Fifty Shades Of Remix: The Intersecting Pleasures Of .
Fifty Shades of Remix: The Intersecting Pleasures of Commercial andFan RomancesKatherine MorrisseyPublished online: February 2014http://www.jprstudies.orgAbstract: Fifty Shades of Grey's past as a work of Twilight fan fiction has turned a spotlightonto the conversion of fan works for the commercial romance market. Fifty Shades remindsus of the increasing flow of texts, readers, and writers across these two categories ofstorytelling. Blurring traditional genre categories, stories like Fifty Shades represent achallenge for fan and popular romance studies. While scholars need to be attentive tomedium specific contexts, the impulse to deny intersection may signal problematicassumptions and artificially segregate these storytelling forms. This paper reexamines pastwork on the differences between fan fiction and romance, arguing for greater attentivenessto the ways these two modes of storytelling intersect. Focusing on the importance ofintertextuality and play with form in romantic storytelling, the paper argues that greaterattention to these qualities offers new ways for us to study texts like Fifty Shades of Greyand may help scholars reconceptualize the relationship between fan and commercial work.About the Author: Katherine Morrissey is a PhD Candidate in Media, Cinema and DigitalStudies at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and has a Master's in Communication,Culture and Technology from Georgetown University. Her research interests include digitaland participatory culture, genre, and depictions of gender and sexuality within popularmedia. Katie also has professional experience in communications and marketing, as well asweb and graphic design.Keywords: digital culture, digital writing, erotic romance, fan fiction, fan studies, fiftyshades of grey, intertextuality, media studies, popular romance studies, SlashThe commercial success of the Fifty Shades of Grey books has prompted anoutpouring of media coverage on the trilogy and its rapid success. Much of this coveragehas focused on the idea of “mommy porn” and the notion that not only do female readersseem to enjoy erotic literature, but there is also potential for making money off this trend.For readers of all kinds of romantic fiction, however, this news is neither particularly1
Journal of Popular Romance Studies (2014) 4.1shocking, nor, in any way, news. What may be of more interest to many romance readersand scholars are, instead, the origins of Fifty Shades, and the fact that the series has madethe move from a not-for-profit piece of Twilight fan fiction to a set of commercial books.Fifty Shades’ history and success marks an opportunity for fan studies and popularromance scholars. This is an occasion to revisit past conversations regarding theconnections and disconnections between romantic fan fiction and commercial romances.Past explorations of fan fiction as romance have often focused on the categories ofhet (male/female relationships) and slash (male/male) fan fiction. This work often eithercategorizes fan fiction as a type of romance writing, or works to mark out boundaries,separating fan fiction and romance into two different storytelling types.[1] Fifty Shadesrefuses such clear categorizing. In its transition from a lengthy work of fan fiction titledMaster of the Universe by fan writer Snowqueens Icedragon to the Fifty Shades of Greytrilogy authored by E.L. James, Fifty Shades blurs the lines between fan work andcommercial fiction, amateur and professional, as well as the romantic and the erotic.[2]Fifty Shades compels us to look beyond taxonomic mappings of what does or does notconstitute romance. The series reminds us that the differences perceived betweencategories can be shaped as much by networks of production and distribution as they areby story content.With these themes of intersection and blurred boundaries in mind, I want to use thegrey-ness of Fifty Shades as an opportunity to explore the connected pleasures that fan andcommercial romances bring to their readers. First, I will review some of the concernsraised regarding the reconfiguration of fan work for the commercial market. Next, I willturn to past scholarship on the similarities and differences between fan fiction andcommercial romances, discussing the challenges faced by scholars exploring these differentmodes of production. Finally, I will outline the importance of play with form andintertextuality across fan and commercial romances, emphasizing the significance of theseelements to readers’ pleasure. While scholars need to be attentive to disciplinary concernsand medium specific contexts, the impulse to deny intersection and to quickly apply labelslike “original,” “derivative,” and “formulaic” can signal problematic assumptions andartificially segregate certain storytelling forms. As Abigail Derecho argues, “[t]o label [a]genre of fiction based on antecedent texts ‘derivative’ or ‘appropriative’ then, throws intoquestion the originality, creativity, and legality of that genre” (64). These terms