Thought this maybe of interest to some here. A german netfriend translated this and posted it to one of my mailing lists. Reproduced with permission.
I wish I could read german better then I can and I'd buy the book as it seems to be interesting. A large cuddly toy to anyone here who can tell me which fics the quotes come from
I believe there is another article around as well which I can ask permission to post if anyone is interested enough or send link privately.
Em
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Listsibs,
I proudly present the first of the two list-relevant chapters from
"Göttliche Kerle" (that's divine guys to us - and yes, the subtitle of the book is 'men - sex - cinema'), by extremely kind permission of the author herself (thanks, Sabine!). Please note - if you want to put it anywhere else, please contact the author
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In Bed With Spock and Mulder: Reinventing Sex in Slash
BY SABINE HORST
Imagine you've just made yourself comfortable at home with a DVD, let's say The Lord of the Rings Part 1, and the following happens: the final kerfuffle has just reached and passed its climax, an attractive man – Sean Bean as Boromir - is lying on the ground bleeding, and another one – Viggo Mortensen's Aragorn – bends over him. They look into each other's eyes, meaningfully. The wounded man believes he's about to die, and mentally prepares himself for a farewell speech. But then, tender hands move across his chest, the wounds close up and heal, he is dragged into the bushes, and his companion gives him a blow job to make his senses reel. Middle-earth will never be the same again.
It's not known whether the creators and producers of the Ring trilogy would shudder at such a vision. But they'd be better off getting used to it, for the internet-based authors who are turning the monkish heroes of the saga into seductive boy toys suitable for home use are among their most faithful fans. They organise conventions, produce magazines and videos, run homepages and newsgroups. And it is quite obvious that it is they who are most eagerly anticipating the companies' latest products – the speed with which they react to new releases says it all. The Lord of the Rings had only just hit the theatres in the States when inventive authors were already revealing
intimate details from the lives of the Fellowship on the web.
It's a Fan's World
It was in the 1970s that stories written by fans and focusing on characters from popular movies, TV shows or books (remodelling or re-contextualising them according to taste) first became popular in science fiction circles as an original form of private cultural appropriation. The fan author assumes that products of the entertainment industry, created by specialist teams and with the express intention of 'grabbing the masses', can vice versa be
appropriated by these masses – or at least borrowed for non-commercial
purposes. In an influential study on TV fan phenomena, US cultural
anthropologist Henry Jenkins has described this practice as a type of
'poaching' on another's territory, as an attempt at fully imagining,
correcting, and mentally completing the blanks that the media leave to their audience, or indeed the complete messes they make of their storylines. All this has given rise to a whole new culture with its own codes, themes and manners.
In the realm of fan fiction, things that would never pass the scriptwriters' conference at a studio happen all the time: Popular storylines are turned upside down, political, ethnic or social conflicts merely hinted at in the original are lived out, passing sideways glances grow into fully-fledged love stories. It may not seem surprising that FBI agents Mulder and Scully of the X-Files found each other's love years ago here – after all, all X-Philes have been waiting for that moment. However, a whole lot of fans finds this obvious combination quite uninteresting, convinced that a green-eyed athletic killer by the name of Alex Krycek makes a far hotter companion for the galaxy's sexiest paranoiac.
Thus, the realm of 'textual poachers' has given birth to a universe that is considered 'alternative', deviating from canon, by the more traditional-minded parts of the cult community. Under the name of 'slash' – after the slash that marks the preferred pairing (e.g. M/K for Mulder and Krycek) thrives a realm of stories colouring and depicting love relationships between fictitious characters, often in such a breathtakingly open-minded and imaginative way that the genre is now rightly considered a "seminal underground/internet outlet of a cultural criticism without any condescending aloofness" (Sight &
Sound, /2002).
And it is not so much the mere existence of such stories that surprises – it is the fact that they are almost exclusively written and read by heterosexual women. The original spark that created the phenomenon came from a handful of attentive Star Trek: Original Series fans who read more into the cordially rude exchanges between Captain James T. Kirk and his second-in-command Spock than just typical male bonding. It was one particular episode, Pon Farr, which had the Vulcan in a state of sexual heat only quenchable by immediate intercourse, and practically pouncing on his commander in a ferocious fight, that generated the original slash scene. Since then, 'Pass the lube, Spock' has become the watchword aboard the Enterprise.
