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kattahj made me think about the intersection of racism and classism in deciding who gets written in fanfiction. Now, of course I think it is silly to say that "it is really just about class" or "it's really just about race"; the two work intersectionally in complicated ways. But if we agree with kattahj that CoC's are more likely to get written if they aren't coded as working class (and I've come to this conclusion about my own writing already long ago) then it'd be interesting to see if we tend not to write working-class white characters in the same way.
I'm not including the crew of Serenity at all in this analysis, since they exist within a completely constructed fictional socio-economic system created precisely for the purpose of making the main cast's lives seem interesting, but I think we certainly do respond differently to Simon than, say, Jayne (in my part, with identification with the former and almost complete disinterest with the latter). The Weasley family, were I even to know enough Harry Potter canon to speak intelligently about them, would probably be set apart under the same logic. Similarly, I'm not including vampires or other characters that are unable to participate in the normal socioeconomic structures because they are set apart as nonhuman.
I don't tend to watch shows with a lot of working-class characters, since they are less likely to provide me the type of wish-fulfillment I'm looking for in my entertainment (which is precisely the kind of dynamic I'm talking about here), so, um . . . it's a rather short list. Please help me add to it!
Notes
By "class" I mean the sociological something-or-other (I'm much less versed in class theory than I am in gender, queer, or even race theory) which is the cumulative result of economic status and a complex system of social markers (occupation, neighborhood of residence, accent, speech patterns, education, circle of friends, etc.). I'm assuming that fandom could[n't] care less what Rupert Giles' salary as a Watcher was, but that his education and breadth of knowledge make him attractive to write; Buffy's ability to quote Sartre and Arthur Miller seemingly without effort disqualifies her from being working-class. (And yes, this assumption is itself classist in fascinating and disturbing ways, ways which I wish I knew enough class theory to be able to problematize further.)
I'm taking it for granted that our source canons deal horribly with class issues (as they do with racial ones), but that there are objectively interesting working-class characters in our canons (in the way that there are interesting female characters and interesting characters of color).
Nonwhite racial cultures are (almost?) automatically coded as working-class. I feel this is important to mention despite the fact that since all of these characters are white, it doesn't apply to any of them. But this is a reason why even if classism seems a sufficient explanation for why working-class characters of color get written less, that classism would still in all probability be racially-motivated. The way we construct the class structure is itself racist.
Feel free to criticize any of my assumptions in the comments; I'm in over my head here.
Okay, now let's get to the list. . . .
Faith
It certainly cannot be argued that Faith does not get written in Buffy fandom, especially concerning her status as only being a recurring character to has nowhere near the screentime of an Anya or Tara. Now part of this just down to Eliza Dushku being Eliza Dushku. But if we look at her character, what do we see? A character whose working-class coding and Slayerness are so caught up in each other that they interact in interesting ways. While at the beginning of her arc Faith is living her life in a run-down motel, her Slaying provides her an outlet to escape from the very beginning, as she manifests the "want, take, have" mentality (she is effectively able to rely on her Slayer capabilities to produce cultural capital), and the overall structure of her story is ultimately one of upward mobility; by "Chosen" she is still coded as working-class in terms of social markers, but she is relatively free of economic concerns and so those social markers are able to be fetishized without playing any meaningful part in the actual life of the character.
Xander Harris
Like Faith, Xander gets a lot of fic. Not much written by me, but in m/m slash fandom I know he's commonly paired with Spike. Angel, and other men.
Now Xander's family is coded as poor and in some ways working-class (and this is uniformly portrayed as a negative), but I'd argue that while Xander is made to materially feel the effect of his family lower economic status, he is always coded as firmly middle-class in terms of social markers. As a geek figure, he is an easy and deliberate audience identification figure, and speaks a language which is coded in many ways as middle-class white male. Note also that like Faith he is upwardly mobile; by the end of the series he is, however implausible, solidly middle-class in terms of not only social but also economic indices.
