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tsukinofaeriiWarning: 2000 words of tl;dr ahead.
It may shock many who don't share the interest, but I spent a number of happy hours today surfing through the academic and journalist sections of the web. Part of the reason why isn't very admirable. There's a sick, subversive joy in reading about an outsider's view of my "inside group", and then writing a post about how they're doing it wrong. I also find it extremely interesting to read the rare article that has its hamsters in a row. They have a way of making me think about myself in relation to what I do, as well as in relation to what I don't do, and who I don't do it with. Say what you like, but as long as I'm being accused of over-thinking, I'm not being accused of failing to think at all.
Today, my journey started with an article on copyright as it applies to fanfiction. Unfortunately, that began a quiet inner commentary on copyright as it doesn't apply to fanfiction. The article was very good, supporting such points at the way fanfiction is non-profit in the most extreme of senses, does not replace the available market and also is transformative and should be protected under fair use policy. "Should be" is the identifying phrase there, as it's all too often not protected. As idealistic as many people seem to be (perhaps naïve would be a better word), no one argues that fan writers often lose the legal battle to defend their activities simply because they lack the resources to match Corporation X and their legions of lawyers. It's a sad but accurate portrayal of how the system fails that's made even sadder by the understandable confusion between copyright and trademark law. Trademark must be defended aggressively, or the trademark may be lost. This policy is often mistakenly applied to copyright, which doesn't play by the same rules at all.
Thoroughly depressed, I moved on to Harry Potter porn articles, which served nicely as a pick-me-up. Specifically, the old articles were the best. Watching people vow to remove "such filth" from the internet in an article dated seven years ago tickles me in so many ways. After that, I read up on various academic perceptions of "slash", which are always so very distant from my own experience as a slash writer that they acquire a Twilight Zone sort of novelty. Finally, no journey through fannish academia is complete without a visit to the blog of Henry Jenkins, a man who I no-so-secretly worship. If he appeared at my door and offered to let me get his coffee for a month, I might not even stop to pack. On his blog, I browsed posts on Obama as Spock (a surprisingly workable parallel), Anonymous, and even identity in the X-Men universe. Alas, my time at work was over, and so I packed my geekery and deep thoughts and drove home.
On the way, I listened to music, as I'm wont to do when otherwise occupied while driving. All the while, my mind was aflutter with ideas of fandom as it relates to society, Anonymous and their goals/methods, and the many thought-provoking posts I'd read over the day. And while this was going on, I heard a song I've always identified with, but now I looked at it with a particular perspective. That song was American Idiot, by Green Day. And it got my thought process off the back burner and set it to boil.
I commented to my family (who have grown accustomed to tuning me out) that it's intriguing how at the same time country music began to pump out songs like Courtesy of the Red White and Blue (Toby Keith) in response to September 11, rock music began to pump out songs like Generation (Simple Plan). Or maybe I only started noticing them after that. The ethic difference between country and rock is pretty well defined. Country is very much "old school" in its pro-America/middle class/status quo ethos. Rock is and always has been the music of the rebellious and the outcaste. So I suppose that it makes sense that, at a time when flag waving and pseudo-patriotism became popular quite literally overnight, rock musicians once again began to turn out lyrics protesting the establishment. When this occurred to me again while driving home, what surprised me is that I chose that time to finally start listening.
Those who know me know that I spent 17 years of my life as an avowed fan of country music and classic rock. The new stuff? Trash and noise, about violence, drugs and sex—all of which were light years away from my own life. There were a lot of reasons for that, which would probably take a psychologist to analyze. The major part of it was that my mother is an avowed fan of country, and I clung to her in any way I could after my father (the classic rock fan) started distancing himself emotionally from me. I spent my young life parroting them both, out of a dual fear of punishment and isolation. I love them both, but it's taken three years of almost total separation for me to acknowledge that they screwed me up. A lot.
