Meta: oh how I wish I was a trinity, pt.1
Apr. 23rd, 2007 05:50 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lotesseBeing a productive member of fandom, at least (assiduously not writing term papers). I've got meta!
A lot of this is runoff from my film theory course last term, in which I realized that we're throwing all sorts of words around without any idea what they mean. Bits have since straggled in from my thinks about h/c and idfic and Kristeva, through the twin lenses of my current work on Shelley!cest and the Boy's book.
I've been turning over a lot of thoughts on sadism/masochism in media and fandom--my (our) deeply visceral turn-on at the sufferings of our BSOs. The one thing I'm sure of, actually, is that it's not bdsm. H/c isn't the same thing as torturefic or literary painplay; I love the first, but can't abide the latter. The pivot, the key to the whole thing, is I think maybe the presence of the love-relationship.
Fandom's talked a whole lot, in the past, about the breaking of boundaries that suffering enables. Sam can't love Frodo until they've suffered together, and been thrust past their taboos against emotion and affection and sex. That's a big important thing, but I think there's more to it. The pain isn't just a mechanism like sex pollens or aliens who make you do it. The pain is a major part of the reader's pleasure. If fic were a sex act--and I do think that the emotional pattern of sex and stories are fairly similar--the structure parallel to orgasm is the moment of trauma, the moment of pain. Any sex that may come of it is textual afterglow, or maybe a second go-round after the post-coital haze has cleared.
Okay, so getting off on others' pain. Textbook sadism. Or, the rape-fantasy defense: I'm identifying with the victim, and I'm getting off on secondarily suffering. Both of these readings are rooted in identifcation, either with the one or with the other. But do we actually know how the hell identification works? There's a lot of fuzzy thinking around this subject--I think![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
sistermagpie had a brilliant post where she said that when she played Robin Hood as a little girl, Robin was a girl because she was, not regendered but fluid. the words we're using don't mean anything.
You know that thing where there's a correct victim? Where sometimes in a pairing you want this one hurt but not that one? And when the wrong one goes down you feel pissed, like someone offered you a cookie and then snatched it away, like why are you sending him to the hospital and not the other one oh my god what's wrong with you? Okay, so maybe it's just me, but I have a right one and a wrong one, and the one I want to hurt tends to be the one I identify with/am in love with.
And there's the rub: identify with/am in love with. Which one? This, actually, is one of the interesting things that slash maybe does. Identification becomes more complicated than it might be with, oh, say Elizabeth/Darcy. In that het case, I think it's safe to say that most girls identify with Lizzie and desire Darcy. (Of course, het isn't always that simple, especially when you bring in bi-ness. I could never tell if I'd rather be Anne Shirley or kiss her. But ignoring that, concentrating on the more simple parts of het identification, where there's a specifically designated space for the female reader as well as designated objects of love and lust, where identification can be channeled easily through gendered narrative.) But slash manages to complicate the entire dialectic of identification and desire. Because which of the boys are we? Which is the friend of which, the lover or the beloved one?
I'm way more Sam Winchester than I ever could be Dean, so Sam is my identification character. But Sam's also the sort of boy that I tend to date, being in fact not unlike my SO. Which means that I'm also in love with him. In h/c fic, I wonder if we're--if I'm--not switching my identification for a moment to the other one. My Supernatural h/c of choice is Sam getting hurt, Dean's POV. I want to experience not Sam's pain but Dean's reaction to it. I want to be in Dean's head. Sam's in pain, and I get to be Dean and heal him and love him.
So there's the character that we see ourselves in, what's traditionally meant by "identification," but then we can be in the head of the one who loves our "avatar" character. There's a pleasure in seeing our "self" through the eyes of someone who loves him/us. If I'm identifying with Sam, it's intensely attractive to watch Dean loving him. Maybe because it translates into me being loved, but then again it's Sammy I want to take home at night. Dean's emotions are the ones I want. I want to hear all about how much he loves my self-figure.
I have pairings that go both ways, where I identify with both characters and don't mind the whumpage going the other way for once. Sam and Frodo, for me, are interchangeable, both the lover and the beloved one at once. But the question of where we are, physically, in "classic slash" (two guys, forbidden love, the whole shuttlecraft crash-pon farr thing) is open. There isn't a clearly marked space in those tets for the intended slashgirl reader. The hurt becomes oblique. We can't name our behavior as sadism or masochism because we aren't identifying strictly with one boy or the other.
I'll pick this up later, when I have more time. Right now, there's some Shelley calling my name.
A lot of this is runoff from my film theory course last term, in which I realized that we're throwing all sorts of words around without any idea what they mean. Bits have since straggled in from my thinks about h/c and idfic and Kristeva, through the twin lenses of my current work on Shelley!cest and the Boy's book.
I've been turning over a lot of thoughts on sadism/masochism in media and fandom--my (our) deeply visceral turn-on at the sufferings of our BSOs. The one thing I'm sure of, actually, is that it's not bdsm. H/c isn't the same thing as torturefic or literary painplay; I love the first, but can't abide the latter. The pivot, the key to the whole thing, is I think maybe the presence of the love-relationship.
Fandom's talked a whole lot, in the past, about the breaking of boundaries that suffering enables. Sam can't love Frodo until they've suffered together, and been thrust past their taboos against emotion and affection and sex. That's a big important thing, but I think there's more to it. The pain isn't just a mechanism like sex pollens or aliens who make you do it. The pain is a major part of the reader's pleasure. If fic were a sex act--and I do think that the emotional pattern of sex and stories are fairly similar--the structure parallel to orgasm is the moment of trauma, the moment of pain. Any sex that may come of it is textual afterglow, or maybe a second go-round after the post-coital haze has cleared.
