LOL, someone ought to write a Hyogo (and/or Kyuuzou) fanfic based on this news story
Thugs attack two transvestites... who turn out to be cage fighters wearing fancy dress (Daily Mail, UK, Oct 9, 2009) Two thugs who attacked what they thought were a pair of transvestites picked on the wrong men - when their intended victims turned out to be cage fighters on a night out in fancy dress...
Hero Cage Fighters In Drag Win Global Fame (Yahoo News, Oct 8, 2009)Dean Gardener, 19, and Jason Fender, 22, who had been drinking heavily, started to abuse the pair because they were wearing dresses, high heels and makeup...
Mr Lerwell, who works as a plumber in his day job, said the reaction from around the world had been "bonkers" with requests for interviews and appearances flooding in.
"Transsexuals around the world have found my Facebook page and want to be my friend. I've never seen anything like it," he said.
Since this story happened in the UK, and is to a degree tied to a particular place and its associated cultural behaviors, IMHO, any attempt to make a S7 fanfic out of this news story will by necessity have a Western sensibility or a European overlay on top of the 'East Asian' setting. The chances of such an incident happening in samurai times are quite low, IMHO. Traditionally, Chinese and Japanese cultures were far more tolerant of gender-bending (and even homosexuality) than many contemporaneous European cultures. European visitors to China and Japan often complained about the natives' "immorality" wrt the widespread male appreciation of mtf transvestites and the social acceptablity of liaisons between men. If you're interested in the subject, you might consider the following books:
The Love of the Samurai: A Thousand Years of Japanese Homosexuality by Tsuneo Watanabe
Male Colors: The Construction of Homosexuality in Tokugawa Japan by Gary Leupp
Passions of the Cut Sleeve: The Male Homosexual Tradition in China by Bret Hinsch
Anyway, back to writing a S7 drag-queen-strikes-back fic: There's nothing wrong with fic writers 'Westernizing' or 'Europeanizing' characters' behaviors despite the Japanese words and props that we might use, as long as both writer and readers KNOW that's what is being done. And in the cae of fanfic, most times the intent of the author is pretty clear.
I only feel uncomfortable - that we as writers might be doing a disservice to both our readership and the cultures we borrow from to amuse ourselves - when some authors (including some professionals) unintentionally or otherwise set themselves up as 'experts' on some culture and then proceed to spread misinformation and stereotypes about said culture to their readers by selling their work as 'authentic' or 'well-researched' while not providing citations and sources for the blanket statements they make about how people in a certain time and place behave.
But if writers CONSCIOUSLY decide they want to write, say, white characters in yellow face, and make it clear to the reader that their work is just that and not intended to accurately reflect any real world society, I don't have a problem with such deliberate inaccuracy (as opposed to writers who persuade themselves and others that they have an authentic understanding of whatever foreign culture they are interested in - or fetishize/objectify - and as a result take on an 'authoritative' tone that misleads their readers).
On a side note, the film director Mizoguchi had an interesting attitude towards creating an authentic setting. According to a documentary that came with one of his films, he was a stickler for period accuracy, but sometimes, he chose to deviate from "authenticity". Even so, he believed you should know what the 'real deal' is before you choose to deviate from it. You should know how and why you're deviating from period in a certain part of the film, so as to understand its impact on the work as a whole. (e.g. maybe a vase in the background that's off by a couple of hundred years is tolerable if getting the correct period item is prohibitively expensive.) Although I'm not aiming for his perfectionism - and cultural/period authenticity has never been the impression I sought to give through my fanfics or other work - it's interesting to see how the great storytellers work.
Hero Cage Fighters In Drag Win Global Fame (Yahoo News, Oct 8, 2009)Dean Gardener, 19, and Jason Fender, 22, who had been drinking heavily, started to abuse the pair because they were wearing dresses, high heels and makeup...
Mr Lerwell, who works as a plumber in his day job, said the reaction from around the world had been "bonkers" with requests for interviews and appearances flooding in.
"Transsexuals around the world have found my Facebook page and want to be my friend. I've never seen anything like it," he said.
Since this story happened in the UK, and is to a degree tied to a particular place and its associated cultural behaviors, IMHO, any attempt to make a S7 fanfic out of this news story will by necessity have a Western sensibility or a European overlay on top of the 'East Asian' setting. The chances of such an incident happening in samurai times are quite low, IMHO. Traditionally, Chinese and Japanese cultures were far more tolerant of gender-bending (and even homosexuality) than many contemporaneous European cultures. European visitors to China and Japan often complained about the natives' "immorality" wrt the widespread male appreciation of mtf transvestites and the social acceptablity of liaisons between men. If you're interested in the subject, you might consider the following books:
The Love of the Samurai: A Thousand Years of Japanese Homosexuality by Tsuneo Watanabe
Male Colors: The Construction of Homosexuality in Tokugawa Japan by Gary Leupp
Passions of the Cut Sleeve: The Male Homosexual Tradition in China by Bret Hinsch
Anyway, back to writing a S7 drag-queen-strikes-back fic: There's nothing wrong with fic writers 'Westernizing' or 'Europeanizing' characters' behaviors despite the Japanese words and props that we might use, as long as both writer and readers KNOW that's what is being done. And in the cae of fanfic, most times the intent of the author is pretty clear.
I only feel uncomfortable - that we as writers might be doing a disservice to both our readership and the cultures we borrow from to amuse ourselves - when some authors (including some professionals) unintentionally or otherwise set themselves up as 'experts' on some culture and then proceed to spread misinformation and stereotypes about said culture to their readers by selling their work as 'authentic' or 'well-researched' while not providing citations and sources for the blanket statements they make about how people in a certain time and place behave.
But if writers CONSCIOUSLY decide they want to write, say, white characters in yellow face, and make it clear to the reader that their work is just that and not intended to accurately reflect any real world society, I don't have a problem with such deliberate inaccuracy (as opposed to writers who persuade themselves and others that they have an authentic understanding of whatever foreign culture they are interested in - or fetishize/objectify - and as a result take on an 'authoritative' tone that misleads their readers).
On a side note, the film director Mizoguchi had an interesting attitude towards creating an authentic setting. According to a documentary that came with one of his films, he was a stickler for period accuracy, but sometimes, he chose to deviate from "authenticity". Even so, he believed you should know what the 'real deal' is before you choose to deviate from it. You should know how and why you're deviating from period in a certain part of the film, so as to understand its impact on the work as a whole. (e.g. maybe a vase in the background that's off by a couple of hundred years is tolerable if getting the correct period item is prohibitively expensive.) Although I'm not aiming for his perfectionism - and cultural/period authenticity has never been the impression I sought to give through my fanfics or other work - it's interesting to see how the great storytellers work.