The generational gap in fandom
I've had some thoughts on age and gender relations in fandom percolating in my head for a while now. I've said a few of these things before in relation to other rants, but these are specifically related to the phenomenon of de-aging and age relations. These thoughts - with a bit of enumeration in the vain hope that it'll make them make logical sense - are as follows:
1. In many fandoms, slash occurs.
2. In some of these slashy fandoms, slash occurs between people with an age-gap.
3. In a substantial volume of the fic in such age-gap slashy fandoms, the age-gap is exaggerated to significant proportions by the process of de-aging the younger guy, resulting in what I will call a generational gap.
To illustrate:
Mulder and Skinner (The X-Files) are maybe 10 years apart in age, if that. At the start of the series, I'd mentally peg Skinner at about mid-forties, and Mulder at mid-thirties. Yet, frequently, the relationship is written as crossing an insurmountable gap, and Skinner is 'the man', whereas Mulder is 'the boy'.
Now. There is a legitimate power imbalance in this set-up: Skinner is Mulder's superior, and he had a welath of experience (e.g. Vietnam) that Mulder does not have. However, Mulder is in his 30s, and a successful agent in a immensely competitive environment. He is accomplished, and has several degrees. He is no way, shape or form, a 'boy' who is incapable of reacting to gunfire with anything other that fear, or to having sex without birsting into tears. Yet he is written as such.
There might be several reasons for this:
1. Authorial shortcuts.
It's difficult to write same-sex sex scenes without wanting to beat your head against the wall at the veritable plethora of pronouns that suddenly take up space in your head. 'He did this' and 'he did this' make for quite difficult reading, which is why writers starting out in slash frequently grope for adjectives and other ways of describing their objets d'amour. Thus:
"The blond gasped."
"The dark-haired man grinned."
"The technician smiled."
"The older man sighed."
"The boy frowned."
All of these various descriptions result in an orgy, of course, and reading fic where the writer has some peculiar ideas about the physical apperance of their characters is very confusing. (For instance: brown hair? Does not mean that someone is blonde. No, not even a little bit. Not even if they're having sex with a dark-haired person.)
This, however, does not explain the other characteristics of the generational gap, which is to de-age the mental acumen and emotional maturity of the younger man in addition to describing him as a boy.
*
2. Mental shortcuts
Here's where we get to the meat of my argument. I believe - and feel free of disagree - that all too often the creation of the man / boy binary in the slash pairing (even in cases where such an age difference is trivial) maps across several sets of other binaries:
Older / younger
Powerful / powerless
Active / passive
Masculine / feminine
Male / female
By 'map across' I do not mean that they are directly equivalent to each of the above binary sets, but merely that there is a link between them that allows a certain amount of translation to occur. Take the popularity of teacher/student relationships in het porn, for instance: this is a classic case where porn exaggerates the societal roles mapped out above, where the male teacher - older, with all of the power - cavorts with his young, female student who is entirely at his mercy. Even when the student is male, keeping everything else the same, he is put in the feminine, traditionally female position of helpless passivity.
*
My argument is two-fold:
1. That writers use mental short-cuts of older/younger (with a generational gap) to write slash because it gives them access to societal codes that transmit a great deal of social information regarding the relationship. There is a familiar, worn-down path for the story/romance to follow, as it is the 'traditional' romance.
For instance:
a) Mulder is attracted to Skinner, yet is intimidated by Skinner's height/broadness/power.
b) Mulder is injured/threatened in some way that forces him to rely on Skinner's help.
c) Skinner saves Mulder, instantly forging a bond between them.
d) Mulder is ill and needs to be naked, or he has to sleep in the same bed as Skinner.
e) They have sex.
f) Mulder freaks out.
g) Skinner comes through and is reliable and dependable and all the rest of it.
h) They live happily ever after.
You can replace the above names with Blake and Avon(Blake's 7) Jack and Daniel (SG-1), or even (in some terrifying cases) Angel and Spike(Buffyverse). Or - here's the money-shot - with Annabelle and Count Vittorio, read the next thrilling installment of Barbara Cartland's 'Most Pointless Romance!'.
