Gloria by sweetestdrain, Commentary by zephyrprince
Title: Gloria
Vidder: sweetestdrain
Fandom: Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles
Song: Patti Smith's "Gloria"
Link: http://sweetestdrain.livejournal.com/211632.html
Commentary: zephyrprince
I’ll start by saying that this is one of my favorite vids for many reasons. I have always liked this song and particularly this version and though I was a late comer to T:SCC, starting it just after the announcement during the second season that it would be canceled, I really love the series and this ship so I have undertaken to do this as my third vid commentary. I have deep gratitude to sweetestdrain for creating this piece, for giving me permission to write this, and for generally being awesome. For anyone not familiar with the show or the fandom, here a few relevant links:
Wikipedia: Terminator franchise
Wikipedia: Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles
Crack_Van: Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles fandom overview
Crack_Van: Terminator tag
Crack_Van: Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles tag
http://community.livejournal.com/sarahcameron/profile
http://community.livejournal.com/terminator_vids/ (this community is not terribly active but I wish it were)
Song Choice
As I mentioned, I love this song generally, but I find it particularly fun for this fandom and pairing for two reasons. First of all, it’s crucial to know that this is not the original “Gloria.” The song was originally written and recorded by Van Morrison. The version that sweetestdrain uses here is a cover by Patti Smith that keeps most of the original lyrics intact. This has the interesting effect of messing with the heterosexuality of the romantic narrative presented in the lyrics, making it particularly appropriate for Sarah/Cameron.
It always piques my interest when a vidder decides to use a non-standard version of a song because, of course, it’s always for a good reason that’s fun to puzzle over (another example that stands out in my mind is absolutedestiny’s Gold Digger).
In this case I don’t think it’s just because of the femme-slashy possibilities embedded in a woman singing about this woman, Gloria, who clearly represents Cameron. I also think that Patti Smith’s rough vocal tone is very specifically reminiscent of the character of Sarah and the tribulations of the life that has shaped her. Also, call me crazy, but I think she kind of looks and sounds like Sarah.
Narrative
We can read the general narrative of this vid as follows.
The opening shots of Gloria are classically filmic with their environmental establishment. We find ourselves in the desert, on the open road of Sarah and John’s life on the run.
At the seventh second as Patti begins to sing, we are given a reverse shot of Sarah, which has the dual effect of identifying her with the first-person musical voice as well as suturing us onto her as the person whose vision we have already been given.
We see her young son through her eyes followed by a reverse shot of her concerned expression, cueing us into her and consequently our own anxieties about him.
But then at twenty-six seconds our point of view changes and we are faded into a vision of Sarah doing pull ups on the other side of a fence from the source of our look as the musical voice describes her body as “thick” and “hard as stone,” which reminded me of the idea of stone butch.
For the first minute and a half, the character of Sarah is considered broadly - her life, the challenges she faces, and the role of her body within those. Cameron enters, obscured, at 1:19 and more obviously by 1:24.
At a 1:30, the plot of the vid is revealed when Smith sings “Oh she looks so good” as we see Cameron writhing under her adversary, followed by a reverse shot establishing Sarah as the looker as well as the nature of her queer desire.
Following this revelatory moment, Sarah’s tribulations are reconsidered with the addition of her erotic interest, who is shown helping her both in physically tangible ways and in terms of visual pleasure.
By the end of the fourth minute, the rising tension is finally satisfied as their sexual relationship is made explicit.
This is followed by a conclusion and credits.
My Take
I particularly love that this vid manages to pull off a full blown sex scene. This is aided, of course, by the number of scenes the creators filmed in which Cameron is shown to lack normal human modesty, which, of course, plays into the overall theme of her identity struggle, but also, of course, was to appeal to heterosexual male viewers. What sweetestdrain reminds us, however, is how those moments can function in multiple ways and have a broader appeal such as in a queer female context.
I also like how the sex scene includes images of pain and wincing. This brings up something I feel strongly about for any romance involving Sarah, which is that even in these small moments in which we might see Sarah finding happiness, they are always mixed with the pain and suffering of her life.
Finally, I think that sweetestdrain doesn’t give us a clear indication of whether she means for the pairing here to be purely lustful or if she frames it as a first-time story that leads into the establishment of a relationship. I think both are interesting for the ship, but my interpretation is more along the lines of the latter because of this image, in particular, which I think powerfully frames the two of them together as a team that’s bonded in a whole new way:
Ironically, of course, in the scene from which this image was plucked, Sarah is actually irritated with Cameron, which of course is the magic of vidding.
The Ship
The last thing I want to say here veers off from sweetestdrain’s work just slightly to consider it within the broader context of the fandom and this ship. One of the things that I always ask myself when I get interested in a pairing that is non-canon is why isn’t this presented on television (or in the movies or books or whatever). Or maybe, more precisely, why couldn’t it be? Of course in this case there’s the sort of obvious go-to answer of queer female erasure on television (with few exceptions many of which are geared towards a straight male mass audience anyway), but one thing that I also thing is interesting to explore here is the age difference.
Gayle Rubin identifies this problem of age difference in her 1984 essay, “Thinking Sex,” in which she scrutinizes socially-sanctioned and renegade sexualities.
In both of the above figures from Rubin’s writing (color/emphasis mine), Rubin locates cross-generational sex in the socially censored regions of the sexual geography of our culture, making this even more subversive.
I know, of course, that Cameron’s can be thought about a little bit differently since she’s an android, but I think the point stands in terms of how they’re read by a less invested, non-fan invested audience.
