Case (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
case) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
fandomsecrets2008-12-01 04:56 pm
case) wrote in fandomsecrets2008-12-01 04:56 pm
[ SECRET POST #696 ]
⌈ Secret Post #696 ⌋
Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.
101.
__________________________________________________
102.
__________________________________________________
103.
__________________________________________________
104.
[Stargate Atlantis]
__________________________________________________
105.
[My Chemical Romance]
__________________________________________________
106.
__________________________________________________
107.
[linked wrong before]
__________________________________________________
108.
__________________________________________________
109.
__________________________________________________
110.
__________________________________________________
111.
__________________________________________________
112.
__________________________________________________
113.
__________________________________________________
114.
__________________________________________________
115.
__________________________________________________
116.
__________________________________________________
117.
__________________________________________________
118.
__________________________________________________
119.
__________________________________________________
120.
__________________________________________________
121.
__________________________________________________
122.
__________________________________________________
123.
__________________________________________________
124.
__________________________________________________
125.
![](https://p2.dreamwidth.org/57b78319b2ac/1159626-222047/i38.tinypic.com/547yhj.jpg")
__________________________________________________
126.
__________________________________________________
127. [posted twice]
__________________________________________________
128.
__________________________________________________
129.
__________________________________________________
130.
__________________________________________________
131.
__________________________________________________
132.
__________________________________________________
133.
__________________________________________________
134.
__________________________________________________
135.
__________________________________________________
136.
__________________________________________________
137.
__________________________________________________
138.
__________________________________________________
139.
__________________________________________________
140.
__________________________________________________
141.
__________________________________________________
142.
__________________________________________________
143.
__________________________________________________
144.
__________________________________________________
145.
__________________________________________________
146.
__________________________________________________
147.
__________________________________________________
148.
__________________________________________________
149.
__________________________________________________
150.
__________________________________________________
151.
__________________________________________________
152.
__________________________________________________
153.
__________________________________________________
154.
__________________________________________________
155.
__________________________________________________
156.
__________________________________________________
157.
__________________________________________________
158.
__________________________________________________
159.
__________________________________________________
160.
__________________________________________________
161.
__________________________________________________
162.
__________________________________________________
163.
__________________________________________________
164.
__________________________________________________
165.
__________________________________________________
166.
__________________________________________________
167.
__________________________________________________
168.
__________________________________________________
169.
__________________________________________________
170.
Notes:
CITY STUFF → http://lolbuttsex.myminicity.com/
Secrets Left to Post: 12 pages, 290 secrets from Secret Submission Post #100.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 1 2 3 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 1 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.
Re: 143 148 155
You are right, I have a problem with all RPF. In part because I know people who have been harassed and hurt by it -- but in that case it wasn't celebrities, but rather ordinary people being RPFed by a classmate. Which really drove home to me how incredibly hurtful and violating this kind of thing can be. But even before that my "do unto others" sense has made me feel uncomfortable about the genre.
One critique of celebrity journalism asserts that it allows the celebs to have too much control over how they are depicted. After all, other public figures, like politicians, certainly do not.
This is true, but it doesn't make it right. Journalism definitely puts the right to make a buck over the feelings of celebrities. There is a sense that because they act and are popular, their privacy, emotions, and sensibilities no longer count, and they lose their right to privacy. What purpose is served by showing an actor or an actress in an unflattering light -- beyond shadenfreude? Is it okay to put the right of one person to be busy-body over another to have privacy?
The obsession to hound celebrities against their will on their time off contributed to the death of Princess Di, so this isn't harmless fun. I sometimes wonder if the drug use amongst celebrities isn't in part due to their need to escape being in the public eye 24/7/365.
I find this disturbing when it comes to politics as well. To me it seems important to know about what policies they have, and things that will effect their governing. Not so important is how they look in a bathing suit on vacation. And many "satires" make me queasy when they make unfounded jabs at a persons personal life rather than than their professional policies.
But the truth is, journalists don't hound politicians the way they do celebrities. Most coverage of politicians is in one way or another directly connected to their work, while most coverage of celebrities is about everything in the sun except their work.
But you are right those Glossies and Tabloids are much worse than RPF -- which is why I don't buy them. But just because what they do drives celebrities nuts and makes their lives hellish, that doesn't make RPF somehow okay just because it does so to a lesser extent.
It's a sort of meta commentary on their public persona put into narrative form. I feel that you are ascribing a goal to RPF that it does not aspire to.
I'm afraid I don't understand this concept. How is saying (for example) "Joe Flanagan told her "I love you more than anyone I've ever met," not putting words in the mouth of Joe Flanagan? How is this commentary on his public personality if it's not true?
Re: 143 148 155
There's always a conversation in RPF fandom about the non-famous friends/girlfriends of the famous, and whether it's fair to write about them. The answer is mainly no. And I think there is a vast difference between writing about someone you know, and are in a community with, and writing about a famous person's persona.
