RPS Writer Interview: Cinna P.
| Interviews by Fans | |
|---|---|
| Title: | RPS Writer Interview: Cinna P. |
| Interviewer: | |
| Interviewee: | |
| Date(s): | 2002 |
| Medium: | online |
| Fandom(s): | RPS, Bob Dylan |
| External Links: | interview is here, Archived version |
| Click here for related articles on Fanlore. | |
RPS Writer Interview: Cinna P. was posted in 2002.
Others in This Series
- RPS Writer Interview: Akuma
- RPS Writer Interview: Cinna P.
- RPS Writer Interview: Claudia
- RPS Writer Interview: Slimslash
Some Excerpts
Why do you think people especially women write slash fiction about real life celebrities? I’m thinking of not just the fact that it's two men together but the fact that it's real people not fictional characters.
I really have no idea. When I think about it, I relate it to Shakespeare’s king plays --- not slash of course, but fictionalisation of real people’s stories. I think the difference between fictional character slash and RPS isn’t a great one. In this age, (watch out, here’s where I get philosophical) of universal media, we’re forced into familiarity with the stories and personalities of people to whom we have no real, “physical” connection. To make up a story about your neighbour down the block is further removed from writing a story about a movie star than the story about the star is from a story about Harry Potter. Both figures in the latter case are, in a practical sense, unreal. And I suppose every writer is always on the lookout for the most interesting story to steal; that’s who we got In Cold Blood and Citizen Kane. I hope I made at least a little sense.
Stop The War Is About Bob Dylan, who is not a typical person to slash (although, I’m of the opinion you can pretty much slash anyone if you put your mind and muse to it). Am I missing some homoerotic subtext to him or is it just that you're a fan and it was the kind of thing that you wanted to read about?
Well … Here’s the thing: STW isn’t really about sex. (shh, don’t tell J) It’s an opportunity for me to write about the music I love, and it’s slash because I got irritated that there was so much musician slash out there, but none of it concerned people I actually give half a damn about. So in that respect, it’s kind of an experiment. Obviously Dylan isn’t gay and while Robbie Robertson may fall into the “almost too fashionable to be straight” category, he’s been married for more than thirty years. There really is no homoerotic subtext to Dylan’s life that I’m aware of, *except* for his relationship with Robbie on the 65-66 tour. They both happen to be fascinating people, and the time period and the atmosphere around the concerts have intrigued me for a long while, and as I got deeper into research I started to theorize, “What if, in this pressure cooker, they developed more than a close working relationship? How would that play out? What effect would it have on the music?”
The story also has development, a kind of exposition as opposed to straight into the sex. Why did you go for that approach, I think it's very common in slash which is interesting that people go to that kind of trouble. I’m thinking of that comment by Hetrez, “Slash is the ice cream but the story is the pie under it.”
As I said above, the point of the story is the exposition and not the sex --- I’m not even sure there’s going to be any “on-camera”. This might be partly because, though I can justify it to myself in a dozen different ways, they’re still real people whom I respect, and I feel a little leery about involving them in anything really explicit.