Bad Art Friends, and How Not To Be One
Or: When altruism goes wrong, & yes, it might be a kidney, but what about my artistic freedom?
Wheaton’s Law of the internet pretty much tells you all you ever need to know in life: Don’t be a dick. But I’d add a qualification to that. If you’re going to be a bitch, then be prepared to own it.
When discussing the case of a writer’s ownership of their own work and life events, and what is fair for them to do to protect these, as published in the New York Times, there has been much made of being a ‘bad art friend’, and I find that very telling. There’s no friendship in anything that happened after one writer invited the other to a Facebook group to share her letter about her kidney donation.
Now. I’m not sure what I’d say in that situation. It’s quite full on. I’d take a while to find the right gif comment, I think. There’s a strong chance I might have something to say in the privacy of WhatsApp or Signal amongst other friends, afterwards. Would I go as far as parody? Well, we’ll never know, will we? But if I was going to seek publication of any kind, I’d make damn sure I didn’t stray into plagiarism, because I know that would leave me and any publisher in potential Big Trouble…
Parody is fair use. I think everyone accepts that, and it’s a vital principle, especially during times when it’s hard to tell satire from political truth. But you can’t parody something without holding it up to be the object of your mockery, however blatant, however cruel or kind. In the case of The Kidney Donor/Bad Art Friend letter, this is clearly not what has happened.
He, she or they that is without a WhatsApp group of close friends who cheerfully mock things they wouldn’t want published to the PTA or work colleagues may blithely cast the first stone. But we are all also grown ups on the internet by this point, and know that nothing shared on the internet is ever actually private, and might as well be in 6ft high neon letters over our heads for eternity. Don’t click that ‘share’ button on anything you don’t stand by. Ever. And especially not those pictures. What were you thinking…?
“To not just double down, but pull a screeching handbrake turn, and then say that the character in Larson’s story is so unpleasant that Dorland shouldn’t want to lay claim on her or her version of the letter is a bit of breathtaking audacity.”
So a group of more successful writers turned out to have been gleefully mocking an acquaintance’s heartfelt letter to the recipient of her altruistically gifted kidney. A letter she had chosen to share with a few selected friends in a private Facebook group, in a gesture that might seem a little more praise-hungry than genuine altruism usually is, and perhaps somewhat attention-seeking. Still, living organ donation is not something everyone does, and is certainly something to encourage. Fair enough, I suppose.
Fair enough, even, that one of those friends sees it as a jumping off point, a hook, even, for a story about white saviour-ism, and how blind it can be. But in doing that, you surely have to consider what you’ll say when the person who showed you their real life kidney-donor letter says, “Hey, the douchebag kidney donor letter writer in your story seems oddly familiar…” Or, “You’ve lifted phrases wholesale from my letter and used them in your story, rather than write your own.” And you surely can’t imagine that you’ll come out of this in the best light by going, “Nah, mate. Don’t know what you mean.”
I mean, that’s just ridiculous. I came into this story thinking I’d be on the side of the story writer and fair use and freedom of expression. I found out that instead, someone built a story around a letter written by another writer, using chunks of that exact letter. I mean, I don’t think that’s really what the Chunky Monkey writers group were all about, when they named themselves. Maybe I’m wrong…
It doesn’t really matter how clumsily done or how pure their intent, what matters is the second writer, the letter thief couldn’t even be bothered to consider what they’d do when that first writer noticed, because that first writer, well, they’re just not very successful are they? They’re lower down the literary power dynamic, it turns out, and that’s what matters – after this started out reading as if it were ostensibly about class and race.
“It’s painful to see Larson try and justify what was done as fair use or akin to a character note.”
I think that’s what annoys me most. That it would have been easy to say, the first time this was brought up by Dawn Dorland and, “Did I hear you wrote a story about kidney donation?” came up, all Sonya Larson had to say was, “Oh, yes! I meant to tell you. I found your letter so inspiring that I’ve written a short story where something similar happens – although I wondered what would happen if someone didn’t have the same noble motives you did. I hope you don’t mind…” Then got busy making sure those ‘overly similar’ phrases that shouldn’t have been there in the first place were all gone.