Journalism definitely puts the right to make a buck over the feelings of celebrities
But celebrity journalism elaborately takes into account the feelings of celebrities--that is, their wish and need to get publicity for themselves, for their projects. It's an economy.
When Angelina Jolie has a movie coming out, she does a magazine cover, an interview, she sits down with David Letterman, all to promote the movie. In exchange, the magazine gets the bump in sales from a celebrity cover, the tv show gets the ratings. And advertisers, especially the ones who make products that you buy at Target, like Cover Girl and Pampers, love celebrity content, because it's either feel-good or dramatic, and it attracts young women like flies to honey. The more publicity the star does, the more they are in the public eye, the more they can brand themselves as "Angelina Jolie" or "Jennifer Anniston" the more likely you are to go see a movie just because they are starring in it. Being able to "open" a movie is the ultimate power in Hollywood--it means you can get projects greenlit no matter what they are. Everyone wins!
And then there are the folks on their way up. All those girls who were flashing the paparazzi last year? They knew the cameras would be there--they were pulling up to the front entrance of a super hot club, the paps are there every night! They also know how to get out of a car and how to wear underpants. Paris Hilton's entire career is about publicity. The reason Britney has 24 hour coverage is because she kept going out and being performative in front of the paparazzi, which gave them pictures that made a lot of money.
And all of these stars have PR people who are paid to help them manage their persona, their public image. Part of Tom Cruise's craziness a few years ago was that he was no longer being managed by his long time PR guru, Pat Kingsley.
As for Princess Diana, it's a tough thing. The UK press are certainly willing to take it a lot further--but her driver was also drunk. And drug use among celebrities, according to some recent work done by Dr. Drew Pinsky, is much more about how Hollywood attracts people with narcisstic personalities and often inadequate family support in their early lives, plus they have a lot of money and surround themselves with people who never say no.
I do think that these hoardes of photogs following the celebs around are taking it pretty far. But that has less than nothing to do with rpf. Fandom isn't big enough to create that kind of climate, and many people writing rpf don't read that stuff anyway. They read proper interviews, and they watch the hours and hours of reality show footage or live shows. That's about 85% of the rpf canon right there.
Now, while I'm happy to patiently explain this, that you keep saying there "is no canon" and rpf can "do whatever they want and slap a name on it" is really insulting. RPF is not trying to recreate the life of the actual person. RPF is creating a character based on the public persona of the person, which is absolutely not the same thing.
Also, actor fic is a tiny subset of rpf! Much rpf is based on people who have appeared on reality shows, or journalists/fake journalists, or musicians in bands, people who are never actually acting as some other character.
As to your final comment, it can only be a commentary on his public persona if it isn't true. Otherwise, it's merely what happened. A commentary is meta, in its truest sense.
I'm not sure you're following that this is all happening at a step removed from these people's actual private lives, as you keep bringing it back to representing some sort of truth about them. RPF is inherently post-modern; there are layers between what is going on in the story, and what is happening in real life.
Re: 143 148 155
I think my problem is that what constitutes "canon" for me in a real world sense is different from what constitutes it for me in a fictional sense. For me canon in fiction would be, in a sense, those interviews. Basically the words on the page from the original source.
However for me real life, canon is truth. What actually is happening, what the person really feels, what really motivates them. Canon would be an autobiography or a biography.
The question becomes is it okay to deviate from canon and to what degree. And in the fictional world this comes up as well, with many people who cannot tolerate non-canonical pairings. And I'll argue it's fine to ignore canon for that. The major difference is that the character in fiction is just an idea, originated with canon, but having no intrinsic existence outside of peoples minds. Characters exist soley for the entertainment of those who read and write about them. They have no feelings or self-awareness. New canons can be made for them, the way Dracula has been reimagined many times over the centuries. It seems that to say that people can't have these alternate realities is denying part of the worth of the character.
But for a real person, there is self-awareness. One can call it just using the public persona, as though it is unconnected with the actual person, but really, is it? Emotionally, when an actor sees his or her name, does she think, oh that's not me, that's no reflection on my worth or what people think of me, I have nothing to do with this? Is this a concern for the community how the person feels about their name being used in such away?
Velvet Mace is not a character I made up to dance like a monkey for the entertainment of others, its part of me -- my public face. When a spider took that name and embedded it into the google search for a bunch of porn sites (and weirdly enough one movie trailer), I was pretty pissed. I didn't endorse any of those things and they had nothing to do with me, and I couldn't control any of it. Velvet Mace isn't my real name, but still it's a part of my identity, and even though I do write porn, I don't want someone googling my name in hopes of finding a fic being redirected to some nasty fetish porn site. Thankfully most of that has passed, and only a few of those spam connections remain (most of them attached to chinese sites, go figure).
So ultimately, I guess the question for me comes down to -- are celebrities not deserving of the same human consideration I'd give non-celebrities. And I just can't see why I would treat one differently.