on emo porn
Mary and I have started using this term in conversation a lot, and because I'm really off the beaten path of metafandom stuff lately, I'm not sure how widespread the phrase is. Anyway, I really like it, because it has a lot of relevance to slash and fanfic, but also to gen and canon, and to me it seems to describe...at least part of what people always talk about as "the slash aesthetic."
So what, I asked myself, *is* emo porn, exactly? And the best I could do at defining it is that emo porn is a climactic moment of high-pitch emotion that is completely focused and unmixed, normally but not always focused on the purity of two characters' feelings for one another. You know it not by what's said but by how it's deployed, the kind of reaction it's intended to elicit from the audience: a breathles, riveted, completely absorbing moment of emotional response. Other kinds of writing tries to make you feel something, to be sure, but emo porn's goal is to make you feel that *whatever you are feeling is everything* -- at least for that moment. It goes straight for the spine, and when it's done well, there's a kind of disconnected elation that results, where you feel like you've been mainlining some powerful emotion in its purest form. To elaborate, a few points of interest:
-- emo porn is not necessarily sexual
Obviously, people's interpretations of which characters are playing out a sexual dynamic varies, but I don't mean this simply in a text/subtext kind of way. I mean that while there is subtextual emo porn, where the emo porn gets read as standing in for or representing a perceived sexual tension, there is also emo porn that overtly takes place between lovers (Angel was particularly good at emo porn with his girlfriends: e.g. "I Will Rememer You" and "You're Welcome" -- different girlfriends, same emo porn!), and also emo porn that takes place in a manifestly non-sexual relationship, such as between parents and children (the example that springs to mind for me is Buffy and Giles at the end of "Passion," which, I realize there are such things as Buffy/Giles shippers, even though -- no, no, no, please stop making Buffy sleep with her dad, it's *awful*! -- but even given that it may be problematic as an example of nonsexual relationships, I wanted to give it a nod since it got edged off my Top Five below by another daddy/daughter emo porn moment). I've noticed that it's getting harder and harder to get fandom to agree that there is any such thing as a non-sexual relationship *g* (I thought about using Simon letting hiself be burned at the stake so River doesn't have to do it alone in "Safe" as my example but that's contested, too, in terms of sexual vs. nonsexual -- there's honestly no pleasing you people), but the point is that just because you identify something in canon as being emo porn does not automatically mean that you see, or want to see, anything sexual in the characters' relationship. I personally am a fan of platonic emo porn, as you'll notice when I get to my list.
-- emo porn is not necessarily predicated on trauma
Usually, yes. Usually it's a terrible moment of pain and loss, wherein the only thing they have to turn to for comfort is each other -- or worse, where they're denied each other's comfort and it's all, well, dreadful. But you can have happy emo porn, I swear! The end of the first run of the UK Queer as Folk, where Stuart and Vince reunite just with their eyes is awesome emo porn, and makes me ecstatically happy. If you prefer the US version, I'd say Justin's prom at the end of season 1 contains some prime emo porn, even before they start bringing the pain. There seems to be something in our collective brains that makes us more receptive to dark emo porn, while the happier stuff runs the risk of being dismissed as fluff or schmoop or whatever, but making you want to kill yourself at the same time it sends you into an ecstatic rapture of ohmygodthatwassoamazing! is not a functional part of the definition. It's just common.