Cindy Mackenzie
When Mac was introduced, her class issues dominated her character: she was the perpetrator of an elaborate con in an attempt to get back at the rich kids and to get money for a new car which she desperately needed. Then the show itself went on to seriously drop the ball on these issues, never bringing up money in regard to Mac again, focusing only on her solidly-coded-middle-class computer skills, having her date an 09er, and show up at college without a word as to how she was paying for it. Mac gets a decent amount of fic, being involved in several popular het and femslash pairings.
Veronica Mars
Everything above for Mac goes double for Veronica. Veronica was never meaningfully coded as lower-class, as she spent her childhood as a honorary 02er. As the eponymous character, she features in a large share of VMars fic.
Rose Tyler
Obviously, there is a whole lot of Rose fic, by virtue of her being the female lead of the first two seasons of new Who. Just as obviously, Rose is freed from the constraints of her working-class life when the Doctor rescues her from the shop where she works while retaining several of the relevant social markers (her accent being the most obvious, I believe? British culture is not my specialty).
Jackie Tyler
I don't know how the fic writers respond to Jackie, who unlike Rose maintains her class identification until the very very end (when she and alt!Pete get together). Obviously she is written less than Rose, but exactly how much so I have no clue.
Dean and Sam Winchester
I don't watch this show, and thus don't know anything about them (except that Sam makes a really hot girl--I do read the genderswap). I know, of course, that there's a massive amount of fic written about them.
Kendra, Normal, Sketchy, and Other Dark Angel Characters
Do these even get written at all? I'm not really familiar with the fandom, but my impression that the main white characters to get written were Logan--obviously not working-class--and Jensen's character (who probably falls under the nonhuman exemption). Lydeker's not exactly working-class either (although his coding is rather complicated).
Conclusion (tentative since the preliminary sample size is so small)
There does seem to be some interest in working with characters who still carry the social markers of a working-class identity, as in the cases of Faith and Rose Tyler. (How deep and accurate these social markers are, both in the source text and in fic, is a question I am not qualified to answer, although I think there are meaningful ways that both characters do begin to act in accord with a middle-class ideal as they become upwardly mobile economically.) Re-reading the comments to my March 2007 post linked above, it seems fandom is perfectly willing to play with characters who are coded as working-class in whatheyiya calls a UK discourse of class, in which "class is experienced as written and performed in the body," but less eager to do so according to what she calls the American discourse in which class is more closely linked to cultural capacity and thus "is experienced as mobile: you get educated, you become middle class." (I'm condensing a lot of thought here; heyiya, is there something crucial I've missed or misrepresented?)
I do think that fandom is less likely to write working-class characters, in general, than middle-class (and upper-class) characters. My intellectual and emotional responses to how problematic this is are somewhat in contradiction.
Even if the true nature of their working-class status is in dispute, it does seem that enough working-class white characters do get written to be able to say that they get written more often than working-class characters of color, and thus classism in fandom is not a sufficient explanation for why working-class characters of color are not written as much as one would otherwise expect. This conclusion shocks approximately no one.
kattahj made me think about the intersection of racism and classism in deciding who gets written in fanfiction. Now, of course I think it is silly to say that "it is really just about class" or "it's really just about race"; the two work intersectionally in complicated ways. But if we agree with kattahj that CoC's are more likely to get written if they aren't coded as working class (and I've come to this conclusion about my own writing already long ago) then it'd be interesting to see if we tend not to write working-class white characters in the same way.I'm not including the crew of Serenity at all in this analysis, since they exist within a completely constructed fictional socio-economic system created precisely for the purpose of making the main cast's lives seem interesting, but I think we certainly do respond differently to Simon than, say, Jayne (in my part, with identification with the former and almost complete disinterest with the latter). The Weasley family, were I even to know enough Harry Potter canon to speak intelligently about them, would probably be set apart under the same logic. Similarly, I'm not including vampires or other characters that are unable to participate in the normal socioeconomic structures because they are set apart as nonhuman.
