Having read an excellent article about fan fiction in Time of all places, I've found myself ruminating on the nature of characters. If you write a Harry Potter fanfic, are you "stealing" Harry Potter? J.K. Rowling doesn't think so. She encourages fan fiction in the Potterverse. But if you turn around and write one about Jon Snow from A Game of Thrones, is that then theft because George R.R. Martin doesn't want you to write his characters?
Who owns a character? Shakespeare, for example, made his living re-purposing characters from myth and legend into his plays. Even his best known character, Hamlet, dates as far back as 1170, and probably earlier. Indeed, since the sources Shakespeare probably used were written as histories, it's quite possible that there really was a Hamlet (or Amleth or Ambloth) who did some or all what's credited him in the history.
But the historical Ambloth isn't the character we know as Hamlet. The whole "melancholy Dane" aspect that Hamlet is best known for is purely the creation of Shakespeare. There's nothing in the legend that suggests that Ambloth was anything besides a clever warrior who outmaneuvered his treacherous uncle and eventually died in battle with his cousin Wiglek. Whether or not he ever contemplated suicide or struggled with his desire to avenge his father's death cannot be known, but it seems unlikely. But those very struggles are what change history's Ambloth to Shakespeare's Hamlet.
If we can trace the origin of Hamlet to Ambloth, does that make the character any less Shakespeare's? But then, if you take another existing character and add your own twists to him, does that make the character yours?
Consider the sprawling and as yet unfinished Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality, written by Eliezer Yudkowsky under the pen name "Less Wrong." In his excellent fan fiction, which I highly recommend, Harry Potter is raised by scientists instead of his abusive aunt and uncle. Thus, Yudkowsky's Harry Potter grows up to try and apply rational thinking to a magical world. The results are amusing and occasionally thought provoking, but in doing so Yudkowsky has created a version of the character that differs as widely from what we know of Harry Potter as Hamlet does from Ambloth.
So who owns Harry James Potter-Evans-Verres?
Obviously, Yudkowsky can't publish Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality for sale. Even if his Harry James Potter-Evans-Verres is greatly changed from Rowling's Harry Potter, the rest of magical England is not. Dumbledore still reigns in Hogwarts, and most of the changes to the history and actions of various characters are reactions to the things that Rational Harry does and says. What's more, much of the pleasure to be derived from Methods of Rationality, and indeed any fan fiction at all, is in seeing variations in an established base.
Setting aside the fact that she doesn't mind and in fact encourages fan fiction, does J.K. Rowling have the right to keep Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality from being written or published for free online? Do the writers who do object to fan fiction like Martin, Ursula LeGuin, Orson Scott Card, or Diana Gabaldon have the right to ban people from their personal playgrounds? If he existed and could speak, would the ghost of Ambloth have the right to keep us from watching Hamlet?
I'm not sure they do. It may be an odd to say for someone with aspirations of becoming a professional writer and little to nothing invested in fan fiction rights, but that's the direction I'm leaning. Because it seems to me that all creative work is synthesis. We take bits and pieces of what we learn and experience and re-package it in other ways. Sometimes the elements are so diverse as to be only definable in broad terms, like the idea of a magical school, and sometimes they're more specific like Dumbledore resembling the headmaster of Rowling's primary school with some Gandalf mixed in. But either way, it's still a mix and match of things we know.
The fact that some of those chunks are significantly larger and more recognizable shouldn't invalidate the value of any given work. If Hamlet exists we should allow Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality to exist as well. That isn't to say that the writer of latter should be allowed to profit from its existence, mind you, which is a whole other thing. But I have no problem with people reading and writing it.
That said, while I'm willing to defend fan fiction's right to exist, regardless of the preferences of the original material's creator, that doesn't mean it is always, or even often, very good. Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality wins my support with some moments of truly excellent writing, which is rare enough in any fiction, much less fan fiction. But I am a big believer in Oscar Wilde's epigram: "Good writers borrow, great writers steal." In other words, the greatest form of writing (and by extension, all creative work) is to manage your synthesis so well that your influences are not only hidden, but that the work itself becomes so well known and appreciated that your version becomes the definitive one.
Which is why people the world over know Hamlet, but I had to look up Ambloth.
No comments:
Post a Comment