-- emo porn is girly (corrollary: not everything slashy is also emo porn)
No, this is not me delving into the debate (such as it is) on "feminizing" characters. And I am mindful of the fact that most, if not all, of the emo porn I'm referencing from canoncial sources actually was invented by men, and I definitely don't want to produce a thesis statement at the moment regarding the definition of masculine and feminine. However, I think when male characters and writers indulge in emo porn, they are by definition stepping outside the paramaters of (blah blah disclaimercakes) what we generally consider man-like behavior. There are some characters and shows that use very little emo porn -- even some famously slashy characters and shows. These are guys who emote in a much more firmly guy-like way; their expressions of love and emotion are *totally real* and highly slashy, but they think of themselves as guy's guys, and they wouldn't be caught dead doing emo porn. In this category, I include Due South. The show is slashy as all hell, but things are signaled in quiet, sometimes slightly awkward, strong and pragmatic ways, with the exception of a single episode ("Victoria's Secret"), where it isn't the slash relationship that gets emo porned. I'm thinking of something like "North" or "Asylum," where the male characters' loyalty and devotion is unquestioned, but it isn't written, shot, or acted as an intensely, *expressively* emotional release. It's just known and accepted, without a lot of fuss. Supernatural skews the same way; there's been a small amount of emo porn (interestingly, IMO none of it very successful, because it doesn't suit the characters as well as the other style), but mostly they abide by the No Chick Flick Moments maxim, and we're simply left to know how much they love each other without consolidating it into the kind of purity and intensity emo porn requires. SGA is also a slashy show with a distinct lack of emo porn, which, thank God. I wouldn't trust these writers within a hundred yards of it.
It's in fanfiction, however, where emo porn really comes into its own. We are amazingly skilled at remixing source materials to create emo porn -- in fact, it's probably not a coincidence that some of the most popular fandoms are those like the above that specifically refuse to canon-ify emo porn. Suddenly, we all want to add it ourselves. I'm not up to compiling a list of my favorite fanfic emo porn; life is way too short, but I think it's not much of an overstatement to say that I often read fic actively looking for the emo porn, that that's my primary (if perhaps not my only) purpose in reading fanfic at all. In fact, I'm deeply tempted to make the impossibly contentious statement that slash is in some sense about creating emo porn, which is why some stories that seem textually gen can "feel like" slash, and some that feature gay sex can feel oddly *off* somehow, like they don't quite fit in with the rest of the genre (of course, I'm reminded by Mary that not everyone considers slash a "genre," so...yes. Duly noted.) Anyway, if I were to make that statement, everyone and their dog would immediately be like "So you're saying you don't consider blah bliddy blah slash?" and I would be like, "Um, well, yes, I do, but, so, the thing, uh..." and look quite foolish, which is why I'm resisting the temptation.
And now that I've offered up this totally subjective and probably not very useful primer on What I Mean When I Say Emo Porn, just for fun, my five favorite emo porn moments on television, in no particular order.
1) Wiseguy, the "Nights in White Satin" scene. If you remember this show, you know exactly what I mean and are totally on board with me. If you don't, you probably wouldn't believe me if I described it to you. I consider this the gold standard to which all emo porn aspires.
2) The Yellow Crayon scenes in "Grave," season 6 BtVS, Willow & Xander. Never having been much of a W/X shipper, this makes an excellent example of how a person can view emo porn as reflecting a particularly intense friendship rather than a sublimated romance.
3) Jim and Blair's fight in "Warriors," The Sentinel. This show sort of walked the line between indulging in emo porn and operating out of that Guy Romance model I alluded to above. This scene, to me, crosses that line -- something about their physicality, how close they stand, how they try to communicate how serious they are about what they're saying through touches that are almost violent but actually not really - it's more like they're trying to physically *bring* one another, push or pull them, toward seeing things their way, and I think it's a perfect reflection of how connected Jim and Blair are even when they argue. Every time I see even the half-second clip from it that ran in the opening credits, I get a little shivery.
4) Keith's "If they take you away..." scene in "Donut Run," Veronica Mars. Any scene with the words "I would not survive without you" in the actual dialogue is, ipso facto, emo porn. This is such a great episode, and even as much as I adore him, I sometimes forget, Enrico can really act.
5) "Walking in Memphis," The X-Files, "Postmodern Prometheus." See, I put a happy one on the list! This was great emo porn and an effective scene in general because of its resonance both for shippers and non-shippers. It doesn't matter. This scene does not give a damn if Mulder and Scully ever have sex, or secretly want to, or if you the viewer want them to. At that moment, they're "together" in the sense of being on the same page, of being glad and grateful for each other, of simply and overtly taking enormous pleasure in each other's company. It's the defining Mulder/Scully scene for me for the whole series.
