While many lived, died and were remembered for hundreds if not thousands of years, “celebrity” is really just a last-century invention. More widespread forms of travel and communication created a new, highly recognizable group of people who exist somewhere between well-known locals and the most important people on the planet.
Through radio, television, film and, more recently, social media, we interact with the same personalities over and over again, albeit mostly one-sidedly. With that interaction comes interest, and with that interest often comes imagination. As fans, we may imagine what it would be like to meet our idols, sometimes branching out further into celebrity crushes and Stan culture.
The lines between appreciation, love and obsession have always been a gray area, as has the line between truth and fiction when it comes to stories about real-life celebrities. The love interest towards Anne Hathaway’s character in the upcoming book-to-film adaptation of The Idea of You is said to have been inspired by musician Harry Styles, despite rebuttals from the book’s author Robinne Lee. Likewise, observers draw connections between the romantic interest of “After” – a book and film series by Anna Todd – and Styles. These connections are far less refutable considering that “Hardin Scott,” the show’s romantic interest, originally went under the name “Harry Styles” in the original Wattpad fanfic.
The “After” series, as well as real-person fiction and fanfiction, have received a lot of backlash, and with good reason. Like dolls, celebrity likenesses are used like styles for stories they disagree with. In the case of “After” and similar stories, an impersonated Styles is sexualized through dirty scenes and is an unsympathetic, toxic character to many.
At the same time, it is worth questioning what should be considered “good” and “bad” – or rather “ethical” and “unethical” – real person fiction. It might be easy to condemn fiction that closely resembles the life of its muse, but what about alternate universe tropes where a face and a name are the only connection between a real public figure and a sexy vampire? How about a fan fiction that focuses on portraying a real person, à la Austin Butler as Elvis Presley in “Elvis” or Pedro Pascal as Javier Peña in “Narcos”? And what about historical figures? Is writing McLennon fanfiction problematic when John Lennon is dead and Paul McCartney most likely has no idea how to navigate Archive of Our Own or Fanfiction.net? Are alternate stories like the one in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood technically real fiction if they change the lives of real people like Sharon Tate?
When it comes to consuming media created with a public figure in mind, it’s incredibly important to consider the impact the work can have on those real people. Styles has barely credited the “After” series publicly, but that doesn’t mean that “After” and similar works that freely use his likeness haven’t harmed him or crossed a line. While it’s true that fame means becoming an image and giving up privacy in a way, admiration can easily turn invasive. We also have to keep in mind that we now live in a time where anyone can quickly go viral against their own will.
As works like “After” continue to emerge from the small fan fiction corner of the internet into the larger pop culture consciousness, legal safeguards should be in place. While regular fan fiction faces copyright issues, real-person fiction challenges grounds for libel. Moving beyond the realm of pure fan fiction, we are now seeing real episodes of deepfake pornography that uses the likeness of real public figures. First with the internet and now with artificial intelligence, as time goes by it becomes easier and easier to imagine scenarios involving our idols.
Just as artists have the power to license their music to streaming services, and just as revenge porn laws give power back to victims, we need a broad set of laws that allow licensing of our own images and other features that appear in the public domain consumed art can be used . Defining the line between protected speech and what belongs to a person is no easy task. As the Wild West, the internet, gets wilder with AI and new ways of sharing creative work, it’s only right that everyone has the ability to license their name, face and personality.
Real person fan fiction is easy to anger and criticize given that this corner of the internet is mostly run by young women, but criticism like the one against real person fiction really should be applied more broadly to fan culture. Other problematic behaviors arise in the context of fan fiction, ranging from mailing real people to waiting outside a celebrity’s home to meet them. Due to the accessibility of celebrities, as well as the one-sided nature of our relationships with them, it’s difficult to imagine them being able to see what we say and write about them. Even if the celebrities themselves do not see these depictions, this does not relieve any fan of the problem of invasiveness. With all the online platforms for us to write on, with the exponential development of technology coming our way, and the mountains of creative possibilities at our disposal, we can certainly be creative enough to meet real people – real strangers – to be left out.
Audra Woehle is an opinion columnist writing about gender and sexuality in popular culture. She can be reached at [email protected]
Comments are closed.