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LotR slash - the actor's perspective

  
 
that
13:58 / 02.02.03
On one of the mailing lists I'm on, someone has an interesting signature which I thought I'd bring to Barbe attention. Apologies if this has been covered before, but:

"They have a very close relationship that sort of transcends friends.
Those feelings are probably there and they probably exist. I wouldn't say that it has anything to do with homosexuality, but it is certainly one possible interpretation of it." ~~ Elijah Wood fails to rule out speculation that Frodo Baggins and Sam Gamgee are lovers.

Orlando Bloom on Viggo Mortensen: "I'm like, 'Fuck off' and he says, 'Come on.' So we're barefoot, waist-high in water, walking on these little rocks to get to the other side and I'm doing it because I'm an idiot and I'm following his lead. Because he's an idiot. And because he's amazing," Bloom laughs. "I can't believe how much this is going to make me sound like I'm in love with the guy." ~~ Premiere magazine Jan 2003
 
 
Jack Fear
14:20 / 02.02.03
On the commentary track to FotR DVD, Ian Mckellen talks at length about how important the homoerotic undercurrent of Sam and Frodo's relationship is to many gay readers, and how he would sometimes push Sean Astin and Elijah Wood to be more physically demonstrative, in their performances, of the deep affection between the two characters: in particular in the Rivendell sequence, when Frodo awakes from his coma: Astin initially played the scene without actually touching Wood, and it was McKellen's encouragement that led him to hold Wood's hand.
 
 
that
14:21 / 02.02.03
That's extremely interesting - thank you, Jack...
 
 
Jack Fear
14:33 / 02.02.03
Yeah--it's a very interesting commentary track. I got the impression that Wood and Astin, though both fans of the books, had never given a lot of thought to that aspect of Sam and Frodo's relationship, and that McKellen's conversations with them were really a sort of consciousness-raising. I applaud the boys' decision to defy the horrible hetero-pressures of their Hollywood careers, and to play the characters honestly.
 
 
that
14:39 / 02.02.03
Absolutely. That extra connection makes the films (and books) a good deal more interesting IMHO.

And btw, people, I do realise that the second quote I gave isn't really about LotR slash - just thought it was worth chucking in as a sweet little thing for the LotR slash fans out there.
 
 
Jack Fear
14:45 / 02.02.03
Well, in actuality, neither of those quotes is really about LotR slash, are they? I mean, the second is obviously about the working relationship between two actors: but even the first is less about slash than about the relationship as it is portrayed in the source material, before the fanficcers ever got their hands on it.
 
 
that
14:52 / 02.02.03
It's about the relationship between characters. Slash is about the relationship between characters. It just so happens that in LotR the homosocial/homoerotic stuff is that little bit closer to the surface. I was using slash as a short-hand for the acknowledgement that there is something more to any given relationship. But yes, not strictly slash, either of them.
 
 
that
14:54 / 02.02.03
But in some sense the state of slash could be said to exist outside of slash fanfiction and be the simple acknowledgement of a possible romantic relationship between characters who are not clearly involved, in the canon. Hence 'cor, that's really slashy'.
 
 
Whisky Priestess
16:52 / 02.02.03
I think "homosocial" is a very useful word in these circumstances. One of my favourite in fact.
 
 
Shortfatdyke
17:56 / 02.02.03
I don't quite understand it when people dismiss 'slash' as purely fan fantasy. Surely the whole thing came about because of stuff that's already there and quite obvious in a lot of stories. Slash fiction with, say, Han Solo and Luke Skywalker is just silly, and easy to spot as bogus. So I see it as a continuation/exploration of certain relationships, although it's definately refreshing to hear actors acknowledging those possiblities (although Leonard Nimoy's legendary explanation to a confused William Shatner, in front of a convention full of Trekkies; "Bill - my cock, your ass,"* takes some beating).


*with thanks to Rothkoid!
 
 
that
18:05 / 02.02.03
Leonard Nimoy also said, when asked if Kirk and Spock had a romantic relationship "I don't know, I wasn't there". I really like that - it totally encapsulates for me what fan fiction is about - writing the bits we don't see on TV, reading between the lines. And I like to think there's a comment there about ownership of the text - the creators of Star Trek were never going to write in a K/S romantic storyline - but the fans can.
 
 
Goodness Gracious Meme
18:15 / 02.02.03
Thanks for those posts, Chol and Jack, a really interesting insight into the way in which perforers interact with canon/non-canonical readings of material. And also insight into some issues of interpretation.

And yeah, that's what I'd assumed as well, sfd, but perhaps it's possible to draw a distinction bewteen slash fiction and fan fantasy fiction.