I don't tend to watch shows with a lot of working-class characters, since they are less likely to provide me the type of wish-fulfillment I'm looking for in my entertainment (which is precisely the kind of dynamic I'm talking about here), so, um . . . it's a rather short list. Please help me add to it!
Notes
By "class" I mean the sociological something-or-other (I'm much less versed in class theory than I am in gender, queer, or even race theory) which is the cumulative result of economic status and a complex system of social markers (occupation, neighborhood of residence, accent, speech patterns, education, circle of friends, etc.). I'm assuming that fandom could[n't] care less what Rupert Giles' salary as a Watcher was, but that his education and breadth of knowledge make him attractive to write; Buffy's ability to quote Sartre and Arthur Miller seemingly without effort disqualifies her from being working-class. (And yes, this assumption is itself classist in fascinating and disturbing ways, ways which I wish I knew enough class theory to be able to problematize further.)
I'm taking it for granted that our source canons deal horribly with class issues (as they do with racial ones), but that there are objectively interesting working-class characters in our canons (in the way that there are interesting female characters and interesting characters of color).
Nonwhite racial cultures are (almost?) automatically coded as working-class. I feel this is important to mention despite the fact that since all of these characters are white, it doesn't apply to any of them. But this is a reason why even if classism seems a sufficient explanation for why working-class characters of color get written less, that classism would still in all probability be racially-motivated. The way we construct the class structure is itself racist.
Feel free to criticize any of my assumptions in the comments; I'm in over my head here.
Okay, now let's get to the list. . . .
Faith
It certainly cannot be argued that Faith does not get written in Buffy fandom, especially concerning her status as only being a recurring character to has nowhere near the screentime of an Anya or Tara. Now part of this just down to Eliza Dushku being Eliza Dushku. But if we look at her character, what do we see? A character whose working-class coding and Slayerness are so caught up in each other that they interact in interesting ways. While at the beginning of her arc Faith is living her life in a run-down motel, her Slaying provides her an outlet to escape from the very beginning, as she manifests the "want, take, have" mentality (she is effectively able to rely on her Slayer capabilities to produce cultural capital), and the overall structure of her story is ultimately one of upward mobility; by "Chosen" she is still coded as working-class in terms of social markers, but she is relatively free of economic concerns and so those social markers are able to be fetishized without playing any meaningful part in the actual life of the character.
Xander Harris
Like Faith, Xander gets a lot of fic. Not much written by me, but in m/m slash fandom I know he's commonly paired with Spike. Angel, and other men.
Now Xander's family is coded as poor and in some ways working-class (and this is uniformly portrayed as a negative), but I'd argue that while Xander is made to materially feel the effect of his family lower economic status, he is always coded as firmly middle-class in terms of social markers. As a geek figure, he is an easy and deliberate audience identification figure, and speaks a language which is coded in many ways as middle-class white male. Note also that like Faith he is upwardly mobile; by the end of the series he is, however implausible, solidly middle-class in terms of not only social but also economic indices.
Cindy Mackenzie
When Mac was introduced, her class issues dominated her character: she was the perpetrator of an elaborate con in an attempt to get back at the rich kids and to get money for a new car which she desperately needed. Then the show itself went on to seriously drop the ball on these issues, never bringing up money in regard to Mac again, focusing only on her solidly-coded-middle-class computer skills, having her date an 09er, and show up at college without a word as to how she was paying for it. Mac gets a decent amount of fic, being involved in several popular het and femslash pairings.
Veronica Mars
Everything above for Mac goes double for Veronica. Veronica was never meaningfully coded as lower-class, as she spent her childhood as a honorary 02er. As the eponymous character, she features in a large share of VMars fic.
Rose Tyler
Obviously, there is a whole lot of Rose fic, by virtue of her being the female lead of the first two seasons of new Who. Just as obviously, Rose is freed from the constraints of her working-class life when the Doctor rescues her from the shop where she works while retaining several of the relevant social markers (her accent being the most obvious, I believe? British culture is not my specialty).
