Narnian Sexuality

[lotesse]

I wrote most of this in the comments over at chaos_pockets's place, and I want to post them here for my own reference, to make sure that I can find them again. so:


Honestly I think that's one of the reasons why I always have shipped Lucy/Caspian - because Lucy is the Good One, the little True Believer, and I like showing that she can still be that girl and be in love.

In my fanwank over Susan, I've tried to position her sin as more self-conscious sexuality than authentic sex, i.e. she's absorbed in appearing, not being. Something that I can also understand as problematic through a feminist lens. And so hooking Lu up allows me to position her good authentic eroticism against Susan's negative "watching herself being watched," using Polly's stuff from LB.

But I do, somewhere in myself, want to blame Susan. Maybe I'm wrong... I just finished working through Ariel Levy's Female Chauvinist Pigs with my freshman, and while Levy strikes me as vicitm-blamey I think she maybe articulates what bothers me wrt Susan - that she's frantically performing a sexuality that has no authenticity to it whatsoever, and in that pursuit abandons her sense of wonder and her self. Wonder, after all, is a function of desire, but the form of femininity that Su seems to be performing has very little use for real female desire.

Blame isn’t at all the right word. I don’t read Susan as a sinner or a deviant from the path of virtue. But I do want to read her as misguided, lost, oppressed. Does she want a lover, or does she want to be the belle of the ball? The two are not the same. And I love Susan, and relate to her, and pity her. We all like to pretend that we'd be like Lucy, but I know that if I'm honest with myself I'd be Susan, sort of scared and not Valiant enough to count and pretty but what good does that do, and maybe not quite as good as believing in Aslan as Lucy is.

It all comes down to the fact that I really don't want to let go of the dream of Narnia. the idea that Lucy wasn't living fully because she dreamed of it - while probably correct - upsets me terribly. I have to keep Narnia as an unalloyed good.

Comments

[grlnamedlucifer.livejournal.com]

I generally don't take issue with Susan's sexuality (seeing the "problem" not being the "boys and lipstick" in and of themselves, but that she latched onto it as a method of avoidance and to the exclusion of everything related to Narnia/faith) but I like the way you've explained the difference here between her having a sexuality and "performing" a sexuality. Which relates back to my issue and certainly fits in with the more superficial Susan we see in HHB.

(Also makes me feel a little better about my desire to shake the director and go "do you understand what you're doing by shoving in a relationship for the first girl to be kicked-out and the one to be left behind?" Because seriously, I might not take issues with Susan's sexuality but that doesn't mean I need more fuel for the fire, you know?)

[lotesse]

Do we have confirmation on this? The only time I ever heard about Caspian/Susan was a few years back, and was an April Fool's joke. But people keep talking about it like it's for real. Got sources?

[grlnamedlucifer.livejournal.com]

Unfortunately it looks like it's going to be true. It doesn't seem like anything overt, but the addition annoys me and that's even ignoring my Lucy/Caspian shipping.

There's a clip up here (http://narniaweb.com/news.asp?id=1249&dl=13345565). I'm at work so I can't double check, but I believe that's the one that briefly shows Susan teaching Caspian to shoot an arrow? I could be wrong. There's a bit more written about it here (http://narniaweb.com/news.asp?id=1327&dl=14178995). If there's been anymore confirmation other than that, I'm not sure. I want to say I read a quote about it on NarniaWeb from someone actually involved as well, but I can't seem to find it so I might be misremembering the April Fools joke.

[lotesse]

Have you seen the clip? It didn't look shippy at all to me, just Su teaching Caspian a skill that she, as a queen, has. Like a training montage. Am all anxious now, because yeah, Caspian/Susan gets really messy in context og her getting banhammered.