Kirk, Honey. It's Me, Spock!

News Media Commentary
Title:	Kirk, Honey. It's Me, Spock!
Commentator:	Julie Madsen
Date(s):	01 September 2002
Venue:	Utne Reader
Fandom:	slash
External Links:	Kirk, Honey. It's Me, Spock!, Archived version
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Kirk, Honey. It's Me, Spock! is an article by Julie Madsen about slash fanfiction. It was published in "Utne Reader" in September/October 2002.

The article's topic line says: "Women's fantasies find a powerful outlet in these strange stories about odd couples."

The article informs its readers that "If you've been hiding inexplicable fantasies about steamy sex between, say, Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock of Star Trek fame, you can now breathe a sigh of relief-it's not as freakish as you may think. And you're definitely not alone."

Madsen cites an article by Audrey Lemon called How slash saved me which was published in the zine "Good Girl".

On the definition of slash:

Slash is a subgenre of fantasy fiction in which writers compose their own plots for favorite pop culture characters. Slash (which gets its name from the way stories are categorized; a Kirk and Spock story is labeled K/S) tends to be written by heterosexual females about homosexual relationships between male characters portrayed as heterosexual or asexual in their TV shows. The name also alludes to a violent element in the story lines, in which one character typically is in danger and awaiting rescue by the other.

On the topic of why slash?:

Lemon has heard several theories about what inspires this longing for eccentric fiction, which draws heavily from the damsel-in-distress motif of heterosexual romance novels. Some writers point to a dissatisfaction with male TV characters, who are often portrayed as wooden and emotionally aloof. Others-especially the gay male minority of slash writers-see the genre establishing more of a gay presence in the media, where homosexuality is either absent or devoid of intimacy. In this way, slash is a form of culture jamming: writers infuse characters from TV-land's numbing banality with emotion and sensuality.

For others, of course, it's just about imagining two beautiful, naked men having sex.

But, as Lemon asserts, such theories still don't take into account someone like her, a self-described 'fat girl, shy girl, queer girl' who imagines these fantasies and feels compelled to craft them into stories. Nor do they explain why this new form of erotica, written by women for women, never contains women's bodies.

Reactions and Reviews

In the latest issue of Utne Reader you will find a short article on slash (with K/S references) along with a cute little cartoon of our Captain and Spock. Interestingly, it is the second time I’ve ever come across press mention of K/S, and in the same magazine!

Okay, so who's Audrey Lemon? Anyone know her? Because this month's Utne Reader has a little squibby article about a zine thing on slash by this chick Audrey Lemon, and surely *somebody* knows who she is; it's a small and tiny world around here, you know. I'm curious.

The article itself was all right, except that the pairings it mentioned were so out of date or marginal as to make us look completely uncool and detached from reality. I mean, all right, I don't have anything against Angel/Xander, but I wouldn't call it one of the defining pairings of modern slash, either. I'm sorry, though: Kirk/Spock and Starsky/Hutch? What year do we think this is? They couldn't mention Smallville or LotR or West Wing or Harry Potter. No, it had to be the antediluvian slash fandoms, the ones without a significant internet presence or much influx of new blood. That's not the impression of current slash fandom that I'd like to offer to the potentially interested who pick up this article, thanks much.

Also, the obligatory two paragraphs on why anyone would do this crazy thing left me vaguely unsatisfied, but then, that's probably to be expected. There's too much to say, and it's all too personal, to expect any thumbnail sketch of the slash psyche to be more than a tiny chunk of reality as I perceive it.

My primary issue with the writer's facts, however, was that she said that the desire to infuse the media with the gay images that are largely absent was sort of a minority opinion held forth mainly by a small subsection of gay male slash writers. Which...I don't agree with. I think it's the single most defining aspect of slash, even though it's not as intriguing as the desire to write off female relational values onto male characters and blah blah blah. I tried to say this last night to Mary, and she told me I was on crack, and I couldn't quite figure out what I was trying to say, but this is what I thought about all day at work, and so here's this about that.