Jackie Tyler
I don't know how the fic writers respond to Jackie, who unlike Rose maintains her class identification until the very very end (when she and alt!Pete get together). Obviously she is written less than Rose, but exactly how much so I have no clue.
Dean and Sam Winchester
I don't watch this show, and thus don't know anything about them (except that Sam makes a really hot girl--I do read the genderswap). I know, of course, that there's a massive amount of fic written about them.
Kendra, Normal, Sketchy, and Other Dark Angel Characters
Do these even get written at all? I'm not really familiar with the fandom, but my impression that the main white characters to get written were Logan--obviously not working-class--and Jensen's character (who probably falls under the nonhuman exemption). Lydeker's not exactly working-class either (although his coding is rather complicated).
Conclusion (tentative since the preliminary sample size is so small)
There does seem to be some interest in working with characters who still carry the social markers of a working-class identity, as in the cases of Faith and Rose Tyler. (How deep and accurate these social markers are, both in the source text and in fic, is a question I am not qualified to answer, although I think there are meaningful ways that both characters do begin to act in accord with a middle-class ideal as they become upwardly mobile economically.) Re-reading the comments to my March 2007 post linked above, it seems fandom is perfectly willing to play with characters who are coded as working-class in what
heyiya calls a UK discourse of class, in which "class is experienced as written and performed in the body," but less eager to do so according to what she calls the American discourse in which class is more closely linked to cultural capacity and thus "is experienced as mobile: you get educated, you become middle class." (I'm condensing a lot of thought here; heyiya, is there something crucial I've missed or misrepresented?)I do think that fandom is less likely to write working-class characters, in general, than middle-class (and upper-class) characters. My intellectual and emotional responses to how problematic this is are somewhat in contradiction.
Even if the true nature of their working-class status is in dispute, it does seem that enough working-class white characters do get written to be able to say that they get written more often than working-class characters of color, and thus classism in fandom is not a sufficient explanation for why working-class characters of color are not written as much as one would otherwise expect. This conclusion shocks approximately no one.
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comment of great density the first.
Date: 2008-02-26 03:24 am (UTC)The first and main thing, I think, is just to remark that I don't think there *is* class theory in the same way that there's race and gender and sexuality theory. There's theories of class formation and conflict and of class as process, but I really kind of think that class as identity category isn't often theorized in a way analogous to the other formations. I can think of exceptions, but I don't think 'class theory' is a body of work in the same way. However, if I were to imagine a body called 'class theory' I think the most crucial part of it would be a distinction between consensus-based and conflict-based models of class.
When I say consensus-based, I mean an understanding of class stratification that sees different classes as necessary, people as comfortable in their class identity, class as something that just is. Conflict-based is seeing class as something that comes out of, well, conflict. The wealth and leisure of the upper strata comes off the back of the lower strata, etc. Of course, as someone deeply influenced by Marxist theory I am powerfully on the conflict side myself; but I know it's more complicated. Marxist theorizing about ideology and hegemony (Gramsci, especially) is basically about how the working classes come to consent to their own exploitation, to perceive working for someone else's profit as something that benefits them.
I'm not sure that classism is analogous to racism and sexism precisely because, to me, some kind of consensus-based view is a precursor to understanding class as analogous with race and gender (and anyway I'm not exactly convinced of that analogy's universal validity either :) ). Then again, a deep analysis of race and gender sees them as conflict-based systems powered by hegemonic systems that produce consent, too, in many ways, so perhaps it's more useful than I'm inclined to think.
Okay, I guess that's my theoretical standpoint on class. More in a second! (I have an insanely long comment to break up in chunks here...)
Re: comment of great density the first.
Date: 2008-02-26 07:21 am (UTC)I think the most important difference has to be that people can change their class, and successful social systems are dependent on class mobility to some extent so they will always incorporate the possibility in some manner. By contrast, the more intentional and oppressive forms of racial and gender prejudice are not only dependent on the immutability of race and gender at the individual level but actively incorporate methods of preventing any blurring of the boundaries. Any analysis that ignores that distinction would strike me as flawed.
