I will be honest: the ownership people feel toward characters–characters like Captain America, Sherlock Holmes, Marylin Monroe’s screen persona–has always baffled me.

I mean, it’s one thing to identify with a character, to yourself, or your idealized self, in that fiction. I am certainly not one to throw stones at that, what with my glass house and all. Rather, what confuses me in the anger and defensiveness people get when the character changes, or is reinterpreted, or the trappings of the character is appropriated  for something else. There’s an element of “How dare they…!” that I’ve never understood.

I may have an inkling, though.

I watch a lot of CLEAN HOUSE, and in almost every show, someone says a variant of “I can’t get rid of this because of the memories attached.” And then Niecy Nash holds their hand and tells them that memories aren’t connected to objects, and that just because they are throwing out their learner’s permit, they will still be able to remember that crazy summer when they were 15. Or whatever.

“What you own,” Nicey says. “Is holding you back. It’s keeping you from moving forward with your life.”

I wonder if that feeling of ownership of character is similar to that.  Fiction has transporting effect on us, so I wonder if when people say “___ ruined my childhood,” they mean to say it ruined their connection to that childhood state when they first enjoyed it. Even though the fiction has nothing to do with the point in their life that evokes such pleasant memories, there’s an attachment to it, as if it did. The character has become a talisman.

Perhaps when we see a new interpretation of characters that we believe are talismans, we are reminded of how little they are actually connected to our lives. Which only makes us want to defend that connection–non-existent though it may be–even more. “That’s not the ‘right’ version of the character,”  one might say, but what they mean is “the correct version is the one that I have a connection with.”

There’s an element of entitlement here,  for anyone but the creator to say one version is “more right” then another takes a massive amount of hubris. I but I don’t think it’s just entitlement. I think it comes from a very personal, emotional place. Just like on CLEAN HOUSE, when folks can’t rid of broken, useless debris that’s keeping them from living their lives. This is a place stuck in time, in a past that may or may not have actually existed. This sort of ownership is held up as the most dedicated way of being a fan, but it seems the worst to me.

It reduces a work of an art to a souvenir. Art is supposed to be conversation between an artist and the audience. This behavior silences the conversation. Because no one wants to talk with a hoarder.

The Battle of Blood and Ink: A Fable of Flying City
Pre-order available from Amazon or Barnes & Noble