Jones, "The Sex Lives of Cult Television Characters" (2002)
So I've been browsing around in The Fan Fiction Studies Reader, as one does, and I was really struck by Sara Gwenllian Jones's essay "The Sex Lives of Cult Television Characters" (2002).
For starters, I found myself nodding along with much of the overall argument, which is basically that slash isn't necessarily a resistant or oppositional reading of media texts, because many of the genre shows that fans gravitate toward are inherently queer, in their narrative dynamics if nothing else. Here's the logic: Heterosexuality is a problem for genre TV because heterosexuality comes with narrative baggage (marriage! domesticity! reproduction!) that is antithetical to genre TV, whose imperatives are "fantasy, adventure, and the sustained virtuality of an exotic fictional world" (126). As soon as a het couple moves beyond courtship, the narrative baggage of het romance starts to threaten the anti-realism of genre fiction. So heterosexual attraction usually either doesn't get resolved OR, if it is, it's then stymied in some way (see: Buffy/Angel, John/Aeryn).In contrast, Xena can share her life and, the series strongly suggests, a lesbian relationship with Gabrielle and still remain a nomadic warrior, forever moving from adventure to adventure.... [H]er relationship with Gabrielle endures because it does not trigger the same trajectory towards domestic stasis.... a trajectory that leads straight back to a material and mundane world, the erasure of which is the very thing that makes the cult series compelling. (126-27)
So, for Jones, slash pairings are really "extensions of cult television's own contra-straight logics": "successful primary relationships in cult television series... are either thwarted heterosexual relationships or same-sex pairings" (127).
You guys, I have so many thoughts about this! ...none of which are actually about slash, because I am contrary like that. Mostly I find myself thinking about the conversations I've had with vonniek about Oliver/Felicity (Arrow) and with
sdwolfpup about Castle/Beckett (Castle). The dynamic that Jones describes is why I don't need Oliver/Felicity to get together (and why I really don't want to read fic about the two of them settling down together). It's why I liked that Castle/Beckett did get together and it didn't change their dynamic, but also why I am frustrated that the writers are now spinning out their engagement by thwarting it; I would actually love to see more genre shows make a go of heterosexual romance that sidesteps the usual narrative baggage of hetero romance, and I think this particular show actually had a shot at doing that, except that apparently the writers are never going to bother, and I am about as tired of the show's lapse into predictable relationship-delay as I would be of a collapse into suburban domesticity. Obviously some viewers, including writers and readers of fic, do want to follow through on the domestic promise of het relationships (as Jones acknowledges), but for me that's not a satisfying extension of the show as it exists; I'm a canon girl at heart, and that kind of domestication of genre TV is actually further from canon than a lot of slash is -- which is exactly Jones's point.
I also find myself thinking about Glee and about how the dynamic isn't inherently different for same-sex and mixed-sex couples. Kurt and Blaine have been put through the same wringer of delayed consummation and narrative thwarting, because Glee is a genre show, too, and the breakup of S4 and the friction-followed-by-Blaine's-moving-out of S5 postponed domestic bliss in the service of artistic development: it's no accident that Kurt got into NYADA with a performance informed by the breakup. It occurs to me, too, that my own unexpectedly positive reaction to Blaine's proposal (seriously, I was so not happy about that prospect at the end of S4) had to do with the utter unreality of it, the over-the-top theatricality -- highlighted by the contrast to Burt's down-to-earth discussion of marriage with Kurt -- which launched the proposal out of the realm of mundane domestic reality and into something far more fabulous.
In conclusion, yay geekery. :D
Originally posted at Dreamwidth || Read
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For starters, I found myself nodding along with much of the overall argument, which is basically that slash isn't necessarily a resistant or oppositional reading of media texts, because many of the genre shows that fans gravitate toward are inherently queer, in their narrative dynamics if nothing else. Here's the logic: Heterosexuality is a problem for genre TV because heterosexuality comes with narrative baggage (marriage! domesticity! reproduction!) that is antithetical to genre TV, whose imperatives are "fantasy, adventure, and the sustained virtuality of an exotic fictional world" (126). As soon as a het couple moves beyond courtship, the narrative baggage of het romance starts to threaten the anti-realism of genre fiction. So heterosexual attraction usually either doesn't get resolved OR, if it is, it's then stymied in some way (see: Buffy/Angel, John/Aeryn).In contrast, Xena can share her life and, the series strongly suggests, a lesbian relationship with Gabrielle and still remain a nomadic warrior, forever moving from adventure to adventure.... [H]er relationship with Gabrielle endures because it does not trigger the same trajectory towards domestic stasis.... a trajectory that leads straight back to a material and mundane world, the erasure of which is the very thing that makes the cult series compelling. (126-27)
So, for Jones, slash pairings are really "extensions of cult television's own contra-straight logics": "successful primary relationships in cult television series... are either thwarted heterosexual relationships or same-sex pairings" (127).
You guys, I have so many thoughts about this! ...none of which are actually about slash, because I am contrary like that. Mostly I find myself thinking about the conversations I've had with vonniek about Oliver/Felicity (Arrow) and with
sdwolfpup about Castle/Beckett (Castle). The dynamic that Jones describes is why I don't need Oliver/Felicity to get together (and why I really don't want to read fic about the two of them settling down together). It's why I liked that Castle/Beckett did get together and it didn't change their dynamic, but also why I am frustrated that the writers are now spinning out their engagement by thwarting it; I would actually love to see more genre shows make a go of heterosexual romance that sidesteps the usual narrative baggage of hetero romance, and I think this particular show actually had a shot at doing that, except that apparently the writers are never going to bother, and I am about as tired of the show's lapse into predictable relationship-delay as I would be of a collapse into suburban domesticity. Obviously some viewers, including writers and readers of fic, do want to follow through on the domestic promise of het relationships (as Jones acknowledges), but for me that's not a satisfying extension of the show as it exists; I'm a canon girl at heart, and that kind of domestication of genre TV is actually further from canon than a lot of slash is -- which is exactly Jones's point.
I also find myself thinking about Glee and about how the dynamic isn't inherently different for same-sex and mixed-sex couples. Kurt and Blaine have been put through the same wringer of delayed consummation and narrative thwarting, because Glee is a genre show, too, and the breakup of S4 and the friction-followed-by-Blaine's-moving-out of S5 postponed domestic bliss in the service of artistic development: it's no accident that Kurt got into NYADA with a performance informed by the breakup. It occurs to me, too, that my own unexpectedly positive reaction to Blaine's proposal (seriously, I was so not happy about that prospect at the end of S4) had to do with the utter unreality of it, the over-the-top theatricality -- highlighted by the contrast to Burt's down-to-earth discussion of marriage with Kurt -- which launched the proposal out of the realm of mundane domestic reality and into something far more fabulous.
In conclusion, yay geekery. :D
Originally posted at Dreamwidth || Read
comments on Dreamwidth