Thanks for indulging me by reading this far! If you want to include shining examples of emo porn as you see it in the comments, please do! I'm interested.
So what, I asked myself, *is* emo porn, exactly? And the best I could do at defining it is that emo porn is a climactic moment of high-pitch emotion that is completely focused and unmixed, normally but not always focused on the purity of two characters' feelings for one another. You know it not by what's said but by how it's deployed, the kind of reaction it's intended to elicit from the audience: a breathles, riveted, completely absorbing moment of emotional response. Other kinds of writing tries to make you feel something, to be sure, but emo porn's goal is to make you feel that *whatever you are feeling is everything* -- at least for that moment. It goes straight for the spine, and when it's done well, there's a kind of disconnected elation that results, where you feel like you've been mainlining some powerful emotion in its purest form. To elaborate, a few points of interest:
-- emo porn is not necessarily sexual
Obviously, people's interpretations of which characters are playing out a sexual dynamic varies, but I don't mean this simply in a text/subtext kind of way. I mean that while there is subtextual emo porn, where the emo porn gets read as standing in for or representing a perceived sexual tension, there is also emo porn that overtly takes place between lovers (Angel was particularly good at emo porn with his girlfriends: e.g. "I Will Rememer You" and "You're Welcome" -- different girlfriends, same emo porn!), and also emo porn that takes place in a manifestly non-sexual relationship, such as between parents and children (the example that springs to mind for me is Buffy and Giles at the end of "Passion," which, I realize there are such things as Buffy/Giles shippers, even though -- no, no, no, please stop making Buffy sleep with her dad, it's *awful*! -- but even given that it may be problematic as an example of nonsexual relationships, I wanted to give it a nod since it got edged off my Top Five below by another daddy/daughter emo porn moment). I've noticed that it's getting harder and harder to get fandom to agree that there is any such thing as a non-sexual relationship *g* (I thought about using Simon letting hiself be burned at the stake so River doesn't have to do it alone in "Safe" as my example but that's contested, too, in terms of sexual vs. nonsexual -- there's honestly no pleasing you people), but the point is that just because you identify something in canon as being emo porn does not automatically mean that you see, or want to see, anything sexual in the characters' relationship. I personally am a fan of platonic emo porn, as you'll notice when I get to my list.
-- emo porn is not necessarily predicated on trauma
Usually, yes. Usually it's a terrible moment of pain and loss, wherein the only thing they have to turn to for comfort is each other -- or worse, where they're denied each other's comfort and it's all, well, dreadful. But you can have happy emo porn, I swear! The end of the first run of the UK Queer as Folk, where Stuart and Vince reunite just with their eyes is awesome emo porn, and makes me ecstatically happy. If you prefer the US version, I'd say Justin's prom at the end of season 1 contains some prime emo porn, even before they start bringing the pain. There seems to be something in our collective brains that makes us more receptive to dark emo porn, while the happier stuff runs the risk of being dismissed as fluff or schmoop or whatever, but making you want to kill yourself at the same time it sends you into an ecstatic rapture of ohmygodthatwassoamazing! is not a functional part of the definition. It's just common.
-- emo porn is girly (corrollary: not everything slashy is also emo porn)
No, this is not me delving into the debate (such as it is) on "feminizing" characters. And I am mindful of the fact that most, if not all, of the emo porn I'm referencing from canoncial sources actually was invented by men, and I definitely don't want to produce a thesis statement at the moment regarding the definition of masculine and feminine. However, I think when male characters and writers indulge in emo porn, they are by definition stepping outside the paramaters of (blah blah disclaimercakes) what we generally consider man-like behavior. There are some characters and shows that use very little emo porn -- even some famously slashy characters and shows. These are guys who emote in a much more firmly guy-like way; their expressions of love and emotion are *totally real* and highly slashy, but they think of themselves as guy's guys, and they wouldn't be caught dead doing emo porn. In this category, I include Due South. The show is slashy as all hell, but things are signaled in quiet, sometimes slightly awkward, strong and pragmatic ways, with the exception of a single episode ("Victoria's Secret"), where it isn't the slash relationship that gets emo porned. I'm thinking of something like "North" or "Asylum," where the male characters' loyalty and devotion is unquestioned, but it isn't written, shot, or acted as an intensely, *expressively* emotional release. It's just known and accepted, without a lot of fuss. Supernatural skews the same way; there's been a small amount of emo porn (interestingly, IMO none of it very successful, because it doesn't suit the characters as well as the other style), but mostly they abide by the No Chick Flick Moments maxim, and we're simply left to know how much they love each other without consolidating it into the kind of purity and intensity emo porn requires. SGA is also a slashy show with a distinct lack of emo porn, which, thank God. I wouldn't trust these writers within a hundred yards of it.