Slash fiction , as my rather basic undestanding (and growing obessions with Black/Snape slash!) has it, is partly about the excavation/teasing out of sexual (homosexual?) narratives from existing material based upon alternative readings , whereas fan fantasy fiction can be a purely inventive activity whereby you get characters you like and put them in situations you want to see them in, whether or not this bears any relation to readings/portrayals from the originating text.

Guess there's alot of crossover though...
 
 
Shortfatdyke
18:22 / 02.02.03
Yup, there's a distinction, BiP. I have to say, though, that the *only* fan fiction I've read has been truely abysmal. I've seen some bad slash, too (mostly involving Seven of Nine and yes, it was a great disappointment!), but some very good stuff. Is it incredibly patronising of me to say that fanfic is more likely to be written by teenagers or even kids?

And I forgot to put this in earlier, but you folks should really watch Neighbours. Yes! - Harold and Lou are two of the slashiest characters I've ever seen.
 
 
Goodness Gracious Meme
18:23 / 02.02.03
Actually, I'm unsure now, being a novice reader at best, and a non-creator. How does that hold as a definition/distinction?

also, simply, slash involves sex/romance/eroticism/sexuality whereas fff doesn't neccessarily (having ploughed through a very boring story about a New Girl In Hermione's Class...)
 
 
Goodness Gracious Meme
18:30 / 02.02.03
God yes. Soaps are full of these dynamics... Dot and Ethel anyone?
 
 
Jack Fear
18:31 / 02.02.03
BiP: the "new girl" thing sounds like a "Mary Sue" story... the new girl being a stand-in for the writer—the writer doesn't necessarily want to subvert the canon, or draw anything out of its subtext, but simply, taking it at face value, to participate.

And I suppose that is the kind of thing that's far more likely to be written by teens: if the dominant paradigm of adolescence is feeling like an outsider, then the sense of belonging to be found in stories, either as a participant or as a creator, is an answered prayer. I wish my school was like Hogwarts...

Whereas I've read that most slash, conversely, is written by straight women over 30 (take with salt as appropriate).
 
 
Shortfatdyke
18:35 / 02.02.03
Jack - yeah, that's what I'd heard, too. I was referring to non sexual/slashy fan fantasy stuff. And trying to find an excuse for terrible writing!
 
 
that
18:36 / 02.02.03
I don't know much about non-slash fan fic but I know that it's not purely or even primarily a teenage preserve. Henry Jenkins' book 'Textual Poachers' is a good one to read. Lots of fan fic writers write highly politicised stuff - about anarchism, feminism, stuff like that, and we're talking full length novels sometimes, too. A lot of fan fic writers consider it an important goal to be true to the canon in one way or another, just as slash writers do - we're fans because we care about the canon, the characters, and a lot of us want to write things that make sense in the universe in which we are writing. But of course there's a lot of crap fan fic out there (Haus' thread here is evidence of that) - but there's a fair amount of dreadful slash too.
 
 
Jack Fear
18:38 / 02.02.03
Sorry, SFD--realized I'd missed yr point after I posted: I've put in a moderation action that should soon mnake my above post make much more sense...
 
 
Tryphena Absent
13:49 / 03.02.03
Ooh we had a thing about Lou and Harold for a long time, my housemate Katie used to squeal everytime they were on screen, there's definitely something there.
 
 
grant
17:50 / 03.02.03
I'm nominating this thread be moved to the Head Shop.
Because it's tasty.
 
 
--
19:26 / 03.02.03
This reminds me of a dream I had shortly after I saw LOTR: FOTR that involved me watching a porn version of the film, in which Sam and Frodo share a very intimate love scene on a muddy battlefield. A pity I woke up before Legolas could join in. I think a goat with a human face was involved too. Good times...

Ever since that dream I've taken a liking to Elijah Wood for some reason. I'm glad he acknowledged the homosexual subtext, even if he himself didn't see it that way.
 
 
D'Israeli
00:28 / 23.03.03
So in what way is this a Head Shop thread? It's about discussion of different actors' perspectives on slash in Lord Of The Rings, right? I've seen nothing discussed that couldn't be part of one of the more inteesting threads in Film/TV/Theatre. Where's the examination?

For example - how about the possibility that slash writers, interested in a particular fandom, are more likely to seize on possible 'slashy' elements of relationships between characters than other parties interested in that fandom - and that most of said slash seems to be m/m rather than f/f or m/f? Does that make the 'slashiness' of certain relationships in these fandoms a matter of the eye of the beholder? Does that matter actually matter?

How about the idea that Frodo/Sam, and to a lesser extent Legolas/Gimli, were the only acknowledged 'slashy' relationships in LOTR until the movies were recently released and Viggo got his stubble out/Orly bounced around on top of the snow? Does the participation of hunky male leads, who may be easily construed to be lust objects as characters more than simply as men, queer the pitch?

