this post was submitted on 27 Jun 2024
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Imagine Aristotle or Plato making up stories about themselves debating other philosophers. Or imagine Greeks and Romans making up random stories that involved their gods and goddesses and then becoming popular to the point of being canon. Or imagine Christians holding councils to determine which biblical story is “real”
I'm not real sympathetic to the whole "Dante and Virgil were just writing fanfic" type arguments. There's certainly a human tendency to reinterpret, but the material conditions that form the basis for the possibility of modern fandom are quite recent and projecting it backwards is something that I think is ahistorical
The earliest you can push this back as a phenomenon is probably something like the original Sherlock Holmes fandom
I'd assume the argument would be that Aristotle and Plato were trying to illustrate some philosophical argument, myths and religion were on some level about understanding the world around you and why it came to be the way it is. Fandom doesn't really have that same importance. Maybe if you are moved by a character or story and want to use the characters and/or setting to illustrate some deeper point about the human experience, but that doesn't really encapsulate the whole of modern fandom. Cosplaying at an anime convention does not make you Aristotle.
I don't think there's anything wrong with fandom or cosplaying, but I assume this is what the main difference would be.
I mean people dressed up like their ancestors or heroes for ceremonies and celebrations. Not much different from cosplayers doing it to celebrate the characters they like
A cosplayer is not celebrating their favorite characters in the same way someone in the distant past would be honoring their heroes, ancestors, gods or the dead. It's a completely different relationship.