Fandom Alert: Fanfic and its Writers as Subjects of Study

[browngirl]

A professor at George Washington University is teaching a course called 'Get a Life!: ‘Shippers, Slashers, and Other Media Fans'. As part of this course, students "will also become a participant-observer of an internet fan fiction community (e.g., Full Metal Alchemist or Lord of the Rings)"

While it sounds as if this course is addressing some issues I personally find fascinating, I don't know if I think this is such a great idea, an influx of people joining fandoms just to study them without having any love for them. Especially because of the attitude reflected in the course description:

"And what about those troublesome fans who use some preexisting story as the springboard for their own stories or art: are they authors in their own right, or thieves, or pathetic parasites? How do we compare a fan novella drawing on characters from the Harry Potter universe to such a work as Jean Rhys's critically-acclaimed Wide Sargasso Sea, which rewords the characters of Jane Eyre? These questions will lead us to larger philosophical mysteries, such as the line between knock-off and clever adaptation, or between copyright violation, plagiarism, and scholarly citation. "

So I find this a little alarming. What do you all think?

Comments

[karadin.livejournal.com]

I am interested in the phraze, stories and art, what is the problem with art, unless you are speaking about manips? I think the only problem is the instructor's bias, which seems to be unfavorable, fic sucks or doesn't suck according to each reader's likes and dislikes, squicks and not-squicks, and everything (even LOTR) could be seen as borrowing from something else, there's nothing wrong with that, as long as you make it interesting.