When Fan Fiction Gets It Wrong

I want to preface this by saying that there is nothing inherently wrong with fan fiction. The genre can be a great tool to help young and emerging writers hone their narrative skills without the added pressure of world-building and character creation entirely from his/her own imagination. When in college, I experimented with writing my own fan fiction using WWE wrestlers.

The thing that can be difficult and troublesome is sometimes the complete lack of understanding of the subject matter of the original text or even the nature of the world in which they place these characters. It has been written on extensively in this matter, but a great example of this dangerous trend is Fifty Shades of Grey by E.L. James. For those who are unaware, Fifty Shades began as a Twilight fan fiction.

One common complaint about the Fifty Shades trilogy revolves around its depiction of the BDSM lifestyle. The crux of the argument against these books centers on the issue of consent in the relationship between the two main characters. Those in the community have consistently stated that the relationship between Anastasia and Christian Grey is one built on deceit, control, and coercion rather than the safe and consensual environment that it should be. However, I don’t intend to re-hash those arguments. I don’t have enough knowledge to do so with the necessary level of expertise.

Instead, I believe part of where Fifty Shades went wrong was in its fundamental misunderstanding of Twilight and ultimately the vampire literary tradition those books were attempting to build upon. One might even suggest that the Twilight series is fan fiction using the vampire of literature. I also believe that Meyer’s series sought to sanitize the vampire of literature for the young adult audience.  

It can be helpful to understand the literary tradition of the vampire. While the vampire myth is pervasive throughout cultures dating back to those most ancient of times, the term itself firs appeared in the Oxford English Dictionary in 1734. One of the first appearances of the vampire in literature was in a short German poem by Heinrich August Ossenfelder called “The Vampire.” This poem had strong erotic overtones when a rejected lover threatens to pay the pious maiden who is the object of his affections a nightly visit, drink her blood using the vampire kiss, and prove that his teaching is better than her mother’s Christianity. The conflict between Christianity and heathendom is a primary theme of the earliest vampire literature and encompassed by the expression/repression of sexuality within the text. Goethe also explored this theme in his poem, “The Bride of Corinth” (1797). Perhaps the definitive work of literature in this genre is Bram Stoker’s Dracula, establishing the connection between sex, death, and blood. This tradition eventually evolved to portray a more sympathetic vampire in the works of Anne Rice, a vampire with the ability to feel remorse for his actions, one that maintained his humanity in spite of his immortality.

Now we come to the Twilight series. While the protagonist, Bella Swan, found herself inexplicably drawn to the vampire, Edward Cullen, the story was scrubbed of nearly all sex or at least sex until marriage. Much of this is because of the author’s religious leanings. This seems to run counter to the already established literary tradition. Breaking these rules in and of itself is not the problem if done with purpose and an understanding of the significance in breaking the rules in the first place. But I would argue that Meyer did not do so in a way that would greatly add to the genre.

Returning to James’ Fifty Shades trilogy, these works seemed an attempt to put the sex back into the story while removing the vampire element. The author replaced the vampire element with BDSM as an analogous situation when it isn’t the case. The consent of a BDSM relationship, as I have come to understand from others’ writing on the matter, is different than the seduction and sometimes coercion of the vampire and victim relationship. While some women found the Fifty Shades trilogy to allow them to safely explore their own sexual fantasies, it is important to recognize the dangers when the work is built upon such a gross misrepresentation.