Freedom to Fanfic: The Warner Bros. “Potter Wars”
The “Potter Wars” were a series of legal difficulties in the early 2000s. The Warner Brothers found themselves in an uncomfortable position after attempting to sue Potter fans for domain names. The fans retaliated, supported heavily by the outraged media. Warner Brothers had never encountered a situation quite as big as Harry Potter, so they played everything very close to the legal vest; unfortunately, this was too strict of a move. By restricting fans abilities to create and adapt using J.K.Rowling’s characters (something she passionately approved of; inspiring new writers was a great thing to Rowling) Warner Brothers made themselves enemies with their marketing audience. Only after a few legal discussions and powerful pressure from world-wide media did Warner Brothers come to understand what path they should take. Nowadays, the “Potter Wars” are a distant memory.
Distant, maybe, but not irrelevant. The Warner Brothers created a legal precedent that many companies ought to follow; a symbiotic and beneficial relationship with the fans that doesn’t hurt their bottom line. Considering the public relations mistakes, the misunderstanding of 21st Century audiences, and the aggressive law techniques, it’s clear that studying the “Potter Wars” is as relevant today as ever it has been. Even today, companies seeking to protect their intellectual rights attack their own audences with demands of the law that really boil down to swinging their monetary weight around and threatening to sue. Nothing says, “please buy our product” like “if you do anything creative with it, we’re going to sue”.
In today’s modern world, we are blessed to be able to share our creativity with anyone. This inspires young writers, musicians, and artists to put their work out there and see what other people are creating. While this does create an influx of “amateur” work, that’s not necessarily a bad thing. In terms of creativity, a large amount of amateur work means a healthy online “ecosystem” of sorts. Imagine it like a pyramid:
At every step, the pyramid gets a little smaller as artists either choose not to devote more time and energy, or are discouraged from doing so by outside forces. Considering the rather formidable prejudices against art in general (mainly the old, artist-in-a-cardboard-box routine) it is unsurprising that the pyramid narrows so quickly. So, considering the forces that narrow it, how can we hope to have a significant amount of professional artists? Because we need them, that’s clear. Art is culture, art is the pulse of a community. Without art, there would be no writing, no images, no clothing of any fashion. Without art, life is tasteless. Sure, medicine and science and math will keep us alive and that’s nothing to dismiss, but without the arts, why are we alive?
Which brings me back to the bottom of the pyramid. Without a large pool of beginning artists to start with, we will never have amateurs. Amateurs may be the most important slice of the entire pyramid; they are dedicated, inspired, and excited by art. They will be the ones that climb that pyramid, and without a significant amount of them, we are sure to have less professional artists in the end. Without professional artists, our culture as a whole suffers.
This is why the Potter Wars were so significant. This wasn’t just a pot-shot against domain names; this put pressure on fan works in general. This threatened an entire creative community of amateur artists, and they fought back.
The aggressive tactics employed by Warner Brothers didn’t just anger the fans; it attracted the attention of the media. The world, in general, supported these teens. The world supported creativity; it supported the written word, no matter how young the author was. As you can see from the timeline, the whiplash against restricting fan works was loud, fast, and solid. Warner Brothers found itself at first losing to, and then educated by, teen amateur artists.
The “Potter Wars” were an indicator of the creative changes that have since become the norm. Fanfictions, once considered cheap, low writing, are now becoming socially acceptable. Websites like fanfiction.net and archiveofourown.org host works ranging from every fandom from Homestuck to Hetalia, from Skyrim to Sherlock Holmes. Recently, fanfictions have even come into the Hollywood limelight; popular film Fifty Shades of Grey began as a Twilight fanfiction. If one reads Twilight and Fifty Shades of Grey, one can see the structural similarities.
However, negative stigma still exists. Fanfictions are considered acceptable by “nerd culture”, but are not accepted by most scholarly critics as “true writing”. This is because most fanfictions lack concept, which as we see from the pyramid above, is one of the key parts of fine art. Some fanfictions are so famously bad that they’re good; some are just good enough to be famous. In fact, the longest written piece of fiction in human history is titled, The Subspace Emissary’s Worlds Conquest.
It’s a Super Mario Smash Bros. fanfic, and it’s got over 3.5 million words and counting. Say what you will, but that’s art to me.
This influx of creative writing proves that our culture as a whole is thriving off literature. The stereotype that “kids don’t read” is being proven false rather quickly. Thousands of fanfictions written by thousands of artists, read by hundreds of thousands of people with similar interests; and it happens every day. These fans have remixed their favorite fandoms and spliced them together in ways previously unimaginable. Some fanfictions fix plot holes that even the original creators left gaping wide. It is widely thought that fanfictions, because they depend on pre-made worlds, lack imagination. Wrong. They are inspired by this pre-made world and imagine their way into it. Any good author will tell you that when people can imagine their way into your world, into your work, this is a sign of success.
This is likely why J.K.Rowling encouraged young writers to pursue writing their Harry Potter-themed works. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, and if that imitation inspires kids to read and write, what’s wrong with that? It is the lawyers who have to guard the intellectual rights; no one is allowed to make money off of other people’s ideas. Not without altering it as significantly as Fifty Shades of Grey did, anyway.
So, what can we learn about our creative culture from the “Potter Wars”?Companies can learn that fans are marketing you don’t have to pay for, and that creativity doesn’t cost you your bottom line. Young people can learn that it’s okay to write a fanfiction and that it’s okay to want to climb that pyramid of artistry; everyone starts somewhere. All of us can learn that creativity, regardless of its form, is a sign of a thriving culture. The support that the media and the world gave the champions of the “Potter Wars” was not insignificant; we as a world culture are ready and willing to support creative arts and will not accept our creative liberties being restricted. This is a promising time for creative writing and all creative arts, and I for one am excited to see where people (and companies) are willing to take it.
Additional Sources:
Lessig, Lawrence. Remix: Making Art and Commerce Thrive in the Hybrid Economy. New York: Penguin, 2009. 205–12. Print.
