Bullying and Fandom: Why Caitlin Moran must publicly apologise for her treatment of Mildred Bobbin, and why anyone who cares about fandom must hold her to account.

I've seen something none too pleasant in the attitude of those in power towards fandom over the past seven days. To recap, at the BFI premiere of the new series of BBC One's Sherlock on December 15, Caitlin Moran humiliated a Sherlock  fanfic writer - who writes under the name Mildred Bobbin -  by plucking her "slashfic" story off the internet (without permission) and forcing stars Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman to read it out while writers Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss, producer Sue Vertue and director Jeremy Lovering  looked on (a video of part of it is here, an account is here, and Mildred Bobbin's admirable response is here)    Now, I wouldn't watch Sherlock in a million years (I think I'd prefer Basil The Great Mouse Detective or that version of Hound of the Baskervilles Cook and Moore did everyone hates), and fanfic isn't something I'm interested in. But you know what's really harmful about people writing fanfic? What's contemptible about people writing fanfic? Because I don't. It seems as pointless a reason to ridicule someone as if they enjoyed knitting, collecting toy soldiers, breakdancing or Origami. It's a harmless activity people do for fun. Why should people who practice it be humiliated, and how is singling them out for such public humiliation kicking upwards?

Let's also not forget an important point here: Mildred Bobbin's blogpost makes it quite clear that piece was written for her own amusement and that of her friends: this is not a debate about the literary merits of fanfiction (I'd be the first to admit it's only recreational). She's horrified the cast were made to read it and, touchingly, begins her piece by focusing on the embarrassment that she thinks it caused Freeman and Cumberbatch.

   Caitlin Moran's books come adorned with blurbs from Lauren Laverne, Jonathan Ross and Nigella Lawson telling us how "cool" she is. Now she's taken her role as the kid at school surrounded by adoring sycophants telling you you could hang out with them if you didn't wear your hair like that, and what are you reading that for, that's saaaaad. Look at this piece by her sneering at Red Dwarf in 2006. It's not just the flatness of its prose, the blank witlessness of the insults directed at the show's writers, cast and fans  and the lack of any argument, but the way the piece acts as a rallying cry to all those who are anxious to declare they're not sad, not obsessive and not virgins.

Paul Cornell once rightly pointed out that part of the magic of the Sylvester McCoy era of Doctor Who was that it was a bullied era: to this day the mention of it is interrupted by the endless jeers of people who've never seen an episode from that period (which includes some of the finest Doctor Who stories to date), who are terrified of any interests that aren't shared by a majority,  and instead find great sustenance in buzz-words (low-budget, embarrassing, sad,  Kandyman, Vision-on, umbrella, hat). To them, the world is a circle with the words "received opinions" inside, and terrifyingly nerdy wastelands outside (do you really think it's a coincidence they've been so keen to pretend science fiction is a cult? As this excellent SOTCAA piece  puts it, people sneering at "anoraks" "virgins" "trainspotters" "nerds" and "obsessives" are simultaneously finding safety-in-numbers by declaring themselves part of a fun-loving majority, not too interested in anything, not taking anything too seriously, not unusual in any way, only annoyed or passionate about things if they know the majority is too, never watching or reading anything unfashionable. When Richard Bacon tweeted, following the broadcast of a Matt Smith Doctor Who story, "what must Sylvester McCoy think when he's watching that?", when Jonathan Ross roared with derision on his chatshow when Billie Piper spiritedly defended Doctor Who Magazine,  and the Radio Times editorial launching the 2010 series promised us that we need not worry because Matt Smith was "no Sylvester McCoy", both were doing nothing other than reasserting their "coolness", their conformity, their lack of anything suspicious. They shelter behind the bigger kids in the class, and let the majority choose their preferences for them, rather than have to think about things. 

At the same time as he was studiously avoiding any allusions to the Moran incident, Cornell himself tweeted: "Oh, so it's bad when Shia LaBeouf steals someone else's work, internet, but not when you illegally download something. Fine", and argued yet again with fans about piracy and how it hurts SF writers. He's talked in the past about his dislike for the tendency of bigger fandoms to look down on others, such as when they sneer at Twilight fans. He's also defended fanfic here. He's a keen viewer of Sherlock and follower of debates within fandom so he knows about  the BFI incident. Until he comments on what Moran did, Cornell can no longer claim to be interested in fandom and bullying.

I blundered into a disagreement over Moran with a published Doctor Who author, Mags L Halliday, after she tweeted this:

Oh, @caitlinmoran I know you weren't out for the Sherlock fanficcers. Sometimes fans forget [what] they don't actually own [heart shape] cf Dr Who

She insisted to me that fanfic writers had to accept that:

If you write fanfic you have no, NO, right to complain about someone using you work: you used someone else's first.[...] I think, if ficcers claim their work is fair use of copyrighted ideas then @caitlinmoran can claim fair use of fanfic.

