the world before slash and after slash
Jan. 19th, 2008 06:36 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
verushka70After watching the Friday night Moonlight episode (and the last of the "season" if the strike continues without any settlement), I have to say this:
While the whole homoerotic buddy subtext thing has clearly been around as a writing device forever, in our time in this culture, there is definitely a world before slash and a world after slash. Or maybe a world before Brokeback Mountain played in theaters for weeks (months!) and a world after Brokeback Mountain played in theaters for weeks & months, making lots of money considering it's budget. Or maybe a world before the Internet became accessible to almost everyone, and a world after the Internet became accessible to almost everyone. Or maybe a world before Neil Jordan directed "Interview With The Vampire" and a world after the IWTV movie, which showed Tom Cruise as about as gay as he could possibly be (outside of "Top Gun"). Or maybe a world before Buffy, and a world after Buffy. Or maybe a world before Will & Grace, and a world after Will & Grace. Or maybe (ultimately) a world before feminism, and a world after feminism.
In the late 80s, when I discovered the then almost-entirely-mainframe-and-Listserv-restricted Internet, the whole slash thing was a wondrously happy discovery for me. Other women who, like me, loved the idea of two men together!
But, at the time, slashers were still considered the fringe people in any fandom I encountered, and still subjected to the vitriol of people who considered us deviant, who inevitably always seemed to be in the majority. Depending on the show, slashers seemed to always have to make our own lists, and set aside our own space within those fandoms. Slash lovers were decidedly more unwelcome in the fandoms of certain shows people perceived by some to be "wholesome" (such as Due South) than the fandoms of other shows which (by virtue of their genre alone) were considered a bit more rarefied (you can't imagine the derision I got, from people in my own family who are usually otherwise more enlightened, for being into a cheesy vampire show like Forever Knight; being into the slashy aspects was only slightly more ridiculous, to them, than being into a vampire show in the first place). As such, those more marginalized (and short-lived) shows (such as Forever Knight) had more freedom to take homoerotic subtext and make it foretext, but still within the bounds of network censorship.
But now, thanks to the infiltration of the Internet and its many forms of communication, the boundaryless/borderless and global nature of Internet-enhanced fandom, the covert and subtextual homoeroticism on many shows prior to the 90s (the original Star Trek, for one, among many -- including Starsky & Hutch and many others), the not-quite-network-muzzled overt and textual homoeroticism of 90s shows (Forever Knight, Due South), the rise of critically acclaimed and respected/respectable genre shows (e.g. BtVS, BSG, others) into financially successful and continuing series (that don't get canceled at the end of every season), the explosion of in-your-face everyday gayness of movies such as Brokeback Mountain, the newly expanding freedoms in our supposedly morally decaying society (if you actually believe the likes of Pat Robertson and their ultra-conservative, ultra-religious closet perv kindred) which allowed even staid older retired women to discuss and enjoy the hotness of man/man love, and what seems to be the post-post-modern youth of today, we're now living in a world that regardless of the so-called moral conservatism of the (s)elected leader accepts and even solicits the increasing proportion of the audience who are slash-friendly, if not slash-fans -- and have the money TPTB so desperately want us to spend on their products/shows.
I can find no other explanation for some of the open, direct, slashy dialog in new shows. It just seems intentional. I'm not saying it's given equal time or anything (it isn't), but whereas we used to have to look for the subtext, tease it out with long, detailed discussions on Listservs, it's simply not subtext anymore: it is overtly slashy and it's out there in the open, for everyone to see and hear.
And, damn it, though I hate to think of myself as manipulable in such a way, it feels pretty fucking good to think that, FINALLY, television and movies and multimedia are going my way, instead of me having to interpret and elucidate to others the veiled homoerotic subtexts and relationships of TV shows to my non-slashy but slash-friendly/open-minded friends. After enduring years of open, in-your-face f/f imagery and dialog (not that there is anything wrong with that; I just resented f/f's exclusive hold on network "acceptability" by virtue of its marketability to het males), it's fucking fantastic to have the m/m stuff out there and in people's faces whether they like it or not.
Yay.
Or, um, hang on... Maybe the real truth behind it all is that... the many gay men in entertainment (writing, acting, directing, producing TV and movies) are sick of being closeted and having their love of all things m/m closeted. And maybe they're just finally saying, fuck it, let's bring it out, it's not the big scary thing the network bigwigs thought it was -- it's even got a touch of "cool" about it now, and chicks dig it.
