributing to them motives and desires they may not actually have possessed. Hey, he gave Louis XIV an imaginary twin brother!

Historical fiction is a lot like fanfiction, in a way: you have a certain set of facts to work with (canon), a bunch of common assumptions and myths that haven't really been proven (fanon), and then you have your ship wars ("Jefferson slept with Sally Hemmings!" "OMG, no he didn't!" "Yes he did; we can prove it!"). And the farther back you go, the less canon and more fanon there is.

[sodzilla.livejournal.com]

the infamous "Okita wasn't gay, he murdered people!" debacle

Bwuh? What exactly does one half of that statement have to do with the other half?

Apparently a great deal, in the eyes of a certain Shinsengumi fanboy who for reasons of homophobia wanted to insist that a) despite the many texts and poems and so forth from the era which praise "manly love", samurai were actually almost never gay, and when they were they were duly socially censured as gays have ever been and ever must be for the sake of humanity's future... well you get it, and b) men who pursue Very Manly Occupations like killing other people for pay/idealism are for some reason immune from other Very Manly Occupations like gay sex. Something like that.

Historical fiction is a lot like fanfiction, in a way: you have a certain set of facts to work with (canon), a bunch of common assumptions and myths that haven't really been proven (fanon), and then you have your ship wars ("Jefferson slept with Sally Hemmings!" "OMG, no he didn't!" "Yes he did; we can prove it!").

It becomes even hairier when most people's only "historical" exposure to the character is in fact from fanfic! For example, I once met someone who insisted Richard III of England was a much better king (and Henry VII a correspondingly greater bastard) than is popular opinion... but most people haven't studied the era, they just take Will Shakespeare's word for it.

[bladesno1.livejournal.com]

I once met someone who insisted Richard III of England was a much better king (and Henry VII a correspondingly greater bastard) than is popular opinion... but most people haven't studied the era, they just take Will Shakespeare's word for it.
Except there's a fair amount of research that shows that Richard III was pretty much sandbagged historically by the following reign. I have not doubt he was both bad and good. History alone knows how he really was, we'll never really know. And Henry was a Bastard in a lot of ways. Dood killed several of his wives on rumour alone. And other reasons.
But just as medieval and renaissance characters fall into the comfortable zone of 'okay to write cause they are so dead', Vietnam era characters are also okay to write because they are historical as well. Last week is historical. Two sentences ago is historical in the strictest sense. History is not a hard and fast objective genre. It's a manipulation of events through the eyes of the recorders of the history who are biased in their own ways, most of whom are the victors and have an agenda regarding the content of their stories for posterity.
In a sense, a very real sense, historical writing is fanfiction. People writing it are fans of the event and write from that bias. The bible as well as many scriptoral writings also fall into this catagory.
There are many actual canon pieces of information, I'll grant you that. Dates and times and sometimes even amounts of things, like deaths or monies or such. But the why's and wherefores are muddled by time and distance.
Anyhow, this got a lot longer than I anticipated.
I would add that even the telling of a story within a family has it's twists and turns. Ever play telephone as a child? That's how I view history. The idea of absolute truth is, in my mind, reserved for scientific facts and human nature. How we interpret them is what makes the fiction.
I'll shut up now.

[sodzilla.livejournal.com]

Well, yes? I haven't disputed any of this.

[bladesno1.livejournal.com]

True enough. But saying someone just takes Shakespeare's word on it implies that affore mentioned writer didn't know what the fuck he was talking about. That he made everything up. But his stories were all rooted in the facts of the time and he was famous for putting his own cultural references in his writing.

[sodzilla.livejournal.com]

...and if you read the passage of mine that you quoted, you'll notice I wasn't claiming that Shakespeare was talking out of his ass, just mentioning that I'd once met a person who made that claim.