reinforcestigmas long connected to women’s authorship and reading. In exploring intersectionsbetween fan fiction and commercial romances, new opportunities emerge to explore theways that romantic storytelling is working within and against social norms and testing newpossibilities for the representation of relationships and desire.Reacting to Fifty ShadesFor many readers and writers of fan and commercial romances, the repackaging ofworks of fan fiction as commercially sold texts is seen as a growing problem or threat totheir reading experiences. While Fifty Shades has gained notoriety as a media event, itrepresents neither a first incident nor an isolated one. As digital publishing opportunitiesexpand, a growing amount of stories and authors are moving from non-commercial fan2
Journal of Popular Romance Studies (2014) 4.1spaces into digital-lit markets. This movement is facilitated by increased opportunities forself-publishing as well as a growing digital publishing industry. Recently, Amazon.com haseven taken steps to get involved in this trend, marketing their new Kindle Worlds serviceas a self-publishing platform for authorized works of fan fiction.[3] Readers and writers ofcommercial romances and fan works are observing these trends and wondering what FiftyShades’ success may signal. Fifty Shades has offered these two communities an opportunityto discuss this type of crossover literature. In spaces like Dreamwidth, LiveJournal, andTumblr, many fans have posted their reactions to the Fifty Shades series and its success.There have also been lengthy discussions on popular romance blogs like Smart Bitches SexyBooks and Dear Author. These discussions have raised questions regarding the ethics ofconverting fan fiction into a commercial product and the impact this may have on fancommunities. Discussion has also focused on aesthetics and the perceived quality of fanwork, fan fiction’s legal status, and whether something like Fifty Shades, a story that beganas fan fiction and has been converted, qualifies as “original” work.For many fans, the monetization of fan work has often meant a fan author “pulling topublish”: removing their writing from the community, deleting files on fan archives, anderasing as much of the work’s history as possible on fan websites and archives. Since fanfiction is generally produced within a community setting, pulling creative work from thissetting is viewed negatively by many fans. The processes of both production and receptionfor fan works are highly social and the stories are often perceived as part of this largercommunity network, a network of exchange built around themes of sharing and giving,rather than profit and commerce (De Kosnik; Hellekson). Fan work is also particularlyintertextual. Fan fiction writers use their fandoms as common frames of reference andextrapolate on these frames as they develop their own interpretations of settings andcharacters. This intertextuality goes beyond the relationship between the fan work and thesource text it responds to and encompasses social relations between fans. As Louisa Steinand Kristina Busse explain:[b]y definition, fan fiction is in intertextual communication with the sourcetext; however, in practice, it also engages with a host of other texts, be theyclearly stated requests [from other fans], shared interpretivecharacterizations, or even particular instantiations of the universes that thefan writer chooses to expand upon. (199–200)Fan writers utilize and comment on these broader community ideas, critiques, andinterpretations, adding to them with their own writing. Stories in this network influenceand rub up against each other, feeding into a broader community dialogue aroundcharacters, narrative choices, and various potentials within different story worlds.Removing a particular story from this network threatens the gift economy through whichfan networks often operate.[4] It erases a social history, moments of conversation, andmoments of pleasure from a particular network of fans.For readers of commercial romances, the repurposing of fan fiction stories intocommercial ones is becoming increasingly visible with the growth of digital publishing,particularly within the category of m/m romance. The reworking of stories withoutdisclosing their origins is sometimes framed by romance readers as a form of deception ora kind of cheating. (An allegation that implies fan authors are simply repurposing other3
