Real Person Fiction: Yay or Nay?
Imagine you’re Harry Styles, one of the many beloved members of One Direction, a boyband sensation from the UK. You’re rich, famous, and surrounded by adoring fans. One day, just for laughs, you decide to do a Google search on yourself. You find that an author by the name of Anna Todd has written a book trilogy inspired by the band. Intrigued and somewhat flattered, you dig a little deeper and make the disturbing discovery that the main character, based on you, is a possessive and toxic boyfriend.
Unwittingly, you’ve become the subject of real person fiction.
While fanfiction refers to fiction written by fans of already established characters in a particular lore or universe (from a television show, movie or book, for example), real person fiction, or RPF, is a category of fanfiction featuring real people, typically celebrities. Although fanfiction has been around as early as the 18th Century, real person fiction only found wider popularity in recent years.
Real person fiction probably exists because the people they’re based on have a significant emotional impact on the fans. By imagining fictional interactions, fans might feel a closer connection to these people. But while there’s nothing wrong with writing real person fiction, we venture into stickier territory the moment something seen as “self-indulgent” (which fanfiction is often accused of) becomes a bestselling series. Case in point: Anna Todd’s After series, whose main character is based on Harry Styles. To add insult to injury, real person fiction may also be published without the real person’s knowledge of its creation until after its publication. Now, what?
As a consumer (and producer) of fanfiction, I will say that not all RPF is controversial, or deserves a bad reputation. For example, stories of long-dead authors often have glowing reviews. Michael Cunningham’s fictional account of Virginia Woolf’s life in The Hours was adapted into a successful film, which was nominated for nine Oscars at the 75th Academy Awards, winning Best Actress for [Nicole] Kidman, who played the dour and depressed Woolf.
What makes the difference? Fiction created around such dead authors are usually backed up by extensive research. Using everything from personal letters to biographies as reference material, the writers work hard to capture the personalities of their subjects in their stories.
For example, when writing Nora, a reimagining of the life of James Joyce’s wife, author Nuala O’ Connor “did prodigious research, reading the biographies by Ellman and Maddox, and testimonies from Joyce’s friends”. For O’Connor, writing a story about the wife of the infamous Dubliner was a tribute, something that was deserved given the many trials and tribulations Nora endured in their turbulent relationship. Perhaps, for O’Connor, Nora was a mute friend for whom she was writing for, since Nora could neither write nor speak because of her poor education. In this case, writing RPF becomes a chance to explore alternative narratives that could have been overshadowed or ignored.
Ethical concerns are, of course, more likely to arise when the person a RPF is based on is still alive. Between issues of privacy, harassment, and non-consent, RPF writers open themselves to feedback and potential backlash from both fans of the celebrity, and the celebrity themselves. Diehard fans of One Direction didn’t hold back when criticising Anna Todd for the After novels, even going as far as to create a petition on Change.org titled “Do Not Produce a Glamorised Fanfiction!”, intended to deter the book from being adaptated into a movie. Others pointed out how offensive it was to portray Harry Styles as a “verbally abusive punk”, and how such a negative portrayal could influence the way people viewed the real Harry Styles.
As with most ethical questions, there are no clear-cut answers. RPF opens up a debate on whether fans have a right to creative expression, and whether individuals/celebrities have a say in how their identities are used. Consent or no, attempting to forge a narrative around real, living people can still be difficult for many to stomach.
Are you a consumer of RPF, or fanfiction? Do you wish to fall down this rabbit hole? Check out the video below, where I dive into the topic of fanfiction with educator-poet Crispin Rodrigues:
