(![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
elspethdixon Oct. 1st, 2009 06:10 pm)
elspethdixon Oct. 1st, 2009 06:10 pm)Switching gears from OMG No to Right On!
franticsga has a post about slash and shame and why there's such a stigma about telling show creators what we want.
And I quote:
Whenever a fan asks that inevitable question-- are we ever going to see Merlin's and Arthur's love story actually play out on-screen?-- I have a visceral reaction of embarrassment. I actually cringe and wish there were some sort of 'embarrassing-question-asker' detector so these people could be barred from conventions. I have to work against that initial reaction now, because my rational side says that it's a perfectly valid question. Because it is. All of the four main characters have undeniable chemistry with each other, in a variety of ways. Why is it embarrassing to ask the writers, who have backgrounds in writing for shows with gay characters and who aren't unfamiliar with homoeroticism and subtext, if Merlin and Arthur or Gwen and Morgana will be shown in that context? Why is it embarrassing to hope for it? It shouldn't be. We should be allowed to hope for and maybe even expect gay characters, even gay main characters. It shouldn't be so out of the realm of possibility that we immediately dismiss it with "Of course it's silly to think this could actually happen." It's not silly to think it and it's not silly to want it.
I actually kind of ship Arthur/Morganna, and have since I first read The Mists of Avalon at the age of 11, but that's beside the point (and I kind of ship Morgana/Uther in Merlin anyway). I also would have loved to see the writers completely pass over the Arthur/Gwen thing and go directly to Gwen/Lancelot, so that for once we could have a version of Arthurian legend where Guinevere wasn't portrayed as a slutty adultress, but like I said, my teenage squee over Gwen/Lancelot and Arthur/Morgana (OMG, their incestious love was SO DARING when I was twelve, you guys!) isn't the issue here.
Substitute Kirk and Spock, or Holmes and Watson, or Sam and Frodo, or Steve and Tony, or Gabrielle and Xena, or Kitty Pryde and Rachel Summers, or Cable and Deadpool, or Jim and Blair, or Destiny and Mystique, or Shatterstar and Rictor, or any other super-slashy pair of characters from fiction for Merlin and Arthur, and the point still stand, or is perhaps even amplified.
Why is it entitlement to hope that the close friendships in fiction that make us sigh and say, "Yes, he loves him (or 'she loves her') so much and it is the most romantic thing I've ever seen," could be more than that? That the writers might make them more than that, or at least not flatly deny the possibility?
I'm too young to have been a part of fandom when Xena was on the air, and I hadn't figured my sexuality out then anyway, being twelve, but I know how much that show meant to an awful lot of lesbian or bisexual women. I know, because when I took a class on musical theater in college and was shown a clip from Wicked of Galinda and Elphaba singing "For Good," I cried. I actually sat there in class and cried, because two women were singing a love song to one another -- even if it was only subtext, even if it was equally possible to interpret their closeness as platonic friendship or say they loved one another "like sisters" -- and I had never seen that before anywhere. And until I saw it, I didn't know how deeply I wanted to see it.
I get to see men and women in love all the time. Fiction and popular culture and myth and fairytales are full of men and women whose love is "as strong as death." I can get my sappy het fix any time I want -- the entire multi-billion dollar romance novel industry basically exists to provide it. Two women or two men? In something that's not "gay literature" and shelved in its own little section of the bookstore where teenage and college student me didn't even know to look for it? You usually need specialized knowledge of where to look in order to find that. It's not right there on your tv or movie screen or shelved in the "YA" or SF or romance section ready to be seen every time you turn around. And as much as I like het (on a purely shallow level, you get both hot men and hot women to watch/read about there, so when it's well done it can be the best of both worlds), het doesn't show me anything that reflects my own relationship, unless I rule 63 half the pairing in my head.
I teared up when I saw Brian and Justin dance at Justin's prom in Queer as Folk, too, because it was two people dancing to a love song, in evening wear, just like people always do in romantic movies, and they were the same gender. And when I read Libba Bray's A Great and Terrible Beauty trilogy and, after thinking "wow, those girls are femslashy" in the first book, got to the third one and discovered that I hadn't just been seeing the text through my own inveterate slash goggle, that one of the heroines really was a lesbian -- I teared up then, too.
Destiny and Mystique becoming canon is the one thing Mike Carey did on X-Men that I will forever love him for, despite the smear job he did on The Scarlet Witch's characterization in Endangered Species. Likewise Rictor and Shatterstar -- seriously, I almost forgave PAD for getting scans_daily shut down when that issue came out.
Why is it entitlement to ask for more of that? Why is it overstepping our bounds to want more creators to be like Warren Ellis ("Yes, Apollo and the Midnighter are gay. So what?") and not like TPTB on Deep Space Nine, who drastically cut the amount of screentime Alexander Siddig and Andrew Robinson shared after they found out how many people were slashing Bashir and Garack?