Vidder: sweetestdrain
Fandom: Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles
Song: Patti Smith's "Gloria"
Link: http://sweetestdrain.livejournal.com/211632.html
Commentary: zephyrprince
I’ll start by saying that this is one of my favorite vids for many reasons. I have always liked this song and particularly this version and though I was a late comer to T:SCC, starting it just after the announcement during the second season that it would be canceled, I really love the series and this ship so I have undertaken to do this as my third vid commentary. I have deep gratitude to sweetestdrain for creating this piece, for giving me permission to write this, and for generally being awesome. For anyone not familiar with the show or the fandom, here a few relevant links:
Wikipedia: Terminator franchise
Wikipedia: Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles
Crack_Van: Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles fandom overview
Crack_Van: Terminator tag
Crack_Van: Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles tag
http://community.livejournal.com/sarahcameron/profile
http://community.livejournal.com/terminator_vids/ (this community is not terribly active but I wish it were)
Song Choice
As I mentioned, I love this song generally, but I find it particularly fun for this fandom and pairing for two reasons. First of all, it’s crucial to know that this is not the original “Gloria.” The song was originally written and recorded by Van Morrison. The version that sweetestdrain uses here is a cover by Patti Smith that keeps most of the original lyrics intact. This has the interesting effect of messing with the heterosexuality of the romantic narrative presented in the lyrics, making it particularly appropriate for Sarah/Cameron.
It always piques my interest when a vidder decides to use a non-standard version of a song because, of course, it’s always for a good reason that’s fun to puzzle over (another example that stands out in my mind is absolutedestiny’s Gold Digger).
In this case I don’t think it’s just because of the femme-slashy possibilities embedded in a woman singing about this woman, Gloria, who clearly represents Cameron. I also think that Patti Smith’s rough vocal tone is very specifically reminiscent of the character of Sarah and the tribulations of the life that has shaped her. Also, call me crazy, but I think she kind of looks and sounds like Sarah.
Narrative
We can read the general narrative of this vid as follows.
The opening shots of Gloria are classically filmic with their environmental establishment. We find ourselves in the desert, on the open road of Sarah and John’s life on the run.
At the seventh second as Patti begins to sing, we are given a reverse shot of Sarah, which has the dual effect of identifying her with the first-person musical voice as well as suturing us onto her as the person whose vision we have already been given.
We see her young son through her eyes followed by a reverse shot of her concerned expression, cueing us into her and consequently our own anxieties about him.
But then at twenty-six seconds our point of view changes and we are faded into a vision of Sarah doing pull ups on the other side of a fence from the source of our look as the musical voice describes her body as “thick” and “hard as stone,” which reminded me of the idea of stone butch.
For the first minute and a half, the character of Sarah is considered broadly - her life, the challenges she faces, and the role of her body within those. Cameron enters, obscured, at 1:19 and more obviously by 1:24.
At a 1:30, the plot of the vid is revealed when Smith sings “Oh she looks so good” as we see Cameron writhing under her adversary, followed by a reverse shot establishing Sarah as the looker as well as the nature of her queer desire.
Following this revelatory moment, Sarah’s tribulations are reconsidered with the addition of her erotic interest, who is shown helping her both in physically tangible ways and in terms of visual pleasure.
By the end of the fourth minute, the rising tension is finally satisfied as their sexual relationship is made explicit.
This is followed by a conclusion and credits.
My Take
I particularly love that this vid manages to pull off a full blown sex scene. This is aided, of course, by the number of scenes the creators filmed in which Cameron is shown to lack normal human modesty, which, of course, plays into the overall theme of her identity struggle, but also, of course, was to appeal to heterosexual male viewers. What sweetestdrain reminds us, however, is how those moments can function in multiple ways and have a broader appeal such as in a queer female context.
I also like how the sex scene includes images of pain and wincing. This brings up something I feel strongly about for any romance involving Sarah, which is that even in these small moments in which we might see Sarah finding happiness, they are always mixed with the pain and suffering of her life.
Finally, I think that sweetestdrain doesn’t give us a clear indication of whether she means for the pairing here to be purely lustful or if she frames it as a first-time story that leads into the establishment of a relationship. I think both are interesting for the ship, but my interpretation is more along the lines of the latter because of this image, in particular, which I think powerfully frames the two of them together as a team that’s bonded in a whole new way:
Ironically, of course, in the scene from which this image was plucked, Sarah is actually irritated with Cameron, which of course is the magic of vidding.
The Ship
The last thing I want to say here veers off from sweetestdrain’s work just slightly to consider it within the broader context of the fandom and this ship. One of the things that I always ask myself when I get interested in a pairing that is non-canon is why isn’t this presented on television (or in the movies or books or whatever). Or maybe, more precisely, why couldn’t it be? Of course in this case there’s the sort of obvious go-to answer of queer female erasure on television (with few exceptions many of which are geared towards a straight male mass audience anyway), but one thing that I also thing is interesting to explore here is the age difference.
Gayle Rubin identifies this problem of age difference in her 1984 essay, “Thinking Sex,” in which she scrutinizes socially-sanctioned and renegade sexualities.
In both of the above figures from Rubin’s writing (color/emphasis mine), Rubin locates cross-generational sex in the socially censored regions of the sexual geography of our culture, making this even more subversive.
I know, of course, that Cameron’s can be thought about a little bit differently since she’s an android, but I think the point stands in terms of how they’re read by a less invested, non-fan invested audience.