This 'romance novel' plot requires two social types of character: the tall, older, powerful man, and the young, small, willowy, innocent girl.
But why would a writer use a romance novel plot that requires such mangling of characterisation?
-----
2. The characterisation in slash pairings depends partly upon the age and social background of the fandom writers. This is hardly news, of course. However, some fandoms where the younger guy has a higher-than-average chance of being feminised include:
1. Man from UNCLE (1960s)
2. Blake's 7 (1980s)
3. X-Files (1990s)
OK, but what does that tell us? Let's add another one:
4. Star Trek (1960s)
BUT only for the first twenty years or so of fandom.
The same applies for the above listed fandoms: the earlier stuff has a much greater number of feminised younger men than the later stuff. Perhaps I shouldn't be surprised at this, as all writers work with what they have, and the writers back then didn't exactly have a visible model of same-sex relationships to base their work on.
-----
3. Throw in some speculation on the age of the fandom writers as well, why not?
a) I'd speculate that the earlier writers in the above fandoms were primarily aged 35 - 60. Some limited empirical evidence bears this out.
b) The new writers that sprang up since the shows were first screened are thus a mixture of second generation fans, who grew up with a wider range of social models, and the older, more mature writers of yesteryear.
c) The third generation of internet-savvy fans (moving on from fanzines into lj and the like) have become younger and younger, through the introduction of DVDs. Their writing may not be as technically proficient, but their social modelling is a lot more advanced.
The three generations mingle, and positive externalities - in the form of improved writing - is the result. I'd say that the above is the case with Star Trek, where I have been reading the earliest fanzines, the middling years of mailing lists, and the new, instant- gratification of online fic. Some of it is dross, true, but an increasing amount is tackling interesting issues. Fandom is evolving.
The above model doesn't work in the case of a fandom like Buffy. Why not? We still see Spike being written as a boy, after all. In the case of new fandoms, I'd speculate that the model is mostly based around c), the internet-savvy fans, with these sub-sets:
i) older writers from other fandoms
ii) young teens cutting their writing teeth (who tend to start out in het canon relationships as a general rule)
iii) young professionals dabbling in a bit of counter-culture.
Oddly enough, it is this third option - the 20-50 age group - that seems to encompass most of the writers in fandom today. It's not that the other writers stopped writing, necessarily, it's that the internet allowed a whole bunch of people that wouldn't necessarily be writing to make their work accessible. The fandom base of writers has thus expanded exponentially. These new writers tend to be (I'm running out of bullet formats!!):
A. educated to a high level (degree level or above)
B. have spending money (enough to source copies of the fandom, rather than relying on memory)
C. be tech-savvy (again, to source, or to communicate).
That, to me, reads as an entirely different social group than the writers of yesteryear.
----
4. So. Some conclusions:
a) there is still a significant hold-over of the use of age as a feminising technique in slash. This is a result of the lingering influence of these earlier writers, who pioneered the earliest fandom work and the concept of slash fiction. I'm not saying that this influence is necessarily conscious, but this is what you'll find if you search for these fics as background reading. In some cases, it's all you'll find, so how can we blame new writers for emulating the classic fics out there?
b) while this age-gap mental short-cut is on its way out, it's still lingering in fandoms where it was once particularly strong as a writing technique. In the newer fandoms, it is more rarely introduced, and then it is by less experienced writers who tend to more beyond it relatively quickly.
c) Yet, this has not resulted in an examination of the age-gaps and how they inform character relationships. The power difference is looked at, of course, but the experience and knowledge is rarely taken into account. Further, it is always assumed that the older person is automatically the more powerful one, but there are cases where this might not be true. One example of a transgressive relationship that doesn't receive nearly as much attention as it should is Buffy/Giles, which takes the established rules and turns them on their head.
(That said, Buffy is exempt from the normal societal morality rules by virtue of her extra-human status. She is, however, still figured as the social feminine, particularly through her numerous deaths, so there is something to this.)
I can't think of a particular 'ship where the age-gap rules are turned on their head in any significant volume within the fandom. Oh, you find the odd 'Harry has the power, Remus doesn't' fic but, generally, if there's an older and a younger person, the older one is somehow seems as more powerful and in charge.
d) Given the above, chan, in my head at least, figures as the ultimate passive feminine.