One of the lessons I had to drag myself away from as a child was the idea that older is inherently smarter. This was my father's favorite argument when I was a child—that I was a child, and would of course understand when I was older. As a third-grader discussing the inherent inequality of the tax code, who was I to call BS? Terry Pratchett in one of his many books had a character consider the truth that age doesn't necessarily mean wisdom; sometimes it only means more practice being stupid. While Terry himself is by no means a spring chicken, this strikes me as something from mouth of someone who was perhaps also told "you'll understand when you're older" one too many times. Is it an inherent dislike of the implication that we're incapable of understanding now that drives this idea? Or is it simply that too many times we've gotten "older", only to be given the same reasoning when we continue to disagree? Of course, now I understand this to be argumentum ad hominem, a logical fallacy of a most pernicious type which is highly favored by the patriarchal society we try to pretend we don't live in, yet it still remains a potent means to close conversations which pose uncomfortable questions.
Something else he instilled was a deep distaste for being talked at, rather than talked to, and with that the understanding that any communications which is less than two way is inherently inferior and dehumanizing. If nothing else, these lessons my father would be horrified to know he taught me are quite possibly the most valuable ones I've ever learned. Any time I'm approached in a manner which first seeks to define my place in the conversation or the world as somehow subordinate, I've found I become very, very aggressive. I will enter as an equal in my own experience and knowledge, or I won't enter at all. This caused me quite the trouble in school, as teachers impart information and often seek to avoid opening a subject for conversation. "Discussion" as defined in a classroom setting is all too often a series of factual questions which are easily answered in a manner which posits the instructor as a source of knowledge and the students as the receptacles, necessarily and automatically inferior to the source. Open-ended questions are not encouraged. Neither are questions which may be uncomfortable or take a stance in favor of something which may be controversial. Under some teachers I thrived, but for most of my academic career I skated through, making certain that my instructor knew of my discontent in any way possible.
None of this happened over night. I didn't wake up one morning and decide to have it out with my father while listening to Linkin Park. I didn't randomly ask my teacher why the Catholic Church got away with what anyone in modern times would consider reprehensible acts, with only the basis that "God says it's okay". I certainly didn't stop discussing topics I argue with my father about overnight—it took me years to finally realize that it's impossible to battle illogic with logic and win, or to pit ethics against morality. I might never have changed music preferences if it weren't for an odd coincidence of factors. At the same time that my prefer music stations were ramping the patriotic fervor to a disgusting pitch, upholding the establishment and everything it stands for, my own establishment had begun to fail me. If you want the whole story, it's probably somewhere in this journal, but it can be summed up as a combination of my family and government both simultaneously falling apart. There was a period when the song Baby Girl (Sugarland) could send me to tears, and a natural defense against despair has always been anger. That was a time when I found Faint (Linkin Park) comforting.
Of course, now I can look at the change and think about it logically. At the time, I had plenty of excuses for my conversion. Friends had been trying to lure me over for ages. All I had to do was give in. Now I have a bit more distance, and I wonder. As is in my nature, I also want to pick it apart. Rock seems to embody quite a bit of what I've always been, and only recently embraced. Now I see it as it reflects society, and specifically my generation. Our attitudes, beliefs and norms are all somewhat inherited. We are the product of every person who has touched our lives. But at the same time, like a good fan writer, we take those contributions and turn them into something new and fresh, recognizable yet distinct. Of course, within certain contexts, we all have similar source material, which means that some things appear more frequently than others. Rock speaks of empowerment, both of the group and of the individual, while at the same time mocking the excesses that power can lead to. Only when I finally realized how powerless I was did I begin to understand it. That was, interestingly, the same time I begin to identify with "fandom" as a group, rather than as a collection of individuals.
This group empowerment is showing up in so many places. There's an unspoken understanding that as individuals within a larger system, we're ultimately equal to each other, but only together are we equal to the system itself. Nothing quite brings this to light as much as a trawl around the internet. Look at anything at all—be it a well-written discourse or a brief conversation between friends. Without some sort of conscious revelation, it's impossible to know age, gender, nationality. All of the details we use within "Real Life" to identify ourselves within the social order are non-existent and meaningless. On the internet, we're all as stupid or as brilliant as each other. And while that may have the effect of creating some truly amazing moments of gross incompetence, it also produces pieces of brilliance which reflects on us all. Anonymous is an example of both; what they're doing against the Church of Scientology is truly inspiring, but frequently they turn around and display their asses for all to see. And this is all part of a vibrant, endless conversation in a medium that allows no dehumanization.
