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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?
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(no subject)
Date: 2010-06-18 06:34 am (UTC)However, like you, I suffer genuine voyeurism and invasion-of-privacy squick when extrapolating such things about *real people*. This is why I run screaming from RPF and even, I think, why I don't care much for historical fiction about actual historical figures. I feel free to write any damn thing I like about fictional characters (like the ever-infamous alien/human-worm!porn-slash), and even to make free with descriptions of them based on the physical features of actors who portray them . . . but I would die of embarrassment before writing anything fictional about the actors themselves, even something quite innocuous in nature.
Hm. Would be interesting to do some sort of poll and see what % of the population views fictional stories as "open" vs. "closed" . . . and what their relative views on, say, fanfic are. ;)
(no subject)
Date: 2010-06-19 12:49 am (UTC)I do sometimes read RPF written by authors I like for their other work, but always with a kind of squiggling feeling in my gut. It fascinates and discomforts me in the same way as watching a car crash or a house fire. I really have no idea how people perform the mental trick of seeing real people as characters while also paying enough attention to their real lives to build the equivalent of an agreed-upon canon knowledge base.
I would do a survey, but obviously any response based on my f-list would be massively fandom-biased. *wry*