Doing Knights Well
In quick succession, an erotic crusade swept though the traditional male enclaves on TV: sci-fi shows such as Star Trek and Blake's 7, police series like The Professionals and Starsky & Hutch were the basis on which the first wave of slash productions was built – fanzines, still individually copied and hand-bound in the 70s. The Internet has given slash, as well as all other fannish activity, an incredible boost since. Nowadays there are not only specialist archives and web rings for this type of fan fiction – it has also widened its scope considerably (and, in the course, created a no less
passionate lesbian variety, currently focusing on shows like Buffy the
Vampire Slayer and Xena). In some cases this scene is linked to classical fandom, but it does not simply constitute a subgroup.
Any series that features good-looking or otherwise attractive men appears to be generally slashable these days, from Hercules and Highlander to the Sentinel and Stargate. Even individual movies that have relatively little material to offer to the aspiring author can develop considerable potential. The handful of awkward scenes that Ewan McGregor and Liam Neeson shared in Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace had given rise to several thousand stories only half a year after the film's release. And the two Jedi knights were quite busy developing their telepathic link in bed:
"Obi-Wan moaned and writhed, and Qui-Gon sent, 'I love watching your face as you come'".
Harry Potter has been taken over just as The Lord of the Rings has, and even beyond the realm of so-called franchises slash authors find their inspiration in such diverse movies as Braveheart and Blade Runner, A Knight's Tale and Trainspotting, Gladiator and Clerks.
It doubtless helps to have a homoerotic subtext to the originals, however weak, and of course it's especially those particularly intimate buddy relationships or temperamental enmities imbued with a touch of sadism that send writers running to their computers. But even the most superficial trawl through the slash universe yields some rather strange, asexual or naive characters: or would you think of sex at the mention of Frodo and Sam? Or the Cigarette Smoking Man, the dusty villain of the X-Files? And often it is especially the self-confessed straight guys or the extremely macho characters that slashers feel attracted to. The seem to enjoy throwing hard-boiled guys on to the couch, in a literal as well as a figurative sense, for the heroes of the genre do not just yield physically, invitingly
sticking their butt in the air, they offer relentless insight into their souls as well.
Indeed it is quite clear that slash is not merely about 'revealing' something that was intended in the originals in some way or another: the raison d'être of slash stories, increasingly reflected in academic circles since the late 80s, seems to go deeper than that, the stories' relation to the original's contents is much more complex. And fan authors are no longer inclined to justify their predilection for explicit sex between men in lengthy explanations – after all, they can point at the fact that the idea of two women getting it on is universally accepted as exciting.
The motivations driving the 'girls who love boys who do boys' are far from easy to sum up in one paragraph, as the sheer spectrum of themes and forms shows. There are the romantic first time stories in which deliciously confused men treat each other to chocolate, bubble baths and candlelight dinners, there's stories about marriage-like long-term relationships. There's parodies, crossovers, lyrics and kitchen sink drama. Unique to the genre is a highly dramatic, conflict-laden story pattern rich in angst and violence, in which a hero finds comfort and refuge with a soulmate after a severe physical or psychological injury. These hurt/comfort stories support the theory that slash is a style of writing that allows active women unhappy with the traditional models of identification (tomboys) to mediate between their feminine and masculine sides, between the desire to be cared for and the desire for adventure.
And finally, all clichés about women and pornography are brilliantly refuted once you take one look at the thing itself – the sex. It is not just Fox Mulder's melancholy puppy-dog eyes that inspire slashers. Occasionally – 'Plot? What plot?' – the clothes are off faster than anyone can say 'fuck me'. And where the earlier slash stories were a bit fuzzy, nowadays the genre speaks out pretty much everything that is erotically imaginable between two men, from tender softsex via the one-two-three-finger-cock method all the way to full-blown BDSM scenarios complete with dildo, nipple clams and cockring. And these fantasies aren't merely a reflection of gay practice. Rather, homosexual acts in slash fiction seem to express something that heterosexual culture has not yet found an accepted mode of expression
for: an unashamed female love for the male anatomy.
Slash does not only emotionalise and eroticise the inaccessible, closed-off macho worlds of genre shows and movies, it also borrows, in passing, certain properties of the lustful masculine point of view – its aggressiveness, directness and active quality – and turns it back on the man, through the eyes of a male stand-in within the text. The good news for straight guys in this context: the penis as such is a beautiful thing, and the vulnerable area between cock and anus is one big erotic challenge. The bad news, if indeed there is any: if you want to be desired like that, you'll have to get used to the fact
that the action is no longer all yours.