Every generation has its achievement and its tragedy. My grandparents had WWII and the Great Depression. My parents had Free Love and Viet Nam. I think perhaps my generation has the Iraq War, and if so I can only be thankful that we've come so far that the Iraq War is considered a true tragedy. But what is our achievement? I think it will be the empowered discourse created by the internet—a language of "we" rather than of "I". It will be a refusal to accept anything "because it is" and instead investigate it for what it can be. I think that, the greatest achievement of my generation will ultimately be the ability to laugh at itself, to accept mistakes and continue the dialogue into improvement. We're very good at taking ourselves serious, and addressing any criticism as a personal affront rather than an alternate view. That ability, to laugh, accept and adjust, to exist as a group and not as a million individuals, is something I don't think has ever truly been embodied in the American spirit.
Maybe it's time it did.
It may shock many who don't share the interest, but I spent a number of happy hours today surfing through the academic and journalist sections of the web. Part of the reason why isn't very admirable. There's a sick, subversive joy in reading about an outsider's view of my "inside group", and then writing a post about how they're doing it wrong. I also find it extremely interesting to read the rare article that has its hamsters in a row. They have a way of making me think about myself in relation to what I do, as well as in relation to what I don't do, and who I don't do it with. Say what you like, but as long as I'm being accused of over-thinking, I'm not being accused of failing to think at all.
Today, my journey started with an article on copyright as it applies to fanfiction. Unfortunately, that began a quiet inner commentary on copyright as it doesn't apply to fanfiction. The article was very good, supporting such points at the way fanfiction is non-profit in the most extreme of senses, does not replace the available market and also is transformative and should be protected under fair use policy. "Should be" is the identifying phrase there, as it's all too often not protected. As idealistic as many people seem to be (perhaps naïve would be a better word), no one argues that fan writers often lose the legal battle to defend their activities simply because they lack the resources to match Corporation X and their legions of lawyers. It's a sad but accurate portrayal of how the system fails that's made even sadder by the understandable confusion between copyright and trademark law. Trademark must be defended aggressively, or the trademark may be lost. This policy is often mistakenly applied to copyright, which doesn't play by the same rules at all.
Thoroughly depressed, I moved on to Harry Potter porn articles, which served nicely as a pick-me-up. Specifically, the old articles were the best. Watching people vow to remove "such filth" from the internet in an article dated seven years ago tickles me in so many ways. After that, I read up on various academic perceptions of "slash", which are always so very distant from my own experience as a slash writer that they acquire a Twilight Zone sort of novelty. Finally, no journey through fannish academia is complete without a visit to the blog of Henry Jenkins, a man who I no-so-secretly worship. If he appeared at my door and offered to let me get his coffee for a month, I might not even stop to pack. On his blog, I browsed posts on Obama as Spock (a surprisingly workable parallel), Anonymous, and even identity in the X-Men universe. Alas, my time at work was over, and so I packed my geekery and deep thoughts and drove home.
On the way, I listened to music, as I'm wont to do when otherwise occupied while driving. All the while, my mind was aflutter with ideas of fandom as it relates to society, Anonymous and their goals/methods, and the many thought-provoking posts I'd read over the day. And while this was going on, I heard a song I've always identified with, but now I looked at it with a particular perspective. That song was American Idiot, by Green Day. And it got my thought process off the back burner and set it to boil.
