Slash vs. PC
| Meta | |
|---|---|
| Title: | Slash vs. PC |
| Creator: | not used here |
| Date(s): | Oct. 11, 2006 |
| Medium: | online |
| Fandom: | Starsky & Hutch |
| Topic: | |
| External Links: | |
| Click here for related articles on Fanlore. | |
Slash vs. PC is a 2006 essay by a Starsky & Hutch fan. It was posted to The Pits Mailing List with the request: "Distribution: Please! Anywhere." Despite this open request, the fan's name is not revealed here on Fanlore.
For more context and related essays, see Timeline of Slash Meta.
Some Topics Discussed
- slash fic vs gayfic
- the horror , resentment, and disappointment, according to this fan, of "making" characters gay
- the term "straight boy slash"
- Starsky & Hutch
- "What used to make slash unique, and beautiful, is missing from gayfic."
- WNGWJLEO
- fans' attempts to control other fans
From the Essay
In terms of slash fandom, I'm a bit of a dinosaur, I suppose. I was an avid reader of both Kirk/Spock and Starsky/Hutch back before slash got called "slash," in the late 70's, and very early 80's. I know I'm not the only one here with fond memories of those old snail-mail days. Remember how so much of that early fic had the intoxicating flavor of infinite possibility about it? That now-unfashionable, heart-felt belief that Love *matters* in the world? That "Love will keep us together," and Love can transform?
I've forgotten now if it was PMG or DS who, long, long ago described S&H as, "a love story about two guys who just happen to be cops." That gets the priorities right, for me. I'm enough of a Romantic to believe that Love is -- or should be -- integral, and everything else incidental.
But, alas, along with the global wave of one-right-answer thinking, a PC chill has come over us. And in its wake, what I would call REAL slash seems to have become an embattled genre, across fandoms. These days, when you open what you hope is a new *slash* story, you're apt to find nothing but gayfic.
I am using the term "gayfic" to refer to stories that (at least on the surface) pretend to be slash, pairing same-sex characters from established media, but a closer inspection reveals that PC characterization choices (and changes) have been made. The established characters have been *rewritten* as gay, sometimes for explicitly ideological reasons. This means that in gayfic we read about "gay" characters falling in love with their own gender -- just like in mainstream gay literature, and gay life. What used to make slash unique, and beautiful, is missing from gayfic.
I've been very troubled and saddened by this trend. *I,* for one, come to fandom to read about characters I recognize. If a writer can make me believe that the character I see on the screen really *IS* gay, fine. I've got no objection. But this doesn't work in S&H, for example. Not without deliberate character distortion.
And I not only want to recognize the characters in my slash, I also want to see those characters making *choices.* I'm old-school. I believe that the Human heart has more to do with *preference* than programming. I believe *choices* matter more than "orientation."
If all we are as Human beings is a prescribed set of "orientations," kill me now -- we'd be no better than robots. But I don't believe that. Humans are more than that. And can aspire to more.
And I think the best of slash touches on those higher aspirations.
I believe, for example, that if you write an erotic story about Brian and Justin from Queer as Folk, that's not slash. That's just fic. A QAF *slash* story would be about Brian and *Lindsay* falling in love. Because that's what slash IS, in my opinion, it's about Love that goes AGAINST expectations, against the grain of lizard-brain programming. Love that is more than just scratching a hard-wired itch.
If all I wanted was gay erotica, that's easy to find. *Anywhere.* But I ask *more* from my slash.
The slash first-time story is the *only* established genre I know that deals head-on with a sort of carpe diem, "waking up" impulse which seems to me to be at the heart of Romanticism. I speak of that giddy sense of widening possibility, that "wide-angle consciousness" sensation when you get a glimpse of world-without-end. I refer to that sudden, gasping insight, that spontaneous awareness that the visible world of forms and rules and surfaces is only a sort of shadow theater played out with paper puppets -- and that LIFE holds prospects so much deeper, more frightening, more vivid, more full of fire, and more awe-inspiringly beautiful than we generally let ourselves know.
What I'm trying to talk about is a slippery topic, virtually impossible to pin down in words. Poets have tried to hint at it, with varying degrees of success. Some few books and movies have dared to attempt it. But slash -- specifically the variety of slash now sometimes derisively referred to as "straight-boy" slash -- is the only genre I know which goes there (or tries to go there) more or less consistently. And THIS is what makes slash important in literary and historical terms: the fact that it has the potential to open out a new kind of story which has not previously had other voice. Slash can give us stories of self-invention, and "waking up."