Journal of Popular Romance Studies (2014) 4.1people’s ideas and labor without putting in much work of their own.)[5] This sense ofdeception may arise simply from a reader’s desire to know the history of the manuscript.However, a sense that the author is cheating can also reflect a deeper ambivalenceregarding the very process of fan production itself and whether that process constitutesoriginal work or, indeed, any work at all. While fan work has become more visible as asocial practice in recent years, fans’ creative practices remain contested and debated. Fanwork challenges traditional notions of authorship, ownership, and labor practices aroundcreative production. In this way, fan work and the blurring of romance and fan fiction aswriting categories may also serve as a threat to readers and writers of commercialromances. In a community that is so often told by society that romance is not real literatureand where romance authors are often perceived more as hobbyists than authors, theprospect of being connected with the proudly unprofessional world of fan fiction may sparkunderstandable concern.Just as commercial romance readers and writers are concerned about larger publicperceptions of romantic literature, fans may also be uncomfortable with their work beingassociated with romance. (The history of this in fan scholarship will be discussed further inthe next section of the paper.) It is important to remember that here too, there is acommunity reacting protectively against larger public perceptions. Fan practices are oftencharacterized as obsessive, frivolous, and aberrant in ways strikingly similar to the waysthat commercial romance reading practices have been positioned.Stigma around romance and fan writing is part of a long legacy of public concernaround women’s writing and reading practices. Concerns about women’s reading andwriting have come from many different directions, conservative and liberal, academic andcultural. As Joan Hollows explains, due to the genre’s association with women, “[m]anyliterary critics [have] regarded romantic fiction as the ultimate example of the trivial” (68).Romance has also been positioned as work “produced for mindless, passive consumers”(Hollows 68). Similar concerns have been raised regarding fan fiction. Discussing the waysshame operates in many predominantly female fan communities, Lynn Zubernis andKatherine Larsen note that there is a “cultural fear of female sexuality which sometimes liesbeneath criticism of female fan behavior” (60). In particular, Zubernis and Larsen observethat cultural discourse around “the ‘wrong’ kind of desire is powerful and is an integralpart of the cultural containment of female desire in general” (60).The public nature of Fifty Shades’ success and the equally public media debate overthe “threat” BDSM content might represent to susceptible (i.e., female) readers has broughtboth fan fiction and romance into the spotlight again, reactivating many conversationsabout the relationship between these two modes of writing. Of course, the reactions andconcerns described here do not reflect the views of all fan or commercial romance readers.More importantly, while here these reactions have been organized as emerging from twodifferent writing and reading communities, the reality is that there is also a great deal ofcrossover between these spaces. Many fans of romantic stories read both fan fiction andcommercial romances. Although there are differences between fan fiction stories andcommercial romances, the success of Fifty Shades reminds us that stories, readers, andwriters are flowing across these community boundaries.4
Journal of Popular Romance Studies (2014) 4.1Romance(s): Problematizing the Slash/Romance BinaryScholarship examining the relationship between fan fiction and commercialromance has a tendency to either rapidly align the two modes of writing and move on orposition them in opposition to each other. More often, the tendency has been to focusspecifically on one category of fan fiction, slash, contrasting the m/m relationships found inslash with the traditionally m/f world of commercial romances. This approach excludes hetfan fiction and tends to footnote femslash (f/f relationships) entirely, dismissing it as asmaller and less relevant fan fiction category. As Laura Kaplan describes it, “[t]hecomparison usually carries with it a whiff of scorn for romance, if not for slash. Romance, itis to be understood, is a simplistic and static genre slash fiction is either more of the sameor is essentially the same but somehow improved” (121). This history sets up problems forscholars interested in exploring Fifty Shades and its position within both fan andcommercial spaces. Fifty Shades began as Masters of the Universe, a lengthy piece of fanfiction connected to Twilight, a young adult paranormal romance series. As Masters of theUniverse, it explored and reworked Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight series, adding more sexuallyexplicit content and investigating the power dynamics of Bella and Edward’s relationship inTwilight through the context of a fictional BDSM relationship. Later, as the commerciallysold Fifty Shades series, the same content was repackaged with new character names andsold as a boundary pushing erotic romance. Where do we place such a story? Do we analyzeit only as fan fiction? Do we ignore the text’s ties to Twilight and focus more on the waysthat Fifty Shades pushes at the boundaries of erotic romance? In order to better understanda text like this and the intertextual moves it makes, we need to revisit past scholarship andinvestigate some of the assumptions made regarding the relationship between romanceand fan fiction.Many