I commented to my family (who have grown accustomed to tuning me out) that it's intriguing how at the same time country music began to pump out songs like Courtesy of the Red White and Blue (Toby Keith) in response to September 11, rock music began to pump out songs like Generation (Simple Plan). Or maybe I only started noticing them after that. The ethic difference between country and rock is pretty well defined. Country is very much "old school" in its pro-America/middle class/status quo ethos. Rock is and always has been the music of the rebellious and the outcaste. So I suppose that it makes sense that, at a time when flag waving and pseudo-patriotism became popular quite literally overnight, rock musicians once again began to turn out lyrics protesting the establishment. When this occurred to me again while driving home, what surprised me is that I chose that time to finally start listening.
Those who know me know that I spent 17 years of my life as an avowed fan of country music and classic rock. The new stuff? Trash and noise, about violence, drugs and sex—all of which were light years away from my own life. There were a lot of reasons for that, which would probably take a psychologist to analyze. The major part of it was that my mother is an avowed fan of country, and I clung to her in any way I could after my father (the classic rock fan) started distancing himself emotionally from me. I spent my young life parroting them both, out of a dual fear of punishment and isolation. I love them both, but it's taken three years of almost total separation for me to acknowledge that they screwed me up. A lot.
One of the lessons I had to drag myself away from as a child was the idea that older is inherently smarter. This was my father's favorite argument when I was a child—that I was a child, and would of course understand when I was older. As a third-grader discussing the inherent inequality of the tax code, who was I to call BS? Terry Pratchett in one of his many books had a character consider the truth that age doesn't necessarily mean wisdom; sometimes it only means more practice being stupid. While Terry himself is by no means a spring chicken, this strikes me as something from mouth of someone who was perhaps also told "you'll understand when you're older" one too many times. Is it an inherent dislike of the implication that we're incapable of understanding now that drives this idea? Or is it simply that too many times we've gotten "older", only to be given the same reasoning when we continue to disagree? Of course, now I understand this to be argumentum ad hominem, a logical fallacy of a most pernicious type which is highly favored by the patriarchal society we try to pretend we don't live in, yet it still remains a potent means to close conversations which pose uncomfortable questions.
Something else he instilled was a deep distaste for being talked at, rather than talked to, and with that the understanding that any communications which is less than two way is inherently inferior and dehumanizing. If nothing else, these lessons my father would be horrified to know he taught me are quite possibly the most valuable ones I've ever learned. Any time I'm approached in a manner which first seeks to define my place in the conversation or the world as somehow subordinate, I've found I become very, very aggressive. I will enter as an equal in my own experience and knowledge, or I won't enter at all. This caused me quite the trouble in school, as teachers impart information and often seek to avoid opening a subject for conversation. "Discussion" as defined in a classroom setting is all too often a series of factual questions which are easily answered in a manner which posits the instructor as a source of knowledge and the students as the receptacles, necessarily and automatically inferior to the source. Open-ended questions are not encouraged. Neither are questions which may be uncomfortable or take a stance in favor of something which may be controversial. Under some teachers I thrived, but for most of my academic career I skated through, making certain that my instructor knew of my discontent in any way possible.
None of this happened over night. I didn't wake up one morning and decide to have it out with my father while listening to Linkin Park. I didn't randomly ask my teacher why the Catholic Church got away with what anyone in modern times would consider reprehensible acts, with only the basis that "God says it's okay". I certainly didn't stop discussing topics I argue with my father about overnight—it took me years to finally realize that it's impossible to battle illogic with logic and win, or to pit ethics against morality. I might never have changed music preferences if it weren't for an odd coincidence of factors. At the same time that my prefer music stations were ramping the patriotic fervor to a disgusting pitch, upholding the establishment and everything it stands for, my own establishment had begun to fail me. If you want the whole story, it's probably somewhere in this journal, but it can be summed up as a combination of my family and government both simultaneously falling apart. There was a period when the song Baby Girl (Sugarland) could send me to tears, and a natural defense against despair has always been anger. That was a time when I found Faint (Linkin Park) comforting.