Slash, it seems to me, is the only literary outlet I know which allows for the gaming out of this experience of transcendence, this act of Free Will which is the profoundly, essentially Human act of CHOICE, of rising above the rule-book, getting yourself out of the Wasteland, of becoming the author and initiator and imaginative muse of your own life.
Individualistic by definition, this soul-journey has never before, to my knowledge, had a codified literature. Slash is the first. There have been social movements, Bohemias, many individual poets, many seekers and writers and mystics, but never anything like slash. Slash is grassroots, accessible, anyone can read it or write it, and yet it is (or, rather, WAS) formulaic enough to provide a repeatable *pattern.* A path to follow towards that elusive experience of "waking up." This, when you think about it, is really amazing. If nothing else, slash -- real slash -- gives us stories of metamorphosis, of friendship transmuting into Romantic Love. Of personal transformation. Of how something which seemed ordinary can turn out to be extraordinary.
Such stories are inherently magical, archetypal, and touch on the Human heart. They are in the truest sense Everyman (EveryHuman) stories. Whereas gayfic is just about, well, gay guys. Nothing against gay guys, but what do they have to do with the (primarily) female readership of slash? Not much. Gayfic doesn't tell Everyman stories. And anyway, the individualistic passion of Romantic Love, which is one of the best things about REAL slash, is superfluous in gayfic. In gayfic you've got sex, so what do you need with Romantic Love?
Slash gives us lots of other good things too, of course. It's fun, and escapist, and hot -- let's not forget hot! But the special, unique characteristic of slash is that it allows us to distinguish between love and sex -- between soul and body -- and thereby gain fresh perspectives on what Love IS. What soul IS. What it would mean to be a fully actualized, fully free Human being.
Who was it (possibly Ursula Le Guin?) who said, a long time ago, "To understand what it is to be Human, as opposed to merely male for female, we need a non-Human shadow, a world other than our own"? Well, to understand what it is to LOVE, as opposed to merely acting out the impulses of being "gay" or being "straight," we need SLASH.
It seems the PC spin-doctors have gone after what used to be the heart and soul of slash, to wit, the idea that two *otherwise straight men* might fall in love with each other simply because they *love* each other, rather than because "their orientation made them do it." Slash (at its best) used to be a literature of *souls,* not just sex. But now there are people *inside* slash fandom, who mock this literature of souls, dismissing it as "straight-boy slash," or "WNGWJLEO fic," or calling it "homophobic." And they seem to be getting away with it. And you can see their chilling influence in the tone of much of the newer fic. There are BNF's who claim it's "homophobic" to write slash characters as straight, even if they ARE straight! If Starsky & Hutch, for example, are straight, and if they fall in love with each other because they LOVE each other, and if that (understandably) causes some consternation on both parts, because it does, after all, mess with deeply held self-image stuff -- then to tell a story about their very real dilemma is, according to influential voices, now to be regarded as "homophobic." And what writer of slash wants to be labeled "homophobic"?? And so, surprise, surprise, when you read newer fic, and netfic, very little of it has that Romantic quality that used to be more routinely found in classic slash.
Sadly, there are people out there who actually *want* to see the characters (one or both) *re-written* -- changed, manipulated, revised -- to be "gay," in order to suit some misguided political agenda. I wish they'd go write original fic, and leave the characters I love alone!
But of course, if you can succeed in making slash PC, you *tame* it. PC makes slash socially "safe" again, and comfortably bourgeois. And I guess that's what these people want.
*Me,* I don't read to be "safe." Thanks, but I'll pass.
If other writers want to revise the characters as "gay," that's their choice, of course. I'm not saying they should be stopped, or censored, or even peer-pressured into silence. That's *their* gig, not mine.
But see, the problem is, the forces of PC don't share my scruples about censorship. They're too sure they're *right.* I deeply resent the PCers' attempts -- sometimes, in my personal experience, OVERT and AGGRESSIVE attempts -- to make sure that *their* vision is the *only* one put across, the only fic taken seriously. PC, like Newspeak, discourages dissent by manipulating language -- setting the language of the discourse in such a way that anyone who disagrees can be dismissed out of hand as "rude," "narrow-minded," "bigoted," "sexist," "homophobic," or some other derogatory word. PC excels at conversation stoppers. How else can you prevent people from thinking unsanctioned thoughts, unless you can first nip the conversation in the bud?