*
Thoughts? Comments? Kitchen utensils?
1. In many fandoms, slash occurs.
2. In some of these slashy fandoms, slash occurs between people with an age-gap.
3. In a substantial volume of the fic in such age-gap slashy fandoms, the age-gap is exaggerated to significant proportions by the process of de-aging the younger guy, resulting in what I will call a generational gap.
To illustrate:
Mulder and Skinner (The X-Files) are maybe 10 years apart in age, if that. At the start of the series, I'd mentally peg Skinner at about mid-forties, and Mulder at mid-thirties. Yet, frequently, the relationship is written as crossing an insurmountable gap, and Skinner is 'the man', whereas Mulder is 'the boy'.
Now. There is a legitimate power imbalance in this set-up: Skinner is Mulder's superior, and he had a welath of experience (e.g. Vietnam) that Mulder does not have. However, Mulder is in his 30s, and a successful agent in a immensely competitive environment. He is accomplished, and has several degrees. He is no way, shape or form, a 'boy' who is incapable of reacting to gunfire with anything other that fear, or to having sex without birsting into tears. Yet he is written as such.
There might be several reasons for this:
1. Authorial shortcuts.
It's difficult to write same-sex sex scenes without wanting to beat your head against the wall at the veritable plethora of pronouns that suddenly take up space in your head. 'He did this' and 'he did this' make for quite difficult reading, which is why writers starting out in slash frequently grope for adjectives and other ways of describing their objets d'amour. Thus:
"The blond gasped."
"The dark-haired man grinned."
"The technician smiled."
"The older man sighed."
"The boy frowned."
All of these various descriptions result in an orgy, of course, and reading fic where the writer has some peculiar ideas about the physical apperance of their characters is very confusing. (For instance: brown hair? Does not mean that someone is blonde. No, not even a little bit. Not even if they're having sex with a dark-haired person.)
This, however, does not explain the other characteristics of the generational gap, which is to de-age the mental acumen and emotional maturity of the younger man in addition to describing him as a boy.
*
2. Mental shortcuts
Here's where we get to the meat of my argument. I believe - and feel free of disagree - that all too often the creation of the man / boy binary in the slash pairing (even in cases where such an age difference is trivial) maps across several sets of other binaries:
Older / younger
Powerful / powerless
Active / passive
Masculine / feminine
Male / female
By 'map across' I do not mean that they are directly equivalent to each of the above binary sets, but merely that there is a link between them that allows a certain amount of translation to occur. Take the popularity of teacher/student relationships in het porn, for instance: this is a classic case where porn exaggerates the societal roles mapped out above, where the male teacher - older, with all of the power - cavorts with his young, female student who is entirely at his mercy. Even when the student is male, keeping everything else the same, he is put in the feminine, traditionally female position of helpless passivity.
*
My argument is two-fold:
1. That writers use mental short-cuts of older/younger (with a generational gap) to write slash because it gives them access to societal codes that transmit a great deal of social information regarding the relationship. There is a familiar, worn-down path for the story/romance to follow, as it is the 'traditional' romance.
For instance:
a) Mulder is attracted to Skinner, yet is intimidated by Skinner's height/broadness/power.
b) Mulder is injured/threatened in some way that forces him to rely on Skinner's help.
c) Skinner saves Mulder, instantly forging a bond between them.
d) Mulder is ill and needs to be naked, or he has to sleep in the same bed as Skinner.
e) They have sex.
f) Mulder freaks out.
g) Skinner comes through and is reliable and dependable and all the rest of it.
h) They live happily ever after.
You can replace the above names with Blake and Avon(Blake's 7) Jack and Daniel (SG-1), or even (in some terrifying cases) Angel and Spike(Buffyverse). Or - here's the money-shot - with Annabelle and Count Vittorio, read the next thrilling installment of Barbara Cartland's 'Most Pointless Romance!'.
This 'romance novel' plot requires two social types of character: the tall, older, powerful man, and the young, small, willowy, innocent girl.
But why would a writer use a romance novel plot that requires such mangling of characterisation?