It's in fanfiction, however, where emo porn really comes into its own. We are amazingly skilled at remixing source materials to create emo porn -- in fact, it's probably not a coincidence that some of the most popular fandoms are those like the above that specifically refuse to canon-ify emo porn. Suddenly, we all want to add it ourselves. I'm not up to compiling a list of my favorite fanfic emo porn; life is way too short, but I think it's not much of an overstatement to say that I often read fic actively looking for the emo porn, that that's my primary (if perhaps not my only) purpose in reading fanfic at all. In fact, I'm deeply tempted to make the impossibly contentious statement that slash is in some sense about creating emo porn, which is why some stories that seem textually gen can "feel like" slash, and some that feature gay sex can feel oddly *off* somehow, like they don't quite fit in with the rest of the genre (of course, I'm reminded by Mary that not everyone considers slash a "genre," so...yes. Duly noted.) Anyway, if I were to make that statement, everyone and their dog would immediately be like "So you're saying you don't consider blah bliddy blah slash?" and I would be like, "Um, well, yes, I do, but, so, the thing, uh..." and look quite foolish, which is why I'm resisting the temptation.
And now that I've offered up this totally subjective and probably not very useful primer on What I Mean When I Say Emo Porn, just for fun, my five favorite emo porn moments on television, in no particular order.
1) Wiseguy, the "Nights in White Satin" scene. If you remember this show, you know exactly what I mean and are totally on board with me. If you don't, you probably wouldn't believe me if I described it to you. I consider this the gold standard to which all emo porn aspires.
2) The Yellow Crayon scenes in "Grave," season 6 BtVS, Willow & Xander. Never having been much of a W/X shipper, this makes an excellent example of how a person can view emo porn as reflecting a particularly intense friendship rather than a sublimated romance.
3) Jim and Blair's fight in "Warriors," The Sentinel. This show sort of walked the line between indulging in emo porn and operating out of that Guy Romance model I alluded to above. This scene, to me, crosses that line -- something about their physicality, how close they stand, how they try to communicate how serious they are about what they're saying through touches that are almost violent but actually not really - it's more like they're trying to physically *bring* one another, push or pull them, toward seeing things their way, and I think it's a perfect reflection of how connected Jim and Blair are even when they argue. Every time I see even the half-second clip from it that ran in the opening credits, I get a little shivery.
4) Keith's "If they take you away..." scene in "Donut Run," Veronica Mars. Any scene with the words "I would not survive without you" in the actual dialogue is, ipso facto, emo porn. This is such a great episode, and even as much as I adore him, I sometimes forget, Enrico can really act.
5) "Walking in Memphis," The X-Files, "Postmodern Prometheus." See, I put a happy one on the list! This was great emo porn and an effective scene in general because of its resonance both for shippers and non-shippers. It doesn't matter. This scene does not give a damn if Mulder and Scully ever have sex, or secretly want to, or if you the viewer want them to. At that moment, they're "together" in the sense of being on the same page, of being glad and grateful for each other, of simply and overtly taking enormous pleasure in each other's company. It's the defining Mulder/Scully scene for me for the whole series.
Thanks for indulging me by reading this far! If you want to include shining examples of emo porn as you see it in the comments, please do! I'm interested.