Due South's Mountie Bares All
| News Media Commentary | |
|---|---|
| Title: | Due South's Mountie Bares All |
| Commentator: | Victoria Cusak |
| Date(s): | October 1997 |
| Venue: | |
| Fandom: | due South |
| External Links: | scanned here, Archived version |
| Click here for related articles on Fanlore. | |
Due South's Mountie Bares All ("and a writer contemplates a musical ride") is a 1997 6-page article in "Elm Street for Canadian Women." The author is Victoria Cusack.
This article about fans and fandom is very likely one reason Bernice, the zine editor for IIBNF Press, specifically printed in several of its zines: "This zine is not to be given to journalists (in particular Cynthia Brouse or Veronica Cusack), actors, producers, or anyone else involved in the entertainment/media industries. Please do not refer to this zine in any public forum without the express permission of the editor." [1]
A Cavalcade of Main Stream Press Derision
- Due South's Mountie Bares All by Victoria Cusak (1997)
- Internet Authors Put TV Buddies in Unusual Romances by Cynthia Brouse (1998)
- Gross encounters: on the way to writing a profile of Paul Gross, the author discovers his fans are the real story. Reflections on celebrity worship, Internet love and Canada as the Holy Land by Cynthia Brouse (2000)
- Not about to curl up and call it quits by Heather Mallick (2000)
Some Topics Discussed
- despite his career in the theatre, fans recognize him mainly as Benton Fraser
- Gross swears a lot: "Gross' profanity reaches psychedelic hues"
- much about Gross' career
- much erroneous, ignorant information about slash fanfiction
- the article's author gives Gross a slash zine, and watches and describes his reactions as he reads it
- Gross says that fans will go crazy in a homoerotic way about his new co-star
Sample Images
Excerpts
Amsterdam Natural Blonde, Marlboro, faded jeans and work boots, absolutely. You did want to know: What he drinks, what he smokes, what he wears, is her really that gorgeous? Now, enough. This is a serious article. The man has a substantial brain even though, to steal from one of his movies, he looks as if he belongs on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. But that habit of running a flat moist tongue along his lower lip is most disconcerting. I may have to confiscate it if this continues.
"In this country, committed people end up in the theatre because there is no interesting alternative. The crap that's on TV and in Canadian movies, well I'd rather vomit than write like that." Perhaps it's only fair to remind Gross of that statement. He uttered it 15 years ago, when he was only 23 and enjoying the first flush of success as a dramatist.
Due South exploits the power of the tease. His body is most often encased from toe to throat in serge and cowhide. Benton Fraser opens a top button or rolls up a shirt sleeve, and women across the world, plus not a few men, retreat in turgid fantasy. Fan fiction zines and Websites swell. And slash fiction, the porno subgenre of fans, goes wild.
Slash, so-called because of the "/" between protagonists' names, is written predominantly by women for women. It explores in graphic detail a monogamous sexual relationship between strongly paired male characters in television or film -- from Spock/Kirk to Fox Mulder/Walter Skinner. The stories circumvent TV's dead-girlfriend-of-the-week syndrome and instead portray men as equal partners sharing mountains of angst plus prolonged foreplay, frottage and copulation -- romantic or rough.
Gross turns out to be completely ignorant of the world of slash. I explain, and his eyes "as blue as dusk on a winter afternoon" widen in the "heartbreaking, passion-glazed" face. (You are reading a serious article. Due South is quite well represented among the prizewinners in the Slash Talent in Fandom writing and artwork awards, the STIFfies. Could I make this up?) I bring out a Due South zine. Gross begins to read. Note: We are sitting in a blue-collar pub. He chuckles. In the background, the Mills Brothers swing. Now, he laughs. Then again -- a long, strong laugh ending only when his lungs give out. Tears appear at the corner of his eyes and he reads out lout from the page., louder than the "glow, little glowworm, glow and glimmer" issuing from the speakers.
He sputters, draws breath in a high pitched wheeze. Large men with bad teeth begin looking our way. I'm convinced that one of us is going to get punched. But Gross is having too much fun to care. His voice gets louder as incredibility rises.
"Shhhh, you'll get us bounced."
"What do they do," he asks. "Masturbate to this stuff? I tell you, slash fiction is going to go crazy when they see the new guy. He is really good-looking, and sexy, the dangerous side of Fraser. It will be totally homoerotic. How can I see this stuff? Where do I go in on the Internet?"
"...glow for the female of the species, turn on the AC and the DC..."