The slash I love most, those stories about transcendent Love, seems to be a vanishing genre. And it's a bloody shame, because we have so little in our culture these days that treats on transcendence. For that matter, we have so few options left to us for stories of forbidden Love. And as to Romantic Love?? Pffft! Romantic Love is rooted in the experience of *individuality.* Watch too many Hollywood movies -- or read too much gayfic -- and you might get the impression that Love has nothing to do with individuality. In Hollywood, and in a lot of gayfic, it's all just interchangeable parts. You don't need any compelling reason to get the characters together, they're just doing what comes naturally.
Gayfic is not, as its proponents would have you believe, a superior, more "enlightened" improvement on slash. FAR from it! Gayfic is a poor substitute.
And slash....... REAL slash ...... ah! Slash was something beautiful!
Fan Comments
I felt that if we weren't very active during the time of letter zines, back in the good old days, we aren't seasoned. There is not one person in the fandom that saw Starsky and Hutch before me. I loved it, I know the show, I love the characters and they've been part of my life for over 30 years, I know exactly where I was and my reaction from the pilot and the anger and sadness I felt at the end. Not seasoned, whatever.
I don't enjoy essays, I hated essays in school. Slash is slash, anyone who would take one person's word or essay to explain slash, or most anything else, must be pretty ignorant on most subjects.
I find it so appropriate that this discussion is taking place on "National Coming Out Day" in the GBLT community.
We've had this sort of discussion ad nauseum. I maintain that you don't want to have sex with someone of the same sex you are unless you are either homosexual or bisexual whether you recognize/admit it or not. No matter HOW fond you are of a friend, you don't want to screw them unless you are romantically attracted to that person. Slash is pairing two characters who are the same sex and having them boink each other and that makes them gay/bi. It is flatly illogical to assume that two men -- and it's always men, in my experience -- who were formerly completely heterosexual, who dated women and slept with women and wanted to sleep with women, would suddenly one day look at their best buddy and go "Gee, turns out I've always wanted HIM but of course, I'm not even remotely homosexual." Come ON. And that act, by itself, makes the characters unrecognizable to me. S&H, Spock and Kirk, Harry Potter and Ron Weasley (God HELP us), Luke Skywalker and Han Solo ... they are all heterosexual in canon and to make them otherwise makes them someone else. Write it if you want to. Read it if you want to. Enjoy it. That's what fan fic's for. But don't try to convince those who don't see your point of view that it's logical because it isn't.
I SO agree with you. I agree with the idea that body and soul are two different things, and that so are love and sex. I also agree that two hetero men (or women) should be able to fall in love without being gay. Because a person should be able to and can fall in love with another person, regardless of "orientation".The main joy in slash is the discovery of something new - whether for Kirk
or Starsky, or Spock or Hutch. If it's a case of "I've done this before, I
can do it with a green alien" it leaves me cold. And a lot of recently written "slash" (or rather, gayfic) leaves me cold. When the internet came along, I thought better fiction would spread more widely, but the opposite is the
case - we get more rubbish in the mailbox than I have time to delete.
You've got a point. Of course, you're going to get countless emails saying
that if two guys have sex (even if, like Kirk, they've slept with countless women) that makes them gay. They've of course always BEEN gay, they just didn't know or wouldn't admit it. Or they're bi.
Which is exactly what PC would want people to say. So, is PC winning?! Let's hope not. Let's keep this tiny alcove of IDIC - with infinite choices, and the ability to make a choice.
Thanks for a beautifully written essay.
For me, gay/lesbian means that you always prefer a partner of the same gender.
The idea for K/S and S/H is that it's "this one man". I just don't buy the
idea that Kirk, with years of experience and years of travelling all over the universe, all of a sudden at the ripe "old" age of 35 or 40 realises he's been gay all along. If he's that unaware of his own feelings, and that stupid, he'd make one rotten Starship Captain.
Likewise for Starsky and Hutch - they literally fall out of their chairs when a fairly pretty lady steps into the room. And all of a sudden they get the idea - hey, we've always been gay, we just didn't know it? Whether you're cop or a ships captain, you need to be able to read and understand people.If you don't know the first thing about yourself - I dread to think what a mess you make of your job.
Besides, I have no problem with the thought that somebody wants "that one
person" of the same sex - but, if they can't have that person, go back to
looking for the opposite gender again.