Of course, now I can look at the change and think about it logically. At the time, I had plenty of excuses for my conversion. Friends had been trying to lure me over for ages. All I had to do was give in. Now I have a bit more distance, and I wonder. As is in my nature, I also want to pick it apart. Rock seems to embody quite a bit of what I've always been, and only recently embraced. Now I see it as it reflects society, and specifically my generation. Our attitudes, beliefs and norms are all somewhat inherited. We are the product of every person who has touched our lives. But at the same time, like a good fan writer, we take those contributions and turn them into something new and fresh, recognizable yet distinct. Of course, within certain contexts, we all have similar source material, which means that some things appear more frequently than others. Rock speaks of empowerment, both of the group and of the individual, while at the same time mocking the excesses that power can lead to. Only when I finally realized how powerless I was did I begin to understand it. That was, interestingly, the same time I begin to identify with "fandom" as a group, rather than as a collection of individuals.
This group empowerment is showing up in so many places. There's an unspoken understanding that as individuals within a larger system, we're ultimately equal to each other, but only together are we equal to the system itself. Nothing quite brings this to light as much as a trawl around the internet. Look at anything at all—be it a well-written discourse or a brief conversation between friends. Without some sort of conscious revelation, it's impossible to know age, gender, nationality. All of the details we use within "Real Life" to identify ourselves within the social order are non-existent and meaningless. On the internet, we're all as stupid or as brilliant as each other. And while that may have the effect of creating some truly amazing moments of gross incompetence, it also produces pieces of brilliance which reflects on us all. Anonymous is an example of both; what they're doing against the Church of Scientology is truly inspiring, but frequently they turn around and display their asses for all to see. And this is all part of a vibrant, endless conversation in a medium that allows no dehumanization.
Every generation has its achievement and its tragedy. My grandparents had WWII and the Great Depression. My parents had Free Love and Viet Nam. I think perhaps my generation has the Iraq War, and if so I can only be thankful that we've come so far that the Iraq War is considered a true tragedy. But what is our achievement? I think it will be the empowered discourse created by the internet—a language of "we" rather than of "I". It will be a refusal to accept anything "because it is" and instead investigate it for what it can be. I think that, the greatest achievement of my generation will ultimately be the ability to laugh at itself, to accept mistakes and continue the dialogue into improvement. We're very good at taking ourselves serious, and addressing any criticism as a personal affront rather than an alternate view. That ability, to laugh, accept and adjust, to exist as a group and not as a million individuals, is something I don't think has ever truly been embodied in the American spirit.
Maybe it's time it did.
no subject
Date: 2008-07-08 03:44 am (UTC)As a counterargument, I will just say that as Americans, and as our generation -- and more, importantly, younger generations -- continue on, we are sure as hell fucking lazy. And if America goes to the shits, it's going to be because of that.
I mean, look at kids these days. I could really write an essay about it. Truly. e_e;; I'll spare you the read, lol.
Anyway. This was an interesting read. :0 I always like how neatly you organize your thoughts. T~T Mine are never that organized. Although, like you, I like to pick apart and analyze everything -- especially when it comes to myself. Holy Jesus, when it comes to an argument and I'm on the apologizing end, I could go on for hours about why I did what I did, and as I'm going on about it, I'm still discovering things myself. 8D It's quite the journey, hurr hurr.
I don't know where I'm going with this. I do know I'm sleepy.
no subject
Date: 2008-07-08 12:37 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-07-08 01:04 pm (UTC)I had to wait until I was eighteen to get a cell phone. Now ten year olds have them. How crazy is that? It teaches them absolutely nothing about responsibility. And I'm not talking about the phones that are to where they really have nothing on them except the bits where your parents can find you/you can get in touch with them. I'm talking about full out cell phones. With minutes they can eat up, etc.
It just eats at me. That teaches them nothing. Especially if they get what, anywhere between five to ten bucks for an allowance a week? Come on. That's hardly enough to pay a cell phone bill, so it's a freebie. And that's just the frosting on the cake.
People have gotten mean, too, mean and angry. Some people probably wouldn't find any problem at all with running someone over, and then they'd keep going. And the sad part is that that's not even really an exaggeration. No one really cares about anyone anymore except themselves.
Sure, there's activists, and sure there's this and this person that does stuff. But most of it is caused by a selfish motivation.
