...so am I correct in understanding that the current #1 bestseller is an erotic Twilight fanfic where the author literally just did a find-replace and renamed all the characters?
Because I think that tends to encapsulate the very essence of the elitist-versus-populist dilemma.
On the one hand, I do believe we have knocked the bottom out of the lowest common denominator. From the perspective of artistic integrity and simple good taste, this is possibly the worst thing ever.
On the other, it's a success story about a nobody on the Internet realizing that she could create a traditionally-published work for profit as her own original property instead of working for free on somebody else's characters, and actually making a bunch of money and potentially a career of it.
"Original property" is used in its very loosest sense here, but honestly I'm totally okay with that!
Bob Kane swiped from the Shadow panel-for-panel, and we got Batman.
And throughout the Before Watchmen debate, I've seen the argument that well the Watchmen characters aren't original in the first place they're just the Charlton characters with a fresh coat of paint.
Personally, I believe that argument to be bullshit. Rorschach may have originally been based on the Question, but he is not the Question; not only is the legal argument for his originality indisputable (and moot, since DC owns the Question and, as we've seen, owns Watchmen for all intents and purposes), but I'm a firm believe in the MORAL argument that creating your own character based, recognizably, on somebody else's should be protected except in the most extreme of cases.
And you know, it's easy to pooh-pooh the lowest common denominator, and often justified, but that's always been used to keep "low art" down. Dime novels and, later, comics were dismissed by elitists as being crap literature, and in many cases they were -- but they were entertainment for the masses, and indeed promoted literacy among poor people and immigrants.
When Biden made his comment a week or two back about Will and Grace making people more accepting of the idea of gay marriage, the Serious Media sneered at him for it. Now, first of all, CNN has given up any right to look down its nose at sitcoms. "The Vice President suggested that people are such a bunch of illiterate, ill-informed followers that they actually form political opinions based on mindless entertainment. That's ridiculous. Now stay with us, because Nancy Grace is up next!"
But I don't even think Biden is wrong. I never watched Will and Grace; I am not what you would call the target audience. But it seems to me that if you said the Cosby Show was an important moment in how mainstream America saw black people, CNN would not sneer at you for it.
Entertainment is important. We are the stories we tell. And something as simple as a popular work of entertainment that depicts the Other as being Not So Different After All can have a major impact on social norms.
I've gotten pretty far off my original subject, I suppose. I guess my point is that freely-accessible casual entertainment is generally a good thing, even if not every example of it is good.