And my favourite ponderable, leading on from the above - Jack mentions the (in my opinion) tacky concept of the 'Mary Sue' in fanfic. If a LOTR fan watches the movies and feels compelled to write slash involving (for example) Aragorn and Legolas, where they wouldn't have ordinarily seen such a possibility of a relationship - how much of that is to do with the physical presence of the actors playing the parts, and is it possible that, in electing to write such a fic, they site themselves as voyeur in a fantasy of their own making, rendering themselves 'Mary Sue' outside the text?

Just a few questions in a fasciating subject, feel free to ignore or make up your own...
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
15:10 / 24.03.03
Melody sighed and thought. Her great- great- great grandmother was a mermaid and met a wizard. She became a witch and married him but she was still able to change into a mermaid any time she wished. All of her children and grandchildren were able to change into mermaids as well.
That’s how she was able to change. She thought that of the first time she transformed when she was 5 years old and how happy her mother was.

The Mary Sue is fascinating thing, as one of those things that generally gets identified in fanfic (not necessarily slash - in fact, the Mary Sue often deforms the rightful path of the slash narrative by turning up and seducing one of the One True Pairings) but not when it occurs outside. For example, the character of Harriet Vane could be seen as a Mary-Sue, or the character of Darrel Rivers (sp?) in Malory Towers, or indeed all the bright, lonely girls in Diana Wynne Jones novels.

In a sense, this deforming effect can be seen as related to SFD's comment on slash being stuff that's already there and quite obvious in a lot of stories. By which logic slash merely continues narratives, and does not require inconsistent narrative or inconsistent behaviour, whereas the Mary Sue, unless done remarkably well, almost forces the narrative and the characters out of whack. And thus, likewise, if characters are driven into incoherence (the reasonably common form of characters behaving in a way that is uncharacteristic but necessary to advance a plot centred on another character, or of Arwen behaving like an absolute dick to alienate Aragorn and drive him into the arms of Eowyn, Legolas or Mary Sue) then perhaps we can see the fell hand of Mary Sue in the shape of the boundaries of the narrative even when no Mary Sue is actually present inwith.
 
 
Kit-Cat Club
15:25 / 24.03.03
I'm not sure whether those entirely tie together though, do they? I mean the idea of the figure with whome the author identifies, and the idea of the Mary Sue as a factor which pushes the fictional universe out of whack. Because, in cases where the author-in-the-story Mary Sue is important to the canonical plot, they're already part of that universe. E.g. one of the all-time greatest Mary Sues in your first sense is Jo Bettany/Maynard, and as we all know 'the Chalet School woulnd't be the Chalet School without Jo'. I'd be inclined to say that that type of authorial projection into the fictional universe isn't quite the same thing as Mary-Suing as we know and love it.
 
 
Cat Chant
07:11 / 27.03.03
all the bright, lonely girls in Diana Wynne Jones novels

Threadrot, I know, but... I think you mean "boys".

There is controversy over whether "Mary-Sue" should be taken to mean "character of unlikely all-round brilliance and popularity" (the one who shows up on the Liberator and shows Jenna how to fly the ship, Blake how to run a revolution, Avon how to program a computer, and instead of being soundly and justifiably slapped and pushed out of an airlock, wins their eternal gratitude. And probably some sex, as well) or simply "authorial insertion character".

D'Israeli, your post is really interesting. I'm intrigued by this Mary-Sue-outside-the-text, particularly since I just got hijacked by a difficult pairing in my new fandom, and I'm currently thinking that the motor that drives slash reading(-into)/writing is that the dynamic of the relationship between the two boys* is somehow in the shape of the slasher's desirous implication in the text as a whole. So, in your Legolas/ Aragorn example, slash is activated not only by the (numerous) bits in the film where they touch each other and stare adoringly into each other's eyes but also by the way that their relationship follows the same contours as the viewer's enjoyment of the LotR as a whole (since it gathers the elf/man contrast and dynamic, the sense of heroic companionship and subordination to a greater tradition, and/or whatever else attracts the slasher to the LotR universe).

