Gan Xingba ([info]ganxingba) wrote,
@ 2008-01-24 00:00:00
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The "Organization for Transformative Works" is Silly
So, there's this thing called the Organization for Transformative Works. They want to apparently archive and legitimize fan works. All right, fine. People have tried before, but that doesn't bug me. They also want to create a history of fandom. Again, no problem. However, from there, it gets odd. This is the second thing on their list of values (on their "About" page here):

2. We value our identity as a predominantly female community with a rich history of creativity and commentary.

Come again?

The OTW represents a practice of transformative fanwork historically rooted in a primarily female culture.

That so? Rooted in female culture? I find that odd, considering they view fan fiction, fan art and fan videos as "transformative works," which sounds pretty pretentious by the way. Like, Edith Wharton came up with that title pretentious. At any rate, I happen to have taken part in two of those aspects of fandom. I know a bit about it, particularly the fanvid part, and I can say with absolute confidence that a statement of it being "predominantly female" is ludicrous. There are as many male FMV makers as female. They've contributed as much to the history of fandom as females. For example, this little AMV, which gained fame before Youtube even existed, or of course the king of fandubs, LittleKuriboh, who blew open a whole new medium for fanworks.

Predominantly female? Rooted in female culture? Yeah, sure, if you exclude all parts of fandom outside of romantic fan fiction. Otherwise, the claim is ridiculous.

There, rant over. Continue with your regularly scheduled internets.

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[info]franzeska
2008-01-24 08:40 pm UTC (link)
Hey, I remember that AMV! Genius! (Yes, I'm another OTW member nosing around on google blogsearch for mentions of the OTW. Hi.)

As you've probably noticed, there are all sorts of discussions, flamewars, and wanks going on over that stuff about female culture/history. I personally think it's blown a little out of proportion, but hey... Basically, the OTW is all centered around the idea of a fic archive, and I think the statement is pretty accurate for big chunks of fanfic writing communities, even those that aren't all about the romance. I don't know that much about vids/AMVs/other video stuff, but I do know that pre-youtube isn't really very old when it comes to that sort of thing. (Blah blah blah 1970's.)

There have been chats and comment threads on the OTW community going into more detail about official OTW policies and the reasoning behind the mission statement, and I'm sure there will be more in the future. I doubt it will stop people from being bothered by the explicit mention of gender, but I do encourage everyone to go read what the OTW has actually said about this stuff.

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[info]ganxingba
2008-01-24 11:23 pm UTC (link)
Oh, I've read the reasoning, but I find to be mostly rationalization. I've also noticed that while their mission statement mentions all levels of fanworks, including videos and fan art, most of their arguments for the history being "predominantly female" revert to fan fiction because, let's face it, that's where their arguments make the most sense.

Fan art, for example, dates back over a thousand years if you count religious works, and for better or worse, the majority of early "fan artists" in ancient times were male. More recently, comic books, a male dominated realm (which is often a bad thing ala Women in Refrigerators) sparked a huge fan art community as everyone tried to make their own super-hero comic, or just draw their own Superman or Batman adventure. If you include fan art, then to say it's "rooted in a primarily female culture" or the like is silly. Granted, it's equally silly to say it's rooted primarily in male culture, as there have and continue to be many, many influential female fan artists.

With fan fiction there is a little more logic to the statement, but while I could debate that too, that's not my main point. The point here is that OTW seems to be ignoring large fan work categories while at the same time claiming that they are representing them. If OTW is truly only talking about fan fiction then it needs to revise its mission statement big time.

That's just the first step, of course, but it needs to be done. OTW needs a firm identity if it wants its claims to be taken seriously.

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[info]ganxingba
2008-01-24 11:25 pm UTC (link)
By the way, I'm not trying to be argumentative or instigate any flames or whatever. I'm sure OTW is made of of nice reasonable people (I mean, you DO like the Hubba Hubba Zoot Zoot vid, so you can't be a bad person :p), I just find their mission statement...disagreeable.

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[info]franzeska
2008-01-26 04:51 am UTC (link)
Heh. No, no, I can tell the difference between disagreement and flamebait. It looks like we should have some Q&A stuff coming out soonish, so maybe some questions will get answered then. Considering all the code will be open source, I figure anyone who has a problem with the eventual TOS, mission statement, etc. can just go make their own archive. (Or, you know, go back to ignoring the OTW and doing whatever fan things they already do now. :-P)

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[info]ganxingba
2008-01-27 09:35 pm UTC (link)
The archive is only one of their listed goals, and indeed if it were their only goal then just ignoring them and making another archive would be fine. In general, though, they seem to want to legitimize fandom and make fanworks more mainstream, which is what makes the group noteworthy. Completion of that goal would make them the face of fandom to a lot of people. That's where all this hubub comes from.

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