[bladesno1.livejournal.com]

It becomes even hairier when most people's only "historical" exposure to the character is in fact from fanfic! For example, I once met someone who insisted Richard III of England was a much better king (and Henry VII a correspondingly greater bastard) than is popular opinion... but most people haven't studied the era, they just take Will Shakespeare's word for it.

This is the quote you posted. You seem to be saying that this person got his impression from reading shakespeare, and that most people haven't study the era. I'm sorry, but to me it reads as if you're saying that Shakespeare isn't a credible source. That's how it reads to me.

[elspethdixon.livejournal.com]

I don't think she's claiming that Shakespeare isn't a credible source, just that his plays provide only one take on events (also, they punch it up a lot in order to make it play better on stage. I'm sure the real Macbeth didn't run around making deals with witches). If someone based their whole view of 15th century British politics on his work, it would be like making assumtions about the Napoleonic war based solely on Bernard Cornwell's Sharpe series.

As far as Richard III goes, the fact that Elizabeth I, the ruler of England when Shakespeare was writing Richard III, was descended from Henry Tudor, whose claim to the throne was shaky at best and who basically got to be king by having Richard III deposed, probably played a part in Shakespeare's decision to depict Richard III in a negative fashion. If you're writing a play about the guy the current bunch of rulers kicked off the throne, it probably pays to make him look like the bad guy, and show the people currently in power in the best possible light.

[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.

[sodzilla.livejournal.com]

Well, what I actually wrote was about how I'd met someone (not me) who insisted (i.e. stated his opinion) that Shakespeare was not a credible source.

[elspethdixon.livejournal.com]

In a sense, a very real sense, historical writing is fanfiction. People writing it are fans of the event and write from that bias.

Having done an undergraduate history thesis on the Civil War, I can get behind that idea. Every time I found a new primary or secondary source, I had to check when and where it was first published. Sometimes the battles had different names. Sometimes the ships had different names. Underwater mines were either a thing of genius, a bloody nuisance, or an abomination in violation of all laws of war, depending on whether the person writing about them was a Confederate naval officer, a blockade runner trying to sneak into Charleston harbor in the dark, or Union naval officers who were irritated that they hadn't thought of them first.

Even films about history have their own editorial slant: to stay with the Civil War genre, there's Birth of a Nation or Glory, Gone With the Wind, or Cold Mountain.

[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.

[elspethdixon.livejournal.com]

most people haven't studied the era, they just take Will Shakespeare's word for it.

Which would make them something like the fanfic writer who hasn't actually read Les Miserables, and decides to base her Valjean/Javert slash epic solely on the musical. The musical's a very good adaptation of the book, but think of all the details and subplots that get left out! Or like someone who's seen half an episode of SGA, and decided to write a Sheppard/McKay pwp based solely on having read Freedom.

Research is a lovely thing. Why, if I hadn't done some admittedly half-assed research for that Tombstone WIP, I'd never have known that Bat Masterson had a pimp stick, and my world would have been a sadder and far less amusing place.

[seanchai.livejournal.com]

Research is a lovely thing. Why, if I hadn't done some admittedly half-assed research for that Tombstone WIP, I'd never have known that Bat Masterson had a pimp stick, and my world would have been a sadder and far less amusing place.

See, this is why people who don't like doing research baffle me, cause it's half the fun. I mean really, how can people not enjoy finding out that Bat Masterson had a pimp pimp-stick. Or that Virgil used to call Wyatt the 'Earp-ape'. Or that Doc was born with a cleft-palate, and had to be fed out of a shot glass as a baby. Or, well, all of those fun facts that research can turn up, which are at least half the reason that I like writing historical fiction.

[sodzilla.livejournal.com]

Amen! Though there are some things about research that make my teeth hurt. For example, just as Dumas preferred to ignore all the blood-and-gorey aspects of period warfare and focus on the gloriousness of it all! so do I prefer to ignore the fact that most probably, the real people behind the characters all had lice and bad teeth and smelled like week-dead goats. My Musketeers bathe, thank you very much!

[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*

[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.