slash thought
Dec. 5th, 2004 08:06 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
truepennyBouncing off sartorias bouncing off Teresa Nielsen Hayden bouncing off ellen fremedon, because ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
matociquala asked me to.
sartorias is right that slash itself, slash qua slash, is basically hobbled by the copyright issues. Slash, as a phenomenon, is inherently a subrosa, subterranean, subversive re-visioning of its canon, and therefore it exists only in relationship to its originary text. But the worldview of slash I think may have a lot of effect on the next generation of genre writers.
The worldview of slash seems to me to be founded on three principles:
(1) Any character may be having sex with any other character. It isn't that they are; it's that the potential exists.
(2) Sex matters. Not all slash is erotica, but all slash assumes that characters are sexual beings and that their sexuality is a driving force in their world.
(3) (and the one that most interests me) Relationships are about power. Love, yes, desire, yes, but slash (at its best, and you know, Sturgeon's Law bites everybody on the ass) is about the negotiations between top and bottom.
Ursula K. Le Guin says somewhere (and I cannot for the life of me find the quote) that she thinks the reason women respond so strongly to Genly Ai and Estraven's understated love-scene on the ice is that it's a love-scene between two men, one of whom has the label WOMAN: HIGH STATUS pasted on his forehead. I think she goes on to invert that idea somehow, but as I said, I cannot find the damn quote--nor could I find it the last two times I went looking. Because slash is m/m or f/f, it denaturalizes--not in the sense that same-sex relationships are "unnatural," whatever that is supposed to mean, but in the sense that all good sff denaturalizes the world as we receive it through ideology--the power structure of a sexual relationship and therefore allows it to be examined. (N.b., I am not saying this can't be done with heterosexual relationships, but for these particular purposes, slash makes it easier to see what you're doing. It's like turning on the lights in the operating theater before you try to do open-heart surgery.)
All IMHO of course--which I wouldn't feel it necessary to point out except that I'm sure I've gotten at least one or two things quite quite wrong.
matociquala asked me to.sartorias is right that slash itself, slash qua slash, is basically hobbled by the copyright issues. Slash, as a phenomenon, is inherently a subrosa, subterranean, subversive re-visioning of its canon, and therefore it exists only in relationship to its originary text. But the worldview of slash I think may have a lot of effect on the next generation of genre writers.The worldview of slash seems to me to be founded on three principles:
(1) Any character may be having sex with any other character. It isn't that they are; it's that the potential exists.
(2) Sex matters. Not all slash is erotica, but all slash assumes that characters are sexual beings and that their sexuality is a driving force in their world.
(3) (and the one that most interests me) Relationships are about power. Love, yes, desire, yes, but slash (at its best, and you know, Sturgeon's Law bites everybody on the ass) is about the negotiations between top and bottom.
Ursula K. Le Guin says somewhere (and I cannot for the life of me find the quote) that she thinks the reason women respond so strongly to Genly Ai and Estraven's understated love-scene on the ice is that it's a love-scene between two men, one of whom has the label WOMAN: HIGH STATUS pasted on his forehead. I think she goes on to invert that idea somehow, but as I said, I cannot find the damn quote--nor could I find it the last two times I went looking. Because slash is m/m or f/f, it denaturalizes--not in the sense that same-sex relationships are "unnatural," whatever that is supposed to mean, but in the sense that all good sff denaturalizes the world as we receive it through ideology--the power structure of a sexual relationship and therefore allows it to be examined. (N.b., I am not saying this can't be done with heterosexual relationships, but for these particular purposes, slash makes it easier to see what you're doing. It's like turning on the lights in the operating theater before you try to do open-heart surgery.)
All IMHO of course--which I wouldn't feel it necessary to point out except that I'm sure I've gotten at least one or two things quite quite wrong.
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no subject
Date: 2004-12-05 06:54 pm (UTC)As a side note: I don't like stories where the younger person is childish or child-like. I particularly don't like them when they are nominally 18 or 21 but behave like 12 year olds because frankly, that's cheating. If your fetish is intergenerational sex then own up, okay? There's a place for you here.
What I like is that these two people appear to be unequal but in all the ways that count - for the purpose of narrative and emotion and sympathy - they are equal, or the younger is the better, braver, more skilled person. The norm, the societal understanding is that there is significant and unsurmountable power difference but the emotional truth is that there is not.
Will Robinson is the actual hero - he faces the most danger and consistently overcomes it. He's brave and clever. Dr Smith is a coward for all his adulthood.
Obi-Wan is consistently a superior Jedi - from his mad, brave willingness to die to save Qui-Gon in the first Jedi apprentice to where he is in Phantom Menace. Clearly his master's equal or more, since it is he who lives and defeats Maul.
Snape is older, but Harry is the more powerful wizard. They are equally as brave, though Snape obviously is more aware of the consequences of danger than Harry is. I would love to see more fiction that compares Harry's scars from Umbridge's treatment with Snape's dark mark.
Oh dear. I do appear to have a thing for brave young men and their older sidekicks...