 Where's the empathy? Is it really that hard to understand that there may be a difference between having your book reviewed and having something written for the amusement of yourself and an online circle mocked onstage at the BFI? Does Halliday really deny the existence of context? How jaded do you have to be to not find Mildred Bobbin's account of her humiliation, and the attack on the simple pleasure writing fanfic brought her, sincere?

 Then James Cooray Smith,  another author of  Doctor Who books and another familiar part of the Who online community,  crashed into this conversation with this revolting series of misogynistic tweets:

Someone puts their work out there, they accept the responses it generates. That's the deal. That includes ridicule. It's interesting from a pathological POV that those who scream loudest about their own rights as fanficcers being above reproach are often the first to SCREAM at someone else's work. Fantitled children.

It particularly goes for those who've confused creativity with public onanism they want praising.

Indeed, they want all the rights & none of the responsibilities of writing. Pure Fantitlement

She put it on the Internet. Everyone is her audience. She must accept that.

The idea we must respect the wankficcer & condemn mocking it risible, yes, Fantitlement. [...]

 Will no one think of the fanchildren manchildren?

After I challenged him on the ghastly terms he was using he responded:

Fantitlement is a thing. The perverse belief that you morally own something because you like it.

"wankficcer" admittedly I only just came up with now, but it does the job in reduced characters.

  (He also thinks I'm being hubristic, so either I'm in for a tragic fall at some point in the future due to my own pride, or he doesn't know what hubris means. We won't really know until the Ides of March). Smith finds real comfort in reducing Mildred Bobbin and anyone else who dares to write fanfiction to those nasty little terms of his (don't you just love his pride in them in that last quote?). After all, what would bullying be without the names and buzz-words it relies on? Whether it's wankficcer, fantitlement, spaz, mong, trainspotter, virgin, live-with-your-parents, anorak or Comic-Book-Guy-from-The-Simpsons, they provide such delicious reaffirmation: who the saaad people are and who they are not. Smith kicks down. He spends his days tweeting sycophancy to those higher up in the Doctor Who echelon than him, and sneers at fanfic writers because they're a level below him. Halliday quietly distanced herself (much as so many have done with Moran), asking me not to conflate their views, although offering no more of her own to date.

Moran has spent the past seven days  on her Twitter timeline neither apologising nor giving any acknowledgement of Mildred Bobbin's blogpost about her experience (away from Twitter, all we know is that she has contacted her privately.) However, she has spent it thanking people for telling her how much they're enjoying her book . She's also spent it tweeting about Chicken Tikka Pies and singing My Sharona. She's ignored tweets calling for her to apologise like this one sent by me. Any possibility this might be due to embarrassment is shot down by her speedy tweeting (just 20 minutes after it hit the web) of her annoyance at Brooke Magnanti after she wrote this reasonable, inoffensive piece suggesting that there was no need for Moran to mock fanfiction and no shame in writing it.  She's also promoting her latest product: her Times column and a sitcom pilot based on her childhood. Why apologise - or even mention the problem -  when you've got a deadline (as she was keen to remind us) and a show about to start (it's broadcast today.)

Now, we know it isn't Owen Jones's style to suggest a friend of his did something wrong, and Helen Lewis went for her usual "mumble mumble can understand why some were offended mumble mumble don't think it was really homophobic though mumble mumble" fence-sitting.  Lauren Laverne's response combined name-avoiding, non-committal gutlessness with a suggestion that fanfic writers were the problem   I'm dreading Zoe Williams's and Ben Goldacre's defence, and Graham Linehan's inevitable anti-fanfic-writer rampage. They all know fully well Moran fucked up, and that arguing that Mildred Bobbin deserved such humiliation or that her account of its effect upon her is not a dignified and upsetting one would be difficult, but even if they can't quite defend her as much as they normally prefer to, they're sure as hell not going to criticise her. But if middle-class media honchos with thousands of sycophants eager to help them fight their own battles can look out for their own, why can't the world of SF? We mustn't allow the lazy, barely literate, poisonous, misogynistic sneers of James Cooray Smith to speak for a whole subculture. As they point out themselves, Paul Cornell and Mags L Halliday started off their careers writing fanfiction, and so did many who have a stake in the Doctor Who universe. If they are really and truly going to let a Murdoch-sponsored bully ignore the distress she's caused to an individual with a fraction of her supporters and influence , and say nothing while she surfs her way out of it over wave after wave of  "awww, thank-yous",  quotes from Norm from Cheers, and all the other things you see if you stare directly into Caitlin Moran's timeline, then it appears that Doctor Who's representatives don't share the values of its hero. And if Caitlin Moran has any decency, she must publicly apologise for her treatment of Mildred Bobbin and acknowledge that she's read her blogpost. Some things are more important than deadlines.