early pieces of scholarship on fan fiction and romance seem overly focused onanswering the question: Why would women want to read that? Often making problematicassumptions about what “that” is. Working in a variety of disciplinary fields, scholars oftenuse terms like romance, pornography, and genre in ways that do not cleanly intersect,frequently causing communication errors. More recently, however, there has been a greatdeal of popular romance scholarship calling attention to the problems inherent in defininga single universal type of romance. Similarly, in fan scholarship, others are calling for areconsideration of the slash/romance binary. As popular romance studies emerges as aninterdisciplinary field looking at various modes of romantic storytelling, it is important thatwe treat this history with care and be mindful of the different ways our disciplinary fieldsmay position us and the terms we use.In scholarship on fan fiction, slash has often been framed as a kind of feministand/or grassroots counter to a predominantly heterosexual mass-market romance (Lamband Veith; Penley; Kustritz). Slash is also sometimes aligned with the pornographic or seenas utilizing and renovating pornographic elements into a new and distinct mode ofromance writing (Penley; Woledge). In this configuration, the pornographic is oftenproblematically positioned as active and romance assumed to be passive (Driscoll). Theproblem with positioning slash in opposition with commercial romance is that it overlooksthe many shared interests and themes between these two modes of writing. It also ignoresthe diversity of commercial romances and the various ways that romance sub-genres5
Journal of Popular Romance Studies (2014) 4.1approach sexual content. Furthermore, the heavy focus on slash artificially isolates it fromthe larger field of fan fiction, which includes a variety of romantic stories, as well as storieswith no romance plot at all. The relationship between slash specifically and fan fictiongenerally is far more intertextual than confrontational. Similarly, the heavy focus on“pairings” and “ships” across fan fiction, and a focus in these stories on overcomingobstacles to place two characters in relationship with one another, suggests that fan fictionand commercial romances are not oppositional modes of writing, but instead are modes ofwriting with linked interests.[6]In much past analysis of slash, romance has been positioned as a problematicstarting point which slash renovates and improves on. Penley, Lamb and Veith, Kustritz,and others contrast romance with slash, positioning slash as a “redoing,” a “radicaldeparture,” or a “tear[ing] down” (Penley 318; Lamb and Veith 238; Kustritz 377). Forexample, Patricia Frazer Lamb and Diana L. Veith find consistent themes of “psychological,emotional, and physical intimacy” in slash when they look at Star Trek fan zines from the1980s (238). The difference between slash and romance, they argue, is that slash zinesinsist “that true love and authentic intimacy can exist only between equals”—theimplication being that this equality is not possible in a relationship between a man and awomen (244). To find this equality, Lamb and Veith argue that Star Trek slash writers andreaders move beyond their day to day realities, and look instead to m/m romances andfantastic futures as a way of transcending the complicated realities women negotiate intheir own relationships.If slash renovates romance, this still implies that it is heavily dependent on andexists in conversation with romantic conventions. Furthermore, this notion of slash as akind of romance improvement model can overlook ways that themes of intimacy andequality are also popular in commercial romances. As Pamela Regis observes, a commonelement in much commercial romance literature is a flawed society which “may beincomplete, superannuated, or corrupt” and “always oppresses the heroine and the hero”(33). According to Regis, this setting often becomes a major part of the external andinternal barriers that the protagonists struggle to overcome. In negotiating with theseobstacles, romance is often working to bring its characters from a place of inequality andmisunderstanding into greater intimacy and connection. Commercial romances also takeflawed relationships and remodel them for their protagonists. Indeed, it might be said thata key element across romantic storytelling is the constant return to and reworking ofrelationship dynamics.While much scholarship on the relationship between fan work and romance hasfocused exclusively on slash, it is also important to remember that slash is not the entiretyof fan writing. Slash is one piece of a larger network of fans’ creative work. While there aremany fans who prefer one particular variety of fan fiction over a
Fifty Shades refuses such clear categorizing. In its transition from a lengthy work of fan fiction titled Master of the Universe by fan writer Snowqueens Icedragon to the Fifty Shades of Grey trilogy authored by E.L. James, F
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