Princeton University course teaches Furry Fanfic – professor talks to us.
by Patch O'Furr
Fanfiction: Transformative Works from Shakespeare to Sherlock assigns homework to read a story replacing characters with animals. (See March 4 in the link.) I emailed the professor for comment to furries. She has an interesting background and is author of “Fic: Why Fanfiction is Taking Over the World”. (Her previous course focused on Twilight – the movie just came out, so I’m guessing that’s why she had many journalist encounters.)
Professor Anne Jamison writes:
Hello,
I am sorry for the delay in getting back to you. For some reason, I had many journalist requests this week!
I should clarify—the assignment was to *read* such work, not to write it.
I know that not all fanfiction involving characters transformed into animals is created by furries, and that some of the authors don’t even know of the subculture. I also know, however, that some such authors do have that background, and that furries often enjoy the stories. I don’t ask—I figure if people wanted to share that information with their readers, they would.
Some of these stories—whatever the enthusiasms of the authors—are extremely creative and very insightful about the character traits they portray using animals. As I said in my class, portraying human characteristics with anthropomorphized animals is a tradition that goes back as far as literature does! And probably longer.
My question for a furry website would be, have you ever heard of any “furry” interest in Kafka’s animal stories? The famous beetle in his “Metamorphosis” isn’t furry, but he also has stories about mice, apes, dogs, and an unspecified burrowing creature. I think they aren’t “cute,” and so aren’t the kind of thing that I understand to be of most interest–but I don’t have an extensive knowledge of the subculture. If there are furries interested in Kafka’s stories, I’d love to know about it! (I write on Kafka, too)
Thank you for your interest, and again, I apologize for the delay.
Sincerely,
Anne Jamison
Visiting Associate Professor
Princeton University
I asked to share, and answered:
I love Kafka… I’m not deeply read on him, but very familiar. Metamorphosis is one of the best pieces of avante garde literature I could name.
Semi related: I’ve just been sharing about this book “Freak’s Amour”. I wish it could draw better traffic and be shared more than it has been, because I (and the few who know it) feel it would make an amazing movie.
The book was planned for a movie that fell through. It did become a 1990’s comic. It’s interesting that the comic makers, who championed the project themselves (it was artist driven), had pitched an adaptation of Kafka’s Metamorphosis directly before it. Freak’s Amour is quoted to be about “body dysmorphia” so both stories share subtext. Steve Bissette, one of the main promoters of the comic, became famous for his work on Swamp Thing. The Dark City movie made instead has been called a sci-fi Kafka story.
Kafka’s giant insect in “Metamorphosis” has been almost universally called a giant cockroach, although Kafka refused to allow it to be identified so each reader could imagine it as the insect he/she most reviled; so you could call it a beetle. Kafka also refused to allow the story to be illustrated during his lifetime; as soon as he died, publishers illustrated it as a cockroach.
For what it’s worth, I read Kafka’s short story ‘Investigations of a Dog’ long before I discovered furry, and liked it enough that my personal homepage was called ‘Investigations of a Dog’ for several years.
That’s cool 🙂 I love hearing about original influences of people who go on to become furries, and furry writers.
As I’ve said elsewhere, my earliest favorite comic-book character, when I was around five years old in 1946, was Sheldon Mayer’s Amster the Hamster in Mayer’s DC funny-animal comics. He was a short con-man who could fast-talk ANYone into agreeing to ANYthing. As a five-year-old surrounded by bossy adults, I considered this a highly desirable ability, and I wanted to grow up to be just like Amster the Hamster. I learned much later that Amster was based by Mayer on the actor W. C. Fields.
It is most embarrassing when some people treat things like fun fiction as something super serious.
You cannot apply science to fantasy, Princeton. That only makes you look bad.
They have an English department… I think the topic does have a lot of merit because of the way “gatekeeper” media is evolving to a model that business couldn’t even imagine in the 80’s. Who could imagine newspapers dead and social media deciding what’s news? Canonical fiction always had some democratic input too, but the potential is really unlocked now.
So the course description makes sense to me: “the co-evolution of fanfiction and mass media… fan studies scholars, intellectual property attorneys, and a panel of fan writers and journalists who will discuss the changing relationship between fans, their creative work, and the media, publishing, and entertainment industries.”
Like news media business lagged behind the times, so is anything based on old fashioned copyright law. It seems like a good course for people who’d want to work in publishing or story development for movies. I think they pay close attention to how to make stuff shareable and social, because that’s what makes marketing powerful now.
True, all true. But reading about serious professors with PHDs in suits and ties and wearing glasses, analyzing furry fanfiction…… I just refuse to take this seriously. Because it isn’t, they they treat is like it is.
Haha there is a sentiment that the liberal arts degrees are on par with toilet paper… don’t get into this stuff for the employment prospects.
I read somewhere about someone doing a lit course and realizing that there were tons of people being sooper professional in it, but not many showing the fun and passion. So I can definitely see silly subjects being valuable. I don’t think this prof is one of the stuffy ones.