 For feedback tweet me here: https://twitter.com/RichardHCooper

The Trouble with Geek Culture

If you haven't read this splendid piece by Patton Oswalt,
you really should, as it's the most interesting thing anyone's written on popular culture in years. Have a look, too, at these two pieces: http://www.edrants.com/review-the-green-hornet-2011/
http://sotcaa.org/comment/kidsprogramme.html

These three pieces focus on the same point: that the fans are becoming the creators. We can think of further examples: Kevin Smith puts a few lines of amusing dialogue about Superman in one of his screenplays, and is commissioned to write a Superman movie. Jonathan Ross's famous comic collection has recently made him a comics writer, and his wife Jane Goldman has gone from writing books on The X-Files to scripting superhero movies (she wrote Kickass, which is rightly demolished in the second of the pieces linked above). Mark Gatiss began by doing skits on his favourite horror movies in the comedy series The League of Gentlemen and indulging his love of Doctor Who in fan-produced videos and Who novels, but now he's a writer on Doctor Who itself, as well as BBC One's Sherlock and his own horror series - Crooked House - for BBC Four. A glance at the poster for Spielberg's multi-million dollar Tintin movie reveals Edgar Wright and Joe Cornish listed as screenwriters: the former began by doing cute little SF and movie pastiches when he directed the Channel 4 sitcom Spaced, while the latter would engagingly recreate movie scenes with toys on the late-night The Adam and Joe Show (the third credited writer on Tintin is one Steven Moffat, whose name rings a bell. Did I mention him on this blog?)

If the geeks (fans, nerds whatever we call ourselves) have take over, I don't think it's a cause for jubilation. Fans are consumers. They aren't necessarily creative talents. Sometimes they are, of course: Spielberg, Lucas and Tarantino are heroes in this regard (though, God knows, there are limits to those three talents), but their work delighted because of its freshness: for all the influences proudly put up there on the screen, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Star Wars and Pulp Fiction feel, from the start, like nothing else you've ever seen before. It's dangerous to start believing that you should be a filmmaker just because Tarantino too once worked In a video store, even though the chances that you could are increasing.

Just because you have an extensive knowledge of comic-books doesn't mean that you have extensive gifts for writing them. Alan Moore - one of the greatest writers in that medium, and probably the single greatest writer to do anything with superheroes - had little regard for comics except for the work of Will Eisner; his imagination was stimulated by Blake and Pynchon. Robert Holmes, the greatest of Doctor Who's writers, had little interest in the show before he started work on it: like Douglas Adams, he cheerfully set out to write what he felt would make good TV, not what he grew up with Doctor Who as.

I loved Mark Gatiss's A History of Horror on BBC 4: it was infectious and uncliched, and he adapted Wells's The First Men on the Moon pleasantly enough, but is he really the Nigel Kneale of his day? His three Lucifer Box novels and his work for Doctor Who all seem to be pure pastiche. The Who episode The Unquiet Dead was instantly proclaimed a modern classic, but isn't that because it uses all the ingredients we associate with classics? Victoriana, Christmas, snow, Dickens, gaslit romance, lavish special effects: enough to make Doctor Who Magazine's Reviewer, Rebecca Levene, declare that a generation now had their very own Talons of Weng-Chiang. Lawrence Miles probably put it best when he observed that Gatiss's Doctor Who novel Last of the Gadarene (which opens with a preface in which Gatiss remembers reading the novelisation of Planet of the Daleks when off sick from school while his mum brought him chicken soup) was acclaimed in reviews by numerous SF magazines for being "perfectly Pertwee", despite the fact that resembling an earlier work is by itself hardly a guarantee of quality (interestingly, the reviewer of Michael Moorcock's Doctor Who novel for Doctor Who Magazine, who found the book a bit difficult, commented on how much he'd rather read Last of the Gadarene). Miles points out that producer Barry Letts would never had commissioned something so banal (even though many of the stories of that period were much rougher around the edges than Gatiss's effort). Similarly, Unquiet Dead isn't half as good as Talons of Weng-Chiang (the story of the Iclelandic Alliance, the Peking Homunculus and the Butcher of Brisbane): it merely resembles a recollection of it. The Talons of Weng-Chiang was a lot more interesting than Victoriana.

More dubious, though, is Charlie Brooker's elevation to satirist. His Guardian columns are diverting, and his Newswipe/Screenwipe shows are informative, but when Channel 4 runs trailers announcing a series of satirical dramas from Charlie Brooker, one wonders exactly how such a thing came to be seen as an event (especially if you remember Nathan Barley, Brooker's unremarkable attempt at a sitcom, and his truly dreadful drama Dead Set for E4, which Brooker himself described as bit of nonsense about zombies but which gained a BAFTA nomination). It's not necessarily surprising that the first (I couldn't face the next two) of the Black Mirror trilogy, The National Anthem, was worthless: do any of Brooker's talents suggest he could depict human beings believably, or had a distinct satirical point to make? His fans think so, and so it got made.

