Meh, slash fic

[breakinglight11]

As I’ve mentioned, I’m not a slash fan. I tend to prefer when fan work sticks to canon, so I don’t really enjoy when the characters’ relationships are disrupted to suit an author’s personal preferences. But another thing that bothers me is how it encourages fans to interpret everything characters who are close to each other do through a lens searching for romantic possibility. This propensity in slash often leads to the invalidating of the notion that FRIENDSHIP CAN BE A POWERFUL AND MEANINGFUL RELATIONSHIP IN AND OF ITSELF.

Of course, my making this argument at all is kind of missing the fact that slash is mostly porn. The assumption is made all the time that women don’t like or don’t use porn, which irks me for a lot of feminist reasons, and is obviously refuted by the existence of slash. So I don’t like to gloss over it, and that makes it a little less silly to bitch about. But still, there’s a big cultural concept going on that suggests that friendship is inferior to romantic connection. A girl who doesn’t want to date a guy is “demoting” him to friend status, for example. This is what pushes people away from making real connections with each other non-sexually or non-romantically, either because they think those relationships aren’t as valuable, or that they’re afraid that, since people assume romantic relationships are the only ones worth seriously pursuing, their attempts at closeness will be perceived as romantic interest. This is especially off-putting if there is a concern of making other think the person is gay. So we don’t get a lot of strong portrayals of friendship, or when we do, people wonder at the supposedly “romantic” undertones. :-P And in real life, we get lots of people who don't have any strong connections outside of their significant others, which leads to less emotional support in their lives.

Comments

[youareverysmall.livejournal.com]

Oooooh, you definitely hit the nail on the head about not a lot of strong portrayals of friendship. I think that's why I tend to gravitate toward children's movies--they're usually about friendship rather than romance, and as far as romance in movies goes, I'd rather see a female-female romance than a male-female one.

[lisefrac.livejournal.com]

This is actually a topic I've thought a lot about, so excuse me if I ramble. (Also, why do I have the feeling this post was brought on by certain elements of P&P that certain members of our large larping contingent were squeeing about...?)

In some sense, I agree with you. Friendship--especially male friendship--is undervalued relative to romantic love in our society. This phenomenon is one of indicators of the "man as an unemotional island" view of masculinity, which is itself quite damaging to men.

But on the other hand... I can't really talk, because I've certainly watched certain shows/read certain books with slash-colored glasses. Sometimes it's fun to imagine there's more, even though you know quite well that is not what the creator intended. In part this is *due* to the dearth of positive male friendship portrayals; I think women WANT to see male characters who are more than just guys who go drinking and pick up chicks together and never share their feelings. It's just sometimes we forget this doesn't necessary imply they also sleep together :)

I've also sometimes been amused by the intellectual exercise of justifying a "crack pairing," i.e. come up with some wild reason why these two people (could be slashy or het) who barely appear on screen together are into each other. It's kind of the smutty equivalent of literary analysis.

Overall, I can indeed confirm it is possible to see both sides of the argument here :)

Regarding the porn thing: yes. In my opinion, slash serves as almost a... hm. Training porn? That sounds weird, but hear me out. I think, as you say, women are socialized to think Porn Is Not For Them. And, true, a lot of porn is male gaze-y and probably not appealing to many women. This is where slash comes in: as a sort of non-threatening alternative. You have the benefits of seeing not one, but two of the sex you're attracted to, AND you don't have to identify too much with any of the characters. That non-identification makes things that might be seen as degrading or offensive in other porn somewhat less personal.

There's also the fact that slash is mostly written, not visual, and women are generally less moved by visual stimuli than men, and more susceptible to the written word. (I generalize based on myself here; but other women have told me the same thing).

I know, in my personal journey of smut appreciation :), I started out reading exclusively slash. I felt like het smut was... just too personal? I was mostly in the anime genre here, though, and anime is not exactly full of amazing female characters. It wasn't until I came across female characters that I felt safe identifying with that I started consuming more het fic.

So, in short, interesting topic! I totally hear where you're coming from, although I suppose I have more sympathy for the urge to slash ;)

[offside7.livejournal.com]

Totally agree regarding friendship being undervalued when compared with romantic relationships. I cannot stand when people complain about being "friendzoned". And I hate the expression "more than friends" (though I slip up and occasionally use by accident, I think mostly because it's just part of our cultural lexicon.) The implication that a friendship is an inherently lesser relationship (instead of just a different form) is something that I not only thoroughly disagree with, but sometimes actually angers me.

[twilighttremolo.livejournal.com]

I very much agree that it's a problem when society devalues friendship. This also comes up for me when people declare that two people in history were a gay couple -- yes, in societies where queer people have to hide, those queers who are lucky enough to find each other and find love often disguise it as a great friendship. But some people are also lucky enough to have great friendships. Also, this discounts the possibility of even-less-mainstream (if I can say that) queerness, such as asexual romantic relationships, people who identify as the other gender but present as their assigned gender and are in a straight relationship that looks gay, etc. But I digress. I agree that slash is often another form of this -- although I think it's possible to create slash that respects the fact that the slash pairings don't HAVE to be the case based on the relationship we've seen, and I think plenty of slash does respect that.

(what's this about P and P slash? Unless it's Lydia and Mrs. Foster, who have been intimate two months...)

[lisefrac.livejournal.com]

Oh, there's just a moment where Mr. Darcy puts his hand on Mr. Bingley's shoulder very fondly... there may have been some giggling going on in our row when that happened.

[jh1230.livejournal.com]

I'll remind you that's only to shove me into a chair and lecture me on why marrying Jane is a bad idea, but yeah, I shouldn't be surprised you looked at it that way.