I Never Had a Hampster
Having spent two days with a wicked L-Word hangover, and having finished up watching the paltry extras last night at two in the morning, I am now prepared to blog "The L Word Complete Second Season." Actually, you can't do better than to read Hothouse's open letter to Ilene Chaiken, which covers most of the points and makes most of the demands I would cover and demand if I were more awake.
Right, well, Katherine Moennig is a sex god. Putting that aside for a moment, the big disappointment of the second season was the sudden deflation of Shane's complexity. I wrote last time about the thrill of seeing oneself represented in mass media. whatkatiedid said, "It means something different to you [the represented group] than it does to other people." That is, plenty of straight girls love "The L Word" (I assume-though Swamp Rat noted how few straight people seem to know much about it), but there is an extra level of recognition and gratitude that I experience when watching it that they may not.
On the other hand, it's possible that we're all thirsting for images of women that stand up to what we know about being female. (Ignore Jenny's advice to Straight Mark that if he writes "Fuck Me" on his naked body and walks the streets letting people rape him, "Then you'll know what it's like to be a woman." Okaaay Jenny.) Vide what I've written about Beatrix Kiddo and (in the first "Matrix") Trinity. What's so compelling about these characters?¹ They are free of the bone-crushing gender imperatives that control most female characters in mass media. They're people, not women, and exist on their own terms, not in relation to men. Okay, maybe not Trinity. But that's how it is with women in movies. They are almost always created to exist only in relation to men, so when an actress is able to imbue her character with real strength despite that precondition, we drink her up. Carrie Ann Moss gave Trinity so much sexiness and agency that I didn't mind her falling for Neo. There's always the hope, when I'm watching such a movie, that the hero and heroine will be allowed to relate to each other as people, instead of as Adam and Adam's rib. No such luck in "The Matrix." But look at the Bride. As Kiddo, Uma Thurman is so free from gender conventions that she kills the man she loves. While looking him in the face. With one hand. She's gorgeous and sexy and totally feminine, and she doesn't need a man to be real.
Which returns me to "The L Word." Thumbnails from Kate-Moennig.net, which has totally helped to ease my Shane craving tonight. Thanks, Kate-Moennig.net.
Spoilers ensue.
Shane is one of those genderless characters. She's also an intensely romantic figure, the product of a shattered past who once turned tricks on Santa Monica Boulevard (whenever this comes up, the dialogue always specifies Santa Monica Boulevard) and has an invariably magnetic effect on women. I am very fucking jealous of the person who invented this character. Anyway, the first ten episodes of the second season did terrific things with Shane. In the first season, she was edgy and ballsy but essentially flat until she fell in love; the second showed her struggling to remain invulnerable. Moennig obviously grooves on her character (good God! who wouldn't?) and can deliver a knock-out scene of laconic suffering. Telling Carmen, "You did this," she makes selfishness and self-deception incredibly seductive. (Kate, you make me weak in the knees, and I'm in an open marriage. E-mail me.) Then she turns around and does macho nobility, holding the door open for Carmen and averting her body just enough to get Carmen out of the room without quite kissing her. When the bottom falls out, she takes a scene of disbelief, incredulity and rage-played entirely in silence opposite Straight Mark-and strings it out so long that you really don't know what Shane is going to do. You never see Shane come, but in this scene you do see her cry. Right before she punches him in the face.
So, but. This is television, limited in the way serial television is, with inconsistent writing and directing and less than an hour a week to develop plots and characters. And Shane's romantic complexity really peters out. I'm not saying the final sex scene with Carmen isn't hot (have I mentioned yet that I'm in love with Moennig's supple skinny back?) but la la la-there's altogether too much beaming going on in episodes eleven through thirteen, and Shane just seems too goddamn happy. Her mother is a junkie, but Shane still loves her very much. Nice. Hothouse has plenty to say about this, for sure.
We who fall in love with faces on a screen are in a frustrating and more than faintly ludicrous position. No TV show and few movies can really do what you want them to do with the character you love. And thus was born slash. However, I did enjoy the metacommentary of Straight Mark and his cameras. Mark starts out as a prick, but changes when he essentially falls in love with Shane's image. His "Lesbos Gone Wild" film buddy is outraged when, as they're editing a tape of Shane sexing up the UPS girl, Mark keeps panning in until Shane's face fills the screen. When his buddy remonstrates, he says, "I want to know what she's feeling." The audience keeps gazing and yearning, trying to get into the head of the character, trying to make the image come alive.
¹ This was originally followed by "... More TK. Must to Chinatown now ..."; which will explain Mr. Smearcase's comment below.