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edenfallingI think I may have figured out why so many people are boggled by fanfiction. It is because they think like this:
I have argued that our emotions are partially insensitive to the contrast between real versus imaginary, but it is not as if we don't care—real events are typically more moving than their fictional counterparts. This is in part because real events can affect us in the real world, and in part because we tend to ruminate about the implications of real-world acts. When the movie is finished or the show is canceled, the characters are over and done with. It would be odd to worry about how Hamlet's friends are coping with his death because these friends don't exist; to think about them would involve creating a novel fiction. But every real event has a past and a future, and this can move us. It is easy enough to think about the families of those people whom O.J. Simpson was accused of murdering.
That is an excerpt from The Pleasures of Imagination, an article by Paul Bloom. (Emphasis is mine.)
It's a very interesting article, mostly to do with why telling and experiencing fictional stories is such a hugely common human activity, and why 'playing pretend' in all its varied forms is so important to us that even babies have the mental capacity to do so (at least to some degree). I found myself agreeing with most of it, but that paragraph stopped me cold.
Because while I know perfectly well that fictional characters are fictional, I do wonder what happens to them before, during, and after their stories. I do wonder about the implications of their actions. I don't think that is in any way more difficult or unusual than wondering about nonfictional people -- in fact, I think it's easier, partly because we can know fictional people in ways we can never know real people, which means we have a much richer basis for speculation, and partly because, well, they're fictional. Telling myself stories about fictional people lacks a certain sense of voyeurism I feel when reading human interest articles about real people. (Obviously YMMV on that last point, as the popularity of RPF shows!)
Yet apparently this instinct to see stories as 'closed' -- as if they have no continuing existence in readers' minds once we reach the words "The End" -- runs very deep in Paul Bloom's mind, since he cannot conceive of considering fictional people as if they and their worlds continue beyond the boundaries of the particular time-and-place in which he encounters them.
I don't understand that mindset at all.
...
Thoughts, anyone?
I have argued that our emotions are partially insensitive to the contrast between real versus imaginary, but it is not as if we don't care—real events are typically more moving than their fictional counterparts. This is in part because real events can affect us in the real world, and in part because we tend to ruminate about the implications of real-world acts. When the movie is finished or the show is canceled, the characters are over and done with. It would be odd to worry about how Hamlet's friends are coping with his death because these friends don't exist; to think about them would involve creating a novel fiction. But every real event has a past and a future, and this can move us. It is easy enough to think about the families of those people whom O.J. Simpson was accused of murdering.
That is an excerpt from The Pleasures of Imagination, an article by Paul Bloom. (Emphasis is mine.)
It's a very interesting article, mostly to do with why telling and experiencing fictional stories is such a hugely common human activity, and why 'playing pretend' in all its varied forms is so important to us that even babies have the mental capacity to do so (at least to some degree). I found myself agreeing with most of it, but that paragraph stopped me cold.
Because while I know perfectly well that fictional characters are fictional, I do wonder what happens to them before, during, and after their stories. I do wonder about the implications of their actions. I don't think that is in any way more difficult or unusual than wondering about nonfictional people -- in fact, I think it's easier, partly because we can know fictional people in ways we can never know real people, which means we have a much richer basis for speculation, and partly because, well, they're fictional. Telling myself stories about fictional people lacks a certain sense of voyeurism I feel when reading human interest articles about real people. (Obviously YMMV on that last point, as the popularity of RPF shows!)
Yet apparently this instinct to see stories as 'closed' -- as if they have no continuing existence in readers' minds once we reach the words "The End" -- runs very deep in Paul Bloom's mind, since he cannot conceive of considering fictional people as if they and their worlds continue beyond the boundaries of the particular time-and-place in which he encounters them.
I don't understand that mindset at all.
...
Thoughts, anyone?
here via metafandom
Date: 2010-06-19 01:59 pm (UTC)Exactly. I was first going to say that its a question of writers vs not-writers, where writer's imaginations are primed by the text [of whatever kind] and not-writers accept or analyze but don't want to add to the text. But I have lots of conversations with family and friends who aren't writers but do have questions and ideas about the pre-, post- and what-ifs of the text/media artefact we're discussing.
Instead I think it's a question of engagement. I don't get "fannish" about texts that do not engage me. The more engaged I am, for whatever reason, the more I talk about the text, question the text, imagine possibilities for the text, and create fanworks about the text. And when I'm engaged with a text, of whatever sort, I can't imagine *not* wondering, questioning, creating. But then I also can't grasp the idea that other people are not constantly imagining or "writing in their head", or however you want to perceive the notion of creativity.
Thank you for an interesting post.
Re: here via metafandom
Date: 2010-06-20 02:25 am (UTC)Anyway, as I said above to