(Also hi, nice to cross paths with you again :o)
Re: comment of great density the first.
Date: 2008-02-26 07:35 am (UTC)I was thinking about our last conversation when I was writing all these comments... We seem to come to similar conclusions via totally different routes and politics, it's interesting!
(Although I still don't think changing class is as easy as all that -- or rather, you can definitely change class (I have, effectively) but you can never leave your class behind.
Re: comment of great density the first.
Date: 2008-02-26 07:52 am (UTC)Well as a geographer I would suggest that our nationality has a huge influence on our interpretations, even though we have used different disciplinary tools to reach our conclusions.
I thoroughly agree. Changing class completely takes at least two generations, and even then there will still be signs.
Re: comment of great density the first.
Date: 2008-02-26 11:57 pm (UTC)There is so little social mobility in the USA today. Everyone thinks that we are the land of social mobility. We so totally aren't.
Re: comment of great density the first.
Date: 2008-02-27 01:02 am (UTC)There's a lot out on working class identity -- it's a growing field! Have you read Janet Zandy, Sherry Lee Linkon, Renny Christopher, John Russo, Paul Lauter? (To name a few of my favorites...)
Re: comment of great density the first.
Date: 2008-02-27 01:07 am (UTC)Re: comment of great density the first.
Date: 2008-02-27 05:04 am (UTC)Re: comment of great density the first.
Date: 2008-02-27 05:14 am (UTC)I guess you could call most British cultural studies, the Birmingham school and its forebears and affiliates, working class studies, and that's a body of work I have a lot of familiarity with and affinity for. I do still feel there is something about class as a mode of analysis that makes 'class theory' as analogous with 'gender theory' or 'race theory' feel off-kilter. It may just be that thinking about class is so inseparable from thinking with/in a Marxist mode, for me.
(also, hi! :) )
Re: comment of great density the first.
Date: 2008-02-27 08:00 am (UTC)Re: comment of great density the first.
Date: 2008-02-27 11:57 am (UTC)Re: comment of great density the first.
Date: 2008-02-27 02:34 pm (UTC)Re: comment of great density the first.
Date: 2008-02-27 02:42 pm (UTC)Re: comment of great density the first.
Date: 2008-02-27 02:47 pm (UTC)Re: comment of great density the first.
Date: 2008-02-27 02:59 pm (UTC)Re: comment of great density the first.
Date: 2008-04-30 02:38 pm (UTC)Re: comment of great density the first.
Date: 2008-04-30 03:24 pm (UTC)Marxist analysis reduces everything to "the class struggle". So, looking at racism from a Marxist perspective, you end up with the viewpoint that capitalists need a) cheap raw materials b) a large pool of cheap labour; and c) new and ever expanding markets for finished products. Hence imperialism and colonialism, and hence racism as a product of imperialism and colonialism which are themselves products of captialism. Yes; Marxist analysis prduces a basis for analysis of race and sex inequalties but essentially these are (in classical Marxist theory as I understand it) spin off from the class struggle. Important spin-offs (in some respects, the sort of spin off that turns out to be more interesting and important than the original series). Now, if you create this bastard thing "classism" you're trying to create a spin-off that is really about what the original series was supposed to be about, and those never end well in my experience (though I haven't seen The Sarah Jane Adventures admittedly).
Re: comment of great density the first.
Date: 2008-04-30 04:00 pm (UTC)Re: comment of great density the first.
Date: 2008-05-01 07:24 am (UTC)Re: comment of great density the first.
Date: 2008-02-27 04:07 pm (UTC)Yes, that's it exactly! For me, to draw a really clumsy analogy, thinking class without Marxist analysis is like thinking gender without feminism -- possible, but missing out on what for me is kind of the point.
Re: comment of great density the first.
Date: 2008-04-30 02:40 pm (UTC)Re: comment of great density the first.
Date: 2008-04-30 02:33 pm (UTC)That's what I keep on going back to when I think about the difference.