Instead, to go back to your Petty Algonquins, and go “Shit lads, she’s onto us!” and decide doubling down is the best tactic… To not just double down, but pull a screeching handbrake turn, and then say that the character in Larson’s story is so unpleasant that Dorland shouldn’t want to lay claim on her or her version of the letter is a bit of breathtaking audacity. “My piece is fiction,” Larson wrote. “It is not her story, and my letter is not her letter. And she shouldn’t want it to be. She shouldn’t want to be associated with my story’s portrayal and critique of white-savior dynamics.”
It’s ok. I’ve made the character everyone knows is based on you so awful you won’t want anything to do with any claim on them. Gee. Thanks, Sonya.
Larson’s constant seeking of the moral high ground, and inability to step up and admit what has actually occurred in the face of all the evidence is what is the most disappointing. “I see that you’re merely expressing real hurt, and for that I am truly sorry,” This is not an apology. I’m sorry you’re sad is in the same class as I’m sorry I got caught out.
It’s painful to see Larson try and justify what was done as fair use or akin to a character note. “I myself have seen references to my own life in others’ fiction, and it certainly felt weird at first. But I maintain that they have a right to write about what they want – as do I, and as do you.” Well, yes. But that wasn’t it, was it? You took her, her letter and her kidney and made them centre stage in your story, and you made them the bad guys, too. And you expected no one to care, because she was just a middle class white woman, still trying to get her first story published, so hard up for attention that she wrote an egregiously emotive letter to the stranger who got her kidney, and shared it on Facebook in the hopes of approval. And you didn’t even click on ‘like’ on her letter on Facebook, did you?
There’s a bad case of DARVO going on here. The gaslighter’s key acronym; Deny, Attack, Reverse Victim & Offender. The narrative was that Dorland was seeing a story about oppression, race and class, and trying to make it all about her, instead. How dare she? She’d gone straight from white saviour to abuser of white privilege – only, Dorland has no privilege here.
There’s no law says Larson can’t chuckle about Dorland’s desperate need to be liked in her cabal of more successful writers, however cruel that may be. It would be foolish to say Larson couldn’t base a character on her, however sharply or vaguely, although just lifting an entire person and personality and incident straight from life seems a little…too easy? But to then also use the actual text of Dorland’s letter to such an extent that so many revisions have had to take place? Were creativity and inspiration having the day off, at the time? I don’t see anything here to be proud of, or worth defending, just the popular girls deriding someone not as successful as they are, to see if they can get away with it.
Maybe they shouldn’t.
This feels a lot to me like the ‘bad ally’ narrative. You might think you’re doing a good thing, but actually you’re doing it wrong, and that is actually worse than doing nothing. I’m sure Dawn might be quite annoying in her needy, approval-seeking, ‘just-checking you got my mail’ constant trying just a bit too hard-ness. I’m sure it’s easy to mock. Who knows how many times she mentions kidney donation in an hour. But, you know, she talked the talk and walked the walk. She gave a stranger a kidney, and no matter how irritating or tone-deaf the person giving you a kidney might turn out to be, the least you can be is gracious in accepting it, Chuntao. We all need all the allies we can get these days. If people are going to try and do the right thing, we need to be guiding and encouraging them, no matter how clumsy they are, because we need them on our side. Leave the arrogance and mockery over there with the Dunning-Krugers who know no better.
Dawn Dorland chose to donate a kidney – and she wanted people to know about it, because it was a good thing to have done. Sonya Larson took the text from Dawn Dorland’s letter, and didn’t want anyone to know about it, because it was the wrong thing to do. That’s all there is to it.
Some quotes taken from the New York Times article by Robert Kolker, here