The second piece I linked to mentions a more cynical motive for the ascension of geek culture: the idea that film producers, TV executives and franchise owners can use fans to test reactions to their products, and to convince their customers that the films, TV shows, games or comics are being made by one of them. Champion mentions Harry Knowles being flown to press junkets and the BoothBabes at ComicCon. I would add The Big Bang Theory as another example: a carefully marketed show made by people uninterested in SF, but smart enough to realise that fandom has become a lucrative target audience (note the presence of merchandise, the references to ComicCon, and the guest cameos from people all associated with well-known and still lucrative franchises: Battlestar Galactica, Star Trek, Terminator, Marvel).

As Oswalt's article mentions, in the age of YouTube there aren't really any niches for interesting bits of culture to hide in anymore. When Evil Dead 2 was just a cult film that the odd fan would try and persuade you was really, really hilarious, that was fine: you still didn't have to watch it. Nowadays its director, Sam Raimi, is given millions to make three Spider-Man movies, and his wretched ideas of characterisation, humour, plotting and depth are up there for all to see. George Romero's Dawn of the Dead was stimulating because of the low expectations in which one watched it: low budget, poor acting and reliance on zombies, the most deeply uninspired of all monsters. As the central characters barricade themselves in a shopping mall, and live a strangely utopian existence, and the zombies become pathetic rather than scary when a biker gang interrupt the paradise and start shooting them, at one point even pushing a custard pie into a zombie's face, the film becomes oddly affecting, and seems to play with our response to horror. Like funny videos on the Internet, this becomes less surprising and amusing when money and mainstream hype is poured into it. The witless plot of The National Anthem was taken from a few navel-gazing sentences in one of Charlie Brooker’s Guardian columns ten years previously, just as Nathan Barley was plucked from a description on a page of spoof TV listings. The best warning, though, of how something genuinely affecting in minature can be milked to death is provided by the offspring of Rob Brydon and Hugo Blick's excellent 10-minute Marion and Geoff monologues: a 50- minute special in which we had to see many of the things that had already been so brilliantly described, a second series, now of half-hour episodes, which was more self-consciously ‘dark’ and ‘sad’; and finally another full-length series that absurdly attempted to turn the character into a Mrs Merton/Dame Edna-esque spoof chat show host. Let’s hope no-one tries to turn the brilliant Downfall meme into a TV series. The magic would fade.

Another problem is that geek culture can often be quite conservative. The best episodes of Doctor Who are the ones that are nothing like Doctor Who, and these tend to alienate fans. To anyone interested in good writing, Love and Monsters is precisely the kind of innovative script that Doctor Who should be doing, but to fans it's abhorrent because it's got silly humour, a silly monster and Peter Kay in it (older Who fans will remember Doctor Who Magazine's poll of 1981 in which Kinda, one of the most extraordinary Doctor Who stories to date, came bottom, perhaps because it didn't have any Cybermen in it). If the fans become the writers, we might end up with films, books and TV shows written to strict genre guidelines (much the way Doctor Who is written now).

Oswalt's solution - killing off geek culture - is amusing but, as Champion suggests, not quite feasible. A better solution would be to improve the standard of criticism for popular culture: we need critics that can tell the difference between the quality of something and the genre tropes it wraps itself in, critics who can see Life of Mars as an empty Sweeney knock-off rather than mistaking its use of time-travel and nostalgic clips from old tv shows for cleverness or postmodernism, that Battlestar Galactica and The Dark Knight have nothing to say about Bush's America and that the Scream movies aren't any better than other dull slasher fodder just because every now and then someone says "this is just like we're a slasher movie." Why have standards of print TV criticism fallen so low that AA Gill and Caitlin Moran are somehow our most famous tv critics? Why do so many reviews of Bond films begin with the assumption that everyone hates them, unlike Paul Cornell's fabulous review of Casino Royale on his blog? Why must Lawrence Miles's blog be the only place we can find intelligent criticism and good writing on Doctor Who? Why were SOTCAA the only ones to see through Ricky Gervais?

The kind of criticism we need is not dissimilar to Clive James's concept of the "Metropolitan Critic", something we also find in the splendid writing of John Carey, using wit and personal response to texts to counter the stupidity of the academic approach to literature, but unashamedly erudite so that accusations of dumbing down won't wash. The Internet certainly seems to offer better criticism of popular culture - look at this excellent piece at The Quietus http://thequietus.com/articles/07434-ricky-gervais-mong-face on Life’s Too Short - but the web is so vast and democratic, it's difficult for it to make the same impact. These pieces need to be sought out so they can make ripples and provoke discourses. I'm not sure if geek culture needs to die, but it certainly needs to grow up.