That, and greed. Whoa at the greed, just for money and power, and it's gotten worse in recent years. It's always been a problem, but with the way people's attitudes have been running lately, it's just gone up on the ante.
And people just hate. They hate left and right.
So you're right, maybe lazy isn't really a good term to encompass everything.
But are these the kind of people you want running your country when they finally hit their thirties?
Look at me, I sound like a republican, and I'm not.
The point is, the higher generations are getting more and more uncaring. It's passing onto the younger kids. The younger kids aren't learning responsibility for shit because everything gets handed to them on a silver platter. All the books on, "Don't spank your child, it's abuse," and shit...
This is slightly off tangent here, but my step mother, when I lived in PA, refused, refused to punish her child in any way outside of a really rare grounding, because she said that when you grow up, if you yell at your kid or spank them or any of that, that's all they're going to remember.
I can find so many arguments right there in that paragraph. I was spanked, and punished, and yelled at when I deserved it, and I grew up just fine.
These kids? You'd be amazed at how spoiled they were. And now, when I went up to visit, they've got, like, everything they ever wanted. When I was little, we were poor. What we got, we had to work really hard for. My mom was a single mom and raised all of us on her own. My dad bitched constantly about child support, and often lied about how much he was really making.
I just really hate this world we live in sometimes, that's all.
no subject
Date: 2008-07-08 01:34 pm (UTC)In this case, I'll drag out a cliché. One bad apple ruins the barrel. It's depressingly simple to look at the kids in high school and see that one smoking pot (which I actually have no objection against, except that it can get you in trouble and most kids don't have the braincells to spare to it), that one with a kid, and the other with way more expensive technology than they need. But right now we have a society where it takes two or more paychecks just to make ends meet--quality time is a thing of the past. Gifts and gadgets substitute for affection. Even the government's in on the act; tax cuts rather than spending cuts. Giving us rebates rather than fixing Social Security. America has an incredibly high percentage of people who don't take part in the democratic process (70% last I looked). How is that democracy? And that is purely the older generations. With that kind of example, we can't possibly expect the younger generation to vote, or even know what issues they're not voting on. Our government doesn't reflect us and hasn't for years--so why should we care?
What we're looking at is a wide-spread value shift from people to things, which isn't conducive to a healthy society at all. But this shift can't be laid at the doorstep of any single cause. It belongs to the economy, education, our parents, a political system that's failing more and more every election. It belongs to religions that are more and more out of alignment with the reality of modern life, and to our ever-growing methods of distracting ourselves from the world outside our door. Until we fix those causes, we're never going to be able to fix the effect. And with trouble like that, it's easy to miss how things might be going right.
No one ever remembers the kids doing volunteer work. We just don't see that little boy dropping his allowance into the Salvation Army donation box, or the girl who makes her parents switch products because it's better for the environment. In schools that are cutting back on arts and music, no one notices the kids who get together over lunch and talk about the election. We get so wrapped up in throwing everyone all into one big pile that we miss the important details. Yeah, they're little things, but those are the kids who are going to be voting in 30 years--evidence shows that the rest won't. I don't think I mind that at all. I wish I had the power to get more people of any generation to be more responsible, more caring, more globalized as opposed to individualized. But I don't. I can only do what's in my power, which is to donate, volunteer, vote and preach to those that hopefully aren't the choir.
no subject
Date: 2008-07-08 01:44 pm (UTC)I guess I'm just going based off my own experience, because to be honest, I don't remember any good encounters with kids lately. Then again, we usually see the bad instead of the good. *shrugs*
I don't know. XD I want to continue with a long comment system, but I can't, because now I've gotten into a state where I just want to ponder on things instead of talk about them.
no subject
Date: 2008-07-08 02:51 pm (UTC)Just wanted to say
Date: 2008-08-03 04:07 am (UTC)Brilliant page!
Date: 2008-09-23 02:02 pm (UTC)well done
Date: 2008-09-28 04:37 pm (UTC)well done
Date: 2008-10-06 07:26 pm (UTC)