Harry Potter Gets Laid
| News Media Commentary | |
|---|---|
| Title: | Harry Potter Gets Laid |
| Commentator: | Annalee Newitz |
| Date(s): | 03 December 2002 |
| Venue: | The San Francisco Bay Guardian |
| Fandom: | Harry Potter |
| External Links: | Harry Potter Gets Laid (AlterNet, Wayback) Harry Potter Gets Laid (now offline) (sfgb.com) |
| Click here for related articles on Fanlore. | |
Harry Potter Gets Laid is an article about Harry Potter slash. It was published in Annalee Newitz's nationally-syndicated weekly column Techsploitation. The article introduces slash to a lay audience, explains the beginnings mentioning Kirk/Spock, cave stories and Pon Farr, and then returns to Harry Potter.
The author of the article Yaoi/slash approaches - A homoerotic subculture goes global says that he first learned of slash fiction from Harry Potter Gets Laid which he saw in the SF Bay Guardian.
Excerpts
Sometimes fiction is safer than reality. When figures from the darkest eras in recent American political history begin returning to center stage in Washington, D.C., it's time to immerse yourself in escapism. Worried about the whole Kissinger appointment? Feeling a little freaked about the ongoing Poindexter project? How about the Homeland Security Act, whose title calls to mind the sound of hundreds of shiny black boots marching in unison? You need to go to the movies. Specifically, you need some Harry Potter action. Taking in the new flick Chamber of Secrets is the perfect solution to all your problems because, as it turns out, nothing in the Harry Potter universe is quite what it seems. Instead of breaking your brain trying to figure out what the hell kind of creepy shit Kissinger is going to do with the Sept. 11 investigation, you could be unburying the secret sexual plot that has Hogwarts fans all atremble. You, too, could be drawn into the seductive web of Harry Potter slash fiction.
True fans of fantasy and science fiction already know what I'm talking about. Slash fiction is part of a long tradition of fan-written stories and art in which popular characters are placed in the sexual situations we always wanted to see but never could. And, for your information, mostly we wanted to see a lot of hot boy-on-boy action. Kirk and Spock were the first outer-space hotties to be slashed. Thousands of women have written K/S tales that run the gamut from intensely graphic to sweetly romantic. Here's how it works: Take one Kirk and one Spock, add a crash landing on a deserted planet, then stir in an unexpected episode of pon farr, a state in which Vulcans must have sex or die. Pretty soon you've got joyous anal sex and cries of love mixed in with alien ejaculate. Rock on.
But back to Harry. Once upon a time Harry Potter slash was kind of a weird novelty, the sort of thing bloggers found in less-traveled parts of the Web and linked to in "Isn't this bizarre?" moods. In the vast and satisfying world of slash, it was an upstart, a dangerous new node in an already perverse data structure. The problem was that Harry and his fetching little pals – despite their very adult problems and conflicts – were all underage. And yet they were so sexy! First of all, everyone knows that boarding school is automatically erotic. Hundreds of hormone-drenched teenagers sleeping in the same rooms together? You do the math. Plus, the world of Harry Potter seems built precisely to suggest terribly naughty possibilities. All those bodily transformations and powerful older men and strange candies and hidden caverns and snake-talking and wands ... it's like a slash writer's wonderland.
Right now I'm feeling terrifically honored because a group of elite Harry Potter slashers in Boston have invited me to join them on a special expedition to see the new flick and analyze it afterward. They'll be mining it for new slash possibilities. Each fiery glance between Harry and Draco could mean hidden passion. Or how about that wand fight between Snape and Lockhart? Looks like the prelude to another kind of wand fight, if you know what I mean. And don't even get me started on the hidden meaning of the snakes who live in the secret chambers of the bathroom.
I just love the new vistas of possibility the slashers have opened up in the Harry Potter universe. Does that make me bad? Oh yes, Snape, I want to be bad ...