Okay, so getting off on others' pain. Textbook sadism. Or, the rape-fantasy defense: I'm identifying with the victim, and I'm getting off on secondarily suffering. Both of these readings are rooted in identifcation, either with the one or with the other. But do we actually know how the hell identification works? There's a lot of fuzzy thinking around this subject--I think
sistermagpie had a brilliant post where she said that when she played Robin Hood as a little girl, Robin was a girl because she was, not regendered but fluid. the words we're using don't mean anything.You know that thing where there's a correct victim? Where sometimes in a pairing you want this one hurt but not that one? And when the wrong one goes down you feel pissed, like someone offered you a cookie and then snatched it away, like why are you sending him to the hospital and not the other one oh my god what's wrong with you? Okay, so maybe it's just me, but I have a right one and a wrong one, and the one I want to hurt tends to be the one I identify with/am in love with.
And there's the rub: identify with/am in love with. Which one? This, actually, is one of the interesting things that slash maybe does. Identification becomes more complicated than it might be with, oh, say Elizabeth/Darcy. In that het case, I think it's safe to say that most girls identify with Lizzie and desire Darcy. (Of course, het isn't always that simple, especially when you bring in bi-ness. I could never tell if I'd rather be Anne Shirley or kiss her. But ignoring that, concentrating on the more simple parts of het identification, where there's a specifically designated space for the female reader as well as designated objects of love and lust, where identification can be channeled easily through gendered narrative.) But slash manages to complicate the entire dialectic of identification and desire. Because which of the boys are we? Which is the friend of which, the lover or the beloved one?
I'm way more Sam Winchester than I ever could be Dean, so Sam is my identification character. But Sam's also the sort of boy that I tend to date, being in fact not unlike my SO. Which means that I'm also in love with him. In h/c fic, I wonder if we're--if I'm--not switching my identification for a moment to the other one. My Supernatural h/c of choice is Sam getting hurt, Dean's POV. I want to experience not Sam's pain but Dean's reaction to it. I want to be in Dean's head. Sam's in pain, and I get to be Dean and heal him and love him.
So there's the character that we see ourselves in, what's traditionally meant by "identification," but then we can be in the head of the one who loves our "avatar" character. There's a pleasure in seeing our "self" through the eyes of someone who loves him/us. If I'm identifying with Sam, it's intensely attractive to watch Dean loving him. Maybe because it translates into me being loved, but then again it's Sammy I want to take home at night. Dean's emotions are the ones I want. I want to hear all about how much he loves my self-figure.
I have pairings that go both ways, where I identify with both characters and don't mind the whumpage going the other way for once. Sam and Frodo, for me, are interchangeable, both the lover and the beloved one at once. But the question of where we are, physically, in "classic slash" (two guys, forbidden love, the whole shuttlecraft crash-pon farr thing) is open. There isn't a clearly marked space in those tets for the intended slashgirl reader. The hurt becomes oblique. We can't name our behavior as sadism or masochism because we aren't identifying strictly with one boy or the other.
I'll pick this up later, when I have more time. Right now, there's some Shelley calling my name.
no subject
Date: 2007-04-24 06:59 pm (UTC)You know that thing where there's a correct victim? Where sometimes in a pairing you want this one hurt but not that one? And when the wrong one goes down you feel pissed, like someone offered you a cookie and then snatched it away, like why are you sending him to the hospital and not the other one oh my god what's wrong with you?
Definitely *grins* I've never quite figured out what makes one character my "designated victim" and not the other (though, sometimes, as with my Marvel OTPs, it's because canon has already designated one of them h/c bait for me), but though any and all h/c is of the good, there's almost always at least one character per fandom whom I really, really like to see put through the wringer. They're usually my favorite character.
I've also found that you can generally tell which character a h/c writer likes the best by whom she has "sent to the hospital."
I want to experience not Sam's pain but Dean's reaction to it. I want to be in Dean's head. Sam's in pain, and I gt to be Dean and heal him and love him.
I'm almost the opposite--I'm far more likely to put myself in the hurt character's head while reading, even if the scene isn't from their pov, and for physical h/c at least, I generally like to have the scene from the hurt character's perspective. There are some kinds of emotional h/c where I do actively want the scene to be from the other character's pov, but that's generally because I identify strongly enough with the hurt guy/girl that I need some distance in order to get through the scene.
no subject
Date: 2007-04-24 07:31 pm (UTC)Do you feel like being in the hurt character's head for the trauma functions for you like maschochistic fantasy, or do you feel lik it's something different?
explanation of terms: wrt masochism, I mean that very Freudian idea of the fetish as reenactment of trauma, that the need for the fantasy comes from experiences that we ourselves need to work through. Am I making sense, or should I clarify?
no subject
Date: 2007-04-24 07:49 pm (UTC)I have no idea. I just know that it's what my brain does when I read h/c--and that well done h/c can be very cathartic (but only if there's a happy ending or at least a satisfyingly loaded-with-operatic-melodrama ending--otherwise it's depressing, not cathartic).
the need for the fantasy comes from experiences that we ourselves need to work through
Hm... That would explain my intense affection for those horrible "everybody has misjudged character X" fics (which almost invariably suck hard core, and yet I'll read them anyway).
no subject
Date: 2007-04-24 07:57 pm (UTC)Yeah, there's some sort of catharsis going on. When I want h/c, I tend to binge and read waaay to many in a row, because just one iteration of the fantasy isn't good enough. It has to be repeated.