u guys omfg can we try feminism again. can we breathe life back into feminism's wounded and perishing body like OMFG she's dying...

So, when I was doing my thesis on whether or not fanfiction should be considered a legitimate genre of literature, my advising professor asked me for examples.  I gave him the generic ones, of course - “Pride & Prejudice and Zombies” is a horror fanfic of “Pride & Prejudice”, “50 Shades of Grey” is an erotica fic of “Twilight" - and that seemed to make him understand what fanfiction is, but not how it’s useful.  So I thought about it, and, after about a minute, I said, “Paradise Lost is basically a fanfiction of the Book of Genesis.  And The Divine Comedy is an epic self-insertion fic for Catholic doctrine.  So, basically, you were teaching us fanfiction last semester.”  I had never before seen a grown man’s eyes widen with such fear, incomprehension, disgust, awe, and understanding.

When people talk about all art being political (hard agree) they always talk about the content, themes, etc present within the art itself. Which obviously I get and obviously is a huge part of it. Of course. But I’m personally always struck by the politics surrounding the more metatextual elements of the art; that is, stuff like access to the tools needed for the creation of the art. I mean the literal materials of which an artpiece is made. This is a low-hanging-fruit example but I’m reminded of that Disney adult who tried to claim art isn’t inherently political by being like “I just drew a stick figure on a napkin, is that political? 🤣🤣” & while I think there are multiple different angles from which one could criticize this blatantly pathetic argument, I remember being really struck by like… the flagrant “waste” of implicitly throwaway resources that many parts of the world just literally don’t have and/or that carry with them deeply fraught histories of capitalist labor exploitation and destruction of natural resources. Like. Napkins?? The apolitical canvas that is paper napkins?