*or, less usually, the two girls (traditionally "slash" always refers to m/m or f/f; m/f is "het" or "adult" or even, sometimes, "gen")

slash writers, interested in a particular fandom, are more likely to seize on possible 'slashy' elements of relationships between characters than other parties interested in that fandom

That sounds almost tautologous to me: slash writers by definition notice slash relationships more than non- or anti-slashers, surely? But in the "history of slash" panels at Redemption this year we discussed the (perceived) evolution of slash from "One True Pairing" to "Avon And Anyone", and we were starting to come up with a difference between One True Pairing slash - where the slasher is seized, possessed, and overwhelmed by the relationship shining at them from the screen and having a certain self-evidence - to the sort of slash that comes about usually later, when the slasher has developed a "trained slash eye" and can pick up on the codes and conventions that signal "slash", and develop an on-screen relationship in a slashy direction without having that moment of "Oh my God!" (In my case, I suddenly got hijacked by the difficult pairing not because of canon but because I saw some slash art that was recognizably the characters, yet transformed by a fantastic slash sensibility into an amazing, all-consuming, romantic relationship. Then I took that dynamic back into canon and now I can happily spot all the points in canon where these two are perving over each other, though I'm sure I'd never convince anyone who hadn't had their slash button pressed already.)

Does the participation of hunky male leads, who may be easily construed to be lust objects as characters more than simply as men, queer the pitch?

Two words. Alan Rickman.
 
 
D'Israeli
09:16 / 27.03.03
Yum!

Ahem... Now, I don't write slash, but having read a great deal, I too find myself having picked up that 'trained slash eye' you refer to, Deva. And since I have a low maturity level, this means I end up giggling like a loon in all sorts of (to others) inappropriate places in movies and television. Sheriff Buford T. Justice and Burt Reynolds ended up in all kinds of unlikely positions last time I watched Smokey And The Bandit. And I think it was Brad Dourif's wonderfully wet-lipped, quivering grasp of the Grima role in The Two Towers, and the movement of status from de facto ruler of Rohan to third fiddle to Saruman's second fiddle, with the accompanying tension between the two, that convinced me that - in the movies - Saruman/Wormtongue is no less a valid pairing than Stubblegorn/Legolas. But I don't write slash, and have no desire to. I have no wish to actualise the potential I can see on screen (I'm reasonably sure there's no Smokey And The Bandit slash fandom, anyway. Please tell me I'm right). So what drives the slash writer to do so?

DEVA "I'm currently thinking that the motor that drives slash reading(-into)/writing is that the dynamic of the relationship between the two boys is somehow in the shape of the slasher's desirous implication in the text as a whole"

My theory about the slashing writer realising a Mary Sue fantasy* through involvement in the text - in effect, acting as authorial matchmaker, pushing two attracted characters to actually act on their potential feelings, gels with what I think you're saying. But, unlike a traditional Mary Sue fic, the author's annoying avatar is not present - except in the actualised relationship in the new text. So, in a sense, they suppress persona in their desire to interact, 'acting out' as one or both characters. Following on from this, this could be especially implicit in BDSM slash, where the desired takes on the role of dom or sub, depending on the position of the slashing writer...

By the way, in the above I'm going with the 'Mary Sue' as unlikely, overly-capable irritant. To me, this has always been a representation of the author's desire to interact with the text in more than just the traditional Barthesian reader/text paradigm, actually creating a fantasy avatar that moves among the characters, being respected and liked, maybe feared, possibly even fucked, by these graven idols on screen/paper. The purely 'Mary Sue' writer, unlike the slash writer, actually attempts to rewrite the text, not add to it, and in their minds, the realisation of the fantasy - that they, or their own character, are actually participating in (for example) an episode of their favourite TV series - is the whole point.

There's an interesting postmodern reference to this tendency in fanfic in Buffy The Vampire Slayer canon, by the way. For non-fans: Jonathan is a geeky shortarse, despising the fact that he's always on the periphery, both socially in Sunnydale High School and in his involvement in the action of previous episodes, to the extent that he takes a rifle to the school belltower, intending to make himself noticed - by the people at school, and by extension, by Buffy and her scooby gang - by doing a Columbine, and thus (incidentally) make himself the A plot of an episode. Now, that's interesting, but the example I'm actually referring to is the episode 'Superstar', where he has a spell cast to alter reality, making himself a superpowered mentor to Buffy and her friends (and also the star of The Matrix, a male model, a sex symbol, fabulously rich, and a kind of cross between James Bond, Batman and Luke Skywalker in Return Of The Jedi). Everyone finds him attractive, even/especially the men, and he dispenses unique and pertinent advice to all. Of course, they eventually spot the Mary Sue in their midst, and hit the reset button. Later, he and two friends attempt to insert themselves into the A plot of an entire season of the show by becoming that season's nemesis for Buffy and the gang (constructing hilariously foolish ways to 'rid themselves of the Slayer', while fantasizing about ways in which they could 'join her gang'), in a season which has been designed to be about the characters' radically changing relationships and lives, and that therefore isn't intended to have a 'Big Bad'.
 
 
D'Israeli
14:24 / 28.03.03
I've killed the thread, haven't I?
 
  
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