Sexual Politics for the Next Century
One of the greatest attractions in slash is the power and the freedom of movement it gives its authors. As the question of who's on top and who's on the bottom loses most of its political meaning in a homosexual pairing anyway, it's easy for many slash stories to further blur the outlines by leaving the apparently dominant guy at the mercy of a weaker-looking partner, or by describing how the one at the bottom really determines the course of things. On the one hand, men in slash are allowed to appear feminised without stepping outside the realm of female fantasies, on the other hand there are no prefabricated female characters – stereotypically clad in perfect bodies and tight catsuits by ignorant producers – that can get in the way of the authors and their male characters. Desire is thus free
to roam between the sexy heroes. For a slasher there is no necessity to make the choice between dark chocolate cake ['Sachertorte' – that's not even German, that's Austrian!] and cream puff, between the giant Liam Neeson and the cutie Ewan McGregor – and many stories change perspective so often that it is hard to follow who's talking or thinking without a reference graph.
If the genre has a political agenda, then that would be the negotiability of relationships, erotic preferences and gender roles, and often the utopian idea that something like balance, like equilibrium could be achieved between lovers. "A way for both partners to retain their self-esteem and their pride while giving each other honest satisfaction", as Terrie Drummonds says in Converse Symmetry. Metaphorically one could speak of a liquefaction of the duality of the sexes, a dissolution of the idea of a bipolar sexuality on which the relationship models and hierarchies of our society are based. The
image of the man waiting to be 'melted' is ubiquitous, and once the slashers have finished their work in the three-star icebox of masculine culture, the result is anything but a wuss in felt slippers.
The ideal hero of all slash would be a changeling, a shapeshifter, the harbinger of a future culture of non-identity, now butch, now femme, now aggressive, now passive. He could first fuck his partner through the wall and then burst into tears – nowhere else do men cry so lustfully and shamelessly. He would take down any number of villains first, and then five minutes later take down the garbage, and if necessary, he would even get pregnant (which doesn't happen all that rarely in this parallel world heavily influenced by science fiction).
But this one perfect man does not exist, even in slash – quite on the
contrary, fan literature is very easy-going when it comes to the other sex. Following Star Trek's utopian motto "infinite diversity in infinite combination", the male species appears in all shapes and sizes in slash. And it is the exception rather than the rule to see the screen characters of mass-compatible stars slashed (Russell Crowe, Harrison Ford, Ben Affleck, Heath Ledger). The fixed self images which these higher-class actors bring to their characters does not seem to make them apt targets for the shifting play of roles and points of view embodied by slash. Since its beginnings, slash has always had a certain tendency towards the exotic, always sought its favourites in the trashier corners of pop culture. It is no surprise that its early idols were Spock, a pointy-eared outsider alien and representative of the 'strange', and the camp guys of the BBC's bizarre low-budget production Blake's 7. And muscle-bound heroes in the Steve Reeves
tradition (Hercules) have just as devoted fans as decadent vampires (Nick Knight, Angel), effeminate glamour boys (Velvet Goldmine), bespectacled nerds (Stargate) and seasick captains (Hornblower).
One thing is clear: whatever these men do – they look good doing it. Once slashers have decided on their favourite, they make him look as good as possible. Obi-Wan Kenobi looks at us from 'tiger eyes' the artificial skin on Star Trek – The Next Generation's android Data begins to magically glow in the dark, the scaly latex bulges covering the face of alien boutique owner Garak in Star Trek – Deep Space Nine are nothing less than 'glorious', and even Mark Hamill's anaemic Luke Skywalker from Star Wars seems to get a little colour to his cheeks.
The fact that original and copy occasionally diverge is not just due to the fact that slashers avoid trespassing on the real-life actors' ground. After all, things get most interesting where body images
oscillate, where deviations or deficiencies can turn into individual
strengths, where male and female ideals interfere and merge. "Should be
illegal, lashes like that on a man. Good thing they aren't," is one
description of the X-Files' one-armed killer Alex Krycek, played by Canadian Nicholas Lea, and one of the most popular erotic double agents in slash, the perfect mix of softness and masculinity. When such men sink onto the bed, anything seems possible, and sex, a territory that had looked like it was irretrievably publicised and completely surrounded by cultural formulas, can suddenly be an experiment again, with an open end. In the end, the passion
that slashers invest in their work makes the genre one of the most beautiful homages to the guys. Especially because that was not what it set out to do – after all: 'sisters are doin' it for themselves'.
(from: Göttliche Kerle, Beltz Verlag 2002) |
