Truth That Goes Crunch

I'm gonna talk about Art.

(Bear with me, this starts out with some obviousness.)

For a long time, there was Art and then there was all that other crap. What the artists, who were often a part of and/or funded by the privileged classes, made was in the objectively unassailable category of Art. And this Art was especially unassailable by the lower, 'uneducated' classes.

Thus, Art is a construction from societies which used top-down power structures to establish hierarchies which reinforce the dominance of the (most often economically) privileged over the unempowered. As such, no one cared if the unprivileged did not like, were offended by, or were hurt by Art - it's wasn't About Them. It was about the subjects who were also its target audience.

This idea is generally seen as starting to change in English literature with Chaucer, who wrote about the lower classes and worked to subvert the concept of Art. By now, most people tend to think of Art as an outmoded concept. (Most importantly to fandom, the deconstruction [Whoo-whoo, here come the postmodern police!] of Art forms a large part of the foundation for establishing the legitimacy of derivative works--a legitimacy which is ultimately unnecessary but often sought after by fandom.)

So, now that we kicked Art in its metaphorical privilege genitals, what is the point of creating? Does there need to be one or several *legitimatized* reasons for creating?

Not really, but people keep trying to establish them anyway. Often in literature classes, students cite one of the reasons for reading/studying literature is how it exposes the reader to the Others who they might not commonly encounter in daily life. (A million existentialists twitch, as if called by a far-off dog whistle.)

What these students really mean is that literature makes you less of an asshole. By being exposed to the Other, it is assumed in the students' reasoning that, following said exposure, one will better understand the Other and learn to view the world through multiple perspectives. The community standard of imposing harmony through obeying hierarchies (the standard of Art) is replaced by the community standard of promoting harmony through mutual respect.

And personally, I like this reasoning. I agree with there being fewer assholes in the world.

But with the warnings wank, the exact opposite is happening. Fanfiction is reestablished as Art. As Art, fanfiction doesn't need to abide by community standards. It exists in a vacuum and can be an asshole if it wants to, and it doesn't care how the Other reacts to it.

Why hello, hierarchies of power, so very not glad that you decided to come and crash the party!

The object lesson? Don't be an asshole. (Unless you want to, which is fine if you're, say, okay with being generally viewed as someone who is a privilege-abusing asshole.)