Re: Le Guin
Date: 2004-12-05 06:54 pm (UTC)The bit about the label is as close to verbatim as my reconstructing can get. ... Unless I just made it all up, which is beginning to look a more and more likely hypothesis. But I swear she said it!
Re: Le Guin
Date: 2004-12-05 07:06 pm (UTC)Quotes do this to me. They scuttle off into the margins and hide.
no subject
Date: 2004-12-05 07:16 pm (UTC)Sturgeon's Law applies to everything. Do people who quote him remember that he was a professional genre fiction writer?
Re: Le Guin
Date: 2004-12-05 07:19 pm (UTC)And, no, it's not in the introduction to TLHoD, 'cause I looked.
Dammit.
no subject
Date: 2004-12-05 07:25 pm (UTC)Interesting that you should say that, because to me, slash is about equality. There is never, in my experience, true equality between characters of different genders, because that equality does not exist in our society as it stands and it is therefore difficult, to matter what, to induce the reader to see a m/f relationship as that of two equals. However, when you have a same sex relationship, you start from an assumption of equality. That is what 'turns my crank' to quote a favorite character.
no subject
Date: 2004-12-05 07:34 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-12-05 07:37 pm (UTC)I am a pro writer.
no subject
Date: 2004-12-05 07:45 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-12-05 07:51 pm (UTC)I should alter my statement to say "pro writers who are not also media fans/fan fiction fans/slash fans" as that is who I meant.
no subject
Date: 2004-12-05 08:36 pm (UTC)One of the things that didn't come up in the other thread is the constant re-discovery of that dynamic, such as in Xena fandom. Slash is termed 'alt' in that community, and existed on its own without a ton of fans having explicit prior exposure to slash fandom. So to me, it seems that there is a craving inherent in some to play with an equal gender relationship structure, and that isn't necessarily being provided pro fiction.
no subject
Date: 2004-12-05 09:21 pm (UTC)seriously, though, i think that the entire concept of the idealized equal relationship that critics like lamb&veigh put forward is only true for a small portion of slash if even that...rather, the way you put it, that the levelling of the field in terms of gender allows exploration of different kinds, seems much more appropriate.
After all, way too many of the popular couples are suffering from huge power imbalances, be they age wise, teacher/student, commanding officer, boss, etc. The interplay between that and other power dynamics (such as the attempt to keep emotional control and loss thereof, which seems to be a quite common trope [or maybe just one i enjoy particularly *g*]) is what ultimately keeps the emotional (and sexual?) tension in a lot of slash...
what was that about happy and unhappy
familiesrelationships???no subject
Date: 2004-12-05 09:22 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-12-05 09:34 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-12-06 01:03 am (UTC)I agree very much with the power thing - for me it's one of the chief attractions of writing slash (and reading it, of course). With a het relationship, you have the writer's and reader's cultural biases projecting onto the situation, so it's harder to establish equality or a position with the woman in power. With two people of the same gender, the power tangle is clearer - and more importantly, the balance can swing in either direction. In a way, slash presents us with a clear slate on which to sketch the relationship.
As for "sex matters", I think that's the Id Vortex
But slash is also about emotions, like a lot of fanfic in general. The emotions are presented in a raw, visceral format: often emotionally charged themes like death, grief, violence and sexual assault are explored. Not always successfully, but they are there. I think it's that emotional intensity that might be slash writers' future pro strength.
Re: Le Guin
Date: 2004-12-06 03:06 am (UTC)Re: Le Guin
Date: 2004-12-06 05:48 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-12-06 06:58 am (UTC)It's one of the main arguments I have had with those who equate slash with social progress -- it's not progressive unless people make it so. Having spent time in an extremely large fandom (XF) with a larger-than-usual (and with more permeable borders than usual) slash subculture, I can say that although slash may have the potential to open up questions of power and behavior, more often those questions are never asked. Instead, one of the partners takes on femininity -- in XF there were some pretty obvious conventions of gendered hierarchy -- and becomes a symbolic woman, complete with weepiness and victimization.
This wasn't the case all the time, but even well-written slash was not necessarily immune to the temptation to write to convention. Therefore, I'm always a little skeptical of the assumption that slash is always revolutionary; sometimes, it's just as unthinkingly confirmatory of existing social roles as a romance novel.
no subject
Date: 2004-12-06 07:18 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-12-06 07:26 am (UTC)What I meant by "sex matters," aside what you're pointing out, is that sex is allowed to be part of the plot, rather than simply a Must Put Sex-Scene Here kind of thing.
I'm probably not putting that very well, but slash privileges sex as a motivation and a structural device, even when it isn't explicitly and intentionally erotica.
no subject
Date: 2004-12-06 07:43 am (UTC)Damn. With all those insightful remarks, there goes my resolution to stop writing slash when I start writing pro ;)
no subject
Date: 2004-12-06 07:50 am (UTC)You put that very nicely. Thank you.
My point about sex, slash, and plot actually has another component to it, but be darned if I can articulate it. And what you said is certainly a useful anchor.
Re: Le Guin
Date: 2004-12-06 08:40 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-12-06 09:17 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-12-06 09:25 am (UTC)