-----
2. The characterisation in slash pairings depends partly upon the age and social background of the fandom writers. This is hardly news, of course. However, some fandoms where the younger guy has a higher-than-average chance of being feminised include:
1. Man from UNCLE (1960s)
2. Blake's 7 (1980s)
3. X-Files (1990s)
OK, but what does that tell us? Let's add another one:
4. Star Trek (1960s)
BUT only for the first twenty years or so of fandom.
The same applies for the above listed fandoms: the earlier stuff has a much greater number of feminised younger men than the later stuff. Perhaps I shouldn't be surprised at this, as all writers work with what they have, and the writers back then didn't exactly have a visible model of same-sex relationships to base their work on.
-----
3. Throw in some speculation on the age of the fandom writers as well, why not?
a) I'd speculate that the earlier writers in the above fandoms were primarily aged 35 - 60. Some limited empirical evidence bears this out.
b) The new writers that sprang up since the shows were first screened are thus a mixture of second generation fans, who grew up with a wider range of social models, and the older, more mature writers of yesteryear.
c) The third generation of internet-savvy fans (moving on from fanzines into lj and the like) have become younger and younger, through the introduction of DVDs. Their writing may not be as technically proficient, but their social modelling is a lot more advanced.
The three generations mingle, and positive externalities - in the form of improved writing - is the result. I'd say that the above is the case with Star Trek, where I have been reading the earliest fanzines, the middling years of mailing lists, and the new, instant- gratification of online fic. Some of it is dross, true, but an increasing amount is tackling interesting issues. Fandom is evolving.
The above model doesn't work in the case of a fandom like Buffy. Why not? We still see Spike being written as a boy, after all. In the case of new fandoms, I'd speculate that the model is mostly based around c), the internet-savvy fans, with these sub-sets:
i) older writers from other fandoms
ii) young teens cutting their writing teeth (who tend to start out in het canon relationships as a general rule)
iii) young professionals dabbling in a bit of counter-culture.
Oddly enough, it is this third option - the 20-50 age group - that seems to encompass most of the writers in fandom today. It's not that the other writers stopped writing, necessarily, it's that the internet allowed a whole bunch of people that wouldn't necessarily be writing to make their work accessible. The fandom base of writers has thus expanded exponentially. These new writers tend to be (I'm running out of bullet formats!!):
A. educated to a high level (degree level or above)
B. have spending money (enough to source copies of the fandom, rather than relying on memory)
C. be tech-savvy (again, to source, or to communicate).
That, to me, reads as an entirely different social group than the writers of yesteryear.
----
4. So. Some conclusions:
a) there is still a significant hold-over of the use of age as a feminising technique in slash. This is a result of the lingering influence of these earlier writers, who pioneered the earliest fandom work and the concept of slash fiction. I'm not saying that this influence is necessarily conscious, but this is what you'll find if you search for these fics as background reading. In some cases, it's all you'll find, so how can we blame new writers for emulating the classic fics out there?
b) while this age-gap mental short-cut is on its way out, it's still lingering in fandoms where it was once particularly strong as a writing technique. In the newer fandoms, it is more rarely introduced, and then it is by less experienced writers who tend to more beyond it relatively quickly.
c) Yet, this has not resulted in an examination of the age-gaps and how they inform character relationships. The power difference is looked at, of course, but the experience and knowledge is rarely taken into account. Further, it is always assumed that the older person is automatically the more powerful one, but there are cases where this might not be true. One example of a transgressive relationship that doesn't receive nearly as much attention as it should is Buffy/Giles, which takes the established rules and turns them on their head.
(That said, Buffy is exempt from the normal societal morality rules by virtue of her extra-human status. She is, however, still figured as the social feminine, particularly through her numerous deaths, so there is something to this.)
I can't think of a particular 'ship where the age-gap rules are turned on their head in any significant volume within the fandom. Oh, you find the odd 'Harry has the power, Remus doesn't' fic but, generally, if there's an older and a younger person, the older one is somehow seems as more powerful and in charge.
d) Given the above, chan, in my head at least, figures as the ultimate passive feminine.
*
Thoughts? Comments? Kitchen utensils?