Seriously, why?
franticsga has a post about slash and shame and why there's such a stigma about telling show creators what we want.
And I quote:
Whenever a fan asks that inevitable question-- are we ever going to see Merlin's and Arthur's love story actually play out on-screen?-- I have a visceral reaction of embarrassment. I actually cringe and wish there were some sort of 'embarrassing-question-asker' detector so these people could be barred from conventions. I have to work against that initial reaction now, because my rational side says that it's a perfectly valid question. Because it is. All of the four main characters have undeniable chemistry with each other, in a variety of ways. Why is it embarrassing to ask the writers, who have backgrounds in writing for shows with gay characters and who aren't unfamiliar with homoeroticism and subtext, if Merlin and Arthur or Gwen and Morgana will be shown in that context? Why is it embarrassing to hope for it? It shouldn't be. We should be allowed to hope for and maybe even expect gay characters, even gay main characters. It shouldn't be so out of the realm of possibility that we immediately dismiss it with "Of course it's silly to think this could actually happen." It's not silly to think it and it's not silly to want it.
I actually kind of ship Arthur/Morganna, and have since I first read The Mists of Avalon at the age of 11, but that's beside the point (and I kind of ship Morgana/Uther in Merlin anyway). I also would have loved to see the writers completely pass over the Arthur/Gwen thing and go directly to Gwen/Lancelot, so that for once we could have a version of Arthurian legend where Guinevere wasn't portrayed as a slutty adultress, but like I said, my teenage squee over Gwen/Lancelot and Arthur/Morgana (OMG, their incestious love was SO DARING when I was twelve, you guys!) isn't the issue here.
Substitute Kirk and Spock, or Holmes and Watson, or Sam and Frodo, or Steve and Tony, or Gabrielle and Xena, or Kitty Pryde and Rachel Summers, or Cable and Deadpool, or Jim and Blair, or Destiny and Mystique, or Shatterstar and Rictor, or any other super-slashy pair of characters from fiction for Merlin and Arthur, and the point still stand, or is perhaps even amplified.
Why is it entitlement to hope that the close friendships in fiction that make us sigh and say, "Yes, he loves him (or 'she loves her') so much and it is the most romantic thing I've ever seen," could be more than that? That the writers might make them more than that, or at least not flatly deny the possibility?
I'm too young to have been a part of fandom when Xena was on the air, and I hadn't figured my sexuality out then anyway, being twelve, but I know how much that show meant to an awful lot of lesbian or bisexual women. I know, because when I took a class on musical theater in college and was shown a clip from Wicked of Galinda and Elphaba singing "For Good," I cried. I actually sat there in class and cried, because two women were singing a love song to one another -- even if it was only subtext, even if it was equally possible to interpret their closeness as platonic friendship or say they loved one another "like sisters" -- and I had never seen that before anywhere. And until I saw it, I didn't know how deeply I wanted to see it.
I get to see men and women in love all the time. Fiction and popular culture and myth and fairytales are full of men and women whose love is "as strong as death." I can get my sappy het fix any time I want -- the entire multi-billion dollar romance novel industry basically exists to provide it. Two women or two men? In something that's not "gay literature" and shelved in its own little section of the bookstore where teenage and college student me didn't even know to look for it? You usually need specialized knowledge of where to look in order to find that. It's not right there on your tv or movie screen or shelved in the "YA" or SF or romance section ready to be seen every time you turn around. And as much as I like het (on a purely shallow level, you get both hot men and hot women to watch/read about there, so when it's well done it can be the best of both worlds), het doesn't show me anything that reflects my own relationship, unless I rule 63 half the pairing in my head.
I teared up when I saw Brian and Justin dance at Justin's prom in Queer as Folk, too, because it was two people dancing to a love song, in evening wear, just like people always do in romantic movies, and they were the same gender. And when I read Libba Bray's A Great and Terrible Beauty trilogy and, after thinking "wow, those girls are femslashy" in the first book, got to the third one and discovered that I hadn't just been seeing the text through my own inveterate slash goggle, that one of the heroines really was a lesbian -- I teared up then, too.
Destiny and Mystique becoming canon is the one thing Mike Carey did on X-Men that I will forever love him for, despite the smear job he did on The Scarlet Witch's characterization in Endangered Species. Likewise Rictor and Shatterstar -- seriously, I almost forgave PAD for getting scans_daily shut down when that issue came out.
Why is it entitlement to ask for more of that? Why is it overstepping our bounds to want more creators to be like Warren Ellis ("Yes, Apollo and the Midnighter are gay. So what?") and not like TPTB on Deep Space Nine, who drastically cut the amount of screentime Alexander Siddig and Andrew Robinson shared after they found out how many people were slashing Bashir and Garack?
Seriously, why?
From:
no subject
From:
no subject