It could be that.
While the whole homoerotic buddy subtext thing has clearly been around as a writing device forever, in our time in this culture, there is definitely a world before slash and a world after slash. Or maybe a world before Brokeback Mountain played in theaters for weeks (months!) and a world after Brokeback Mountain played in theaters for weeks & months, making lots of money considering it's budget. Or maybe a world before the Internet became accessible to almost everyone, and a world after the Internet became accessible to almost everyone. Or maybe a world before Neil Jordan directed "Interview With The Vampire" and a world after the IWTV movie, which showed Tom Cruise as about as gay as he could possibly be (outside of "Top Gun"). Or maybe a world before Buffy, and a world after Buffy. Or maybe a world before Will & Grace, and a world after Will & Grace. Or maybe (ultimately) a world before feminism, and a world after feminism.
In the late 80s, when I discovered the then almost-entirely-mainframe-and-Listserv-restricted Internet, the whole slash thing was a wondrously happy discovery for me. Other women who, like me, loved the idea of two men together!
But, at the time, slashers were still considered the fringe people in any fandom I encountered, and still subjected to the vitriol of people who considered us deviant, who inevitably always seemed to be in the majority. Depending on the show, slashers seemed to always have to make our own lists, and set aside our own space within those fandoms. Slash lovers were decidedly more unwelcome in the fandoms of certain shows people perceived by some to be "wholesome" (such as Due South) than the fandoms of other shows which (by virtue of their genre alone) were considered a bit more rarefied (you can't imagine the derision I got, from people in my own family who are usually otherwise more enlightened, for being into a cheesy vampire show like Forever Knight; being into the slashy aspects was only slightly more ridiculous, to them, than being into a vampire show in the first place). As such, those more marginalized (and short-lived) shows (such as Forever Knight) had more freedom to take homoerotic subtext and make it foretext, but still within the bounds of network censorship.
But now, thanks to the infiltration of the Internet and its many forms of communication, the boundaryless/borderless and global nature of Internet-enhanced fandom, the covert and subtextual homoeroticism on many shows prior to the 90s (the original Star Trek, for one, among many -- including Starsky & Hutch and many others), the not-quite-network-muzzled overt and textual homoeroticism of 90s shows (Forever Knight, Due South), the rise of critically acclaimed and respected/respectable genre shows (e.g. BtVS, BSG, others) into financially successful and continuing series (that don't get canceled at the end of every season), the explosion of in-your-face everyday gayness of movies such as Brokeback Mountain, the newly expanding freedoms in our supposedly morally decaying society (if you actually believe the likes of Pat Robertson and their ultra-conservative, ultra-religious closet perv kindred) which allowed even staid older retired women to discuss and enjoy the hotness of man/man love, and what seems to be the post-post-modern youth of today, we're now living in a world that regardless of the so-called moral conservatism of the (s)elected leader accepts and even solicits the increasing proportion of the audience who are slash-friendly, if not slash-fans -- and have the money TPTB so desperately want us to spend on their products/shows.
I can find no other explanation for some of the open, direct, slashy dialog in new shows. It just seems intentional. I'm not saying it's given equal time or anything (it isn't), but whereas we used to have to look for the subtext, tease it out with long, detailed discussions on Listservs, it's simply not subtext anymore: it is overtly slashy and it's out there in the open, for everyone to see and hear.
And, damn it, though I hate to think of myself as manipulable in such a way, it feels pretty fucking good to think that, FINALLY, television and movies and multimedia are going my way, instead of me having to interpret and elucidate to others the veiled homoerotic subtexts and relationships of TV shows to my non-slashy but slash-friendly/open-minded friends. After enduring years of open, in-your-face f/f imagery and dialog (not that there is anything wrong with that; I just resented f/f's exclusive hold on network "acceptability" by virtue of its marketability to het males), it's fucking fantastic to have the m/m stuff out there and in people's faces whether they like it or not.
Yay.
Or, um, hang on... Maybe the real truth behind it all is that... the many gay men in entertainment (writing, acting, directing, producing TV and movies) are sick of being closeted and having their love of all things m/m closeted. And maybe they're just finally saying, fuck it, let's bring it out, it's not the big scary thing the network bigwigs thought it was -- it's even got a touch of "cool" about it now, and chicks dig it.
It could be that.