Wow! When I wrote and posted my essay on Slash vs. PC, I certainly never expected to hear such wonderful responses, both onlist and off! During the time since I've been dabbling in net fandoms, after being away from slash fandom for almost 20 years, I've of course had many private conversations with other slash fans like myself, who regret and mourn that the territory of our dream has been largely hi-jacked by PC. But in every case, the people I've talked with previously have felt helpless to speak up, helpless to make themselves heard.
If I'd tried to open a topic such as this in one of the newer, net-based fandoms, I'm pretty sure no one at all would have come out in defense of straight boy slash. They wouldn't have dared. This just goes to show, once again, that Starsky&Hutch fandom is something special! That such a discussion *can* still be had here! And, most importantly of all, that some Starsky&Hutch fans are still brave enough to buck the status quo!
*Thank you,* from the bottom of my heart, to all the amazing letter writers and posters who shared their thoughts on the beauty of SLASH ..... by which I mean, as ever, STRAIGHT BOY SLASH!!! (Insert virtual cheer!)
Deny it all you wish, but it was reader/writer discomfort with homosexuality, in some small part, that produced "straight boy slash". It was an obstacle that the writers overcame by making their stories about the power of love overcoming all obstacles. Romance as a genre is always about love overcoming serious obstacles, and what could be more of a challenge than the protagonists own natural sexual inclinations? It's the ultimate obstacle, therefore, the ultimate romance. But, that doesn't change the fact that there would not have been any obstacle at all to write about if we didn't live in an essentially homophobic culture.
Non-heterosexuals also read and write fanfiction and many heterosexuals enjoy stories about gay men in romantic relationships and they will write what they like to read.
It's interesting to me that in spite of your protestation that "straight boy slash" is the orginal and primary form of slash, it's not even mentioned in the Wikipedia article on slash, or any other important article I've seen discussing slash doesn't mention the term.
Many in the GBLT community enjoy the Starsky and Hutch fandom, the series and the characters. You are aware that in the GBLT community that they are icons? They represent something important to gay men, in particular. That men openly expressing love for each other, whether sexual or not, was "okay". I know many gay men who have a deep emotional connection to this series because it gave them this positive message. This is the same positive message it gives to everyone.
One genre of fanfiction does not own exclusive rights to express it's adoration of two public icons, nor should it attempt to. That gives the lie to the very message of love these two characters represent to so many people. To create an apartheid of fanfiction based on what merely strongly appeals to yourself is contrary to the whole message of love that made most of us fans.
And isn't this exactly what fandom is supposed to be about? Having the chance to connect with like-minded fans, and share our feelings and ideas about the characters and stories we love? This has been great!
I believe the question is not so much how Starsky or Kirk define themselves - the question was how WE (the reader, and the writer) define them. If the
writer works with the assumption that "they've always been gay, they just
didn't know", the whole idea of "new discovery" and soul searching is obsolete. Instead, you get "gay fiction" - how does Starsky tell his mother, how do they deal with colleagues, what new ideas do they come up with in bed... that sort of thing.
This is of course "realistic" (as realistic as it can be, if written by a straight woman). It's just not what I want to read. I "prefer" to read about two individuals dealing with this new love between them. I want to dig into their emotions, their minds - how does love affect these two men? If the sex is well-written, great. But for the story to work, I don't need the sex. The essential part of the story is the emotion, and if the writer can't make me see that (as is often the case in gay fic - if Kirk has done it with 20
other men, doing it with Spock is no big deal anymore), great gay sex doesn't save the story.
So, in the beginning, there was "straight boy slash". Then along came gay fic, at first just poking its head in. By now, it's taking up most of the seats. And all of a sudden, "straight boy slash" is described as homophobic? If a writer is "uncomfortable" with a topic, they normally don't bother to
write about it.
Straight boy slash is a difference genre. Different, not homophobic. And there are still a few people out here who like to read it. Without being told they're "unrealistic", "old-fashioned" or homophobic.
The split has always been there, but normally people are afraid to face up
to it.
What does it hurt to discuss it civilly. It is true there is change in Starsky & Hutch fandom...look how hard it was for Flamingo to bring out the first Dangerous Visions zine and how hard she worked to prepare the fandom for it. An entire new, younger generation has joined
and they write different stories because their personal history is different. They grew up with things that are acceptable now that were a killing offence not too many years ago. Many of the older guard have grown to appreciate the changes and assimilated them gradually. The older zines that someone recently posted were not to her taste is one example of a differing view. The people that wrote those zines had a vision and laid the foundation on which we are all treading in various pieces of footwear from hobnail boots to ballet slippers.
My whole point all along is that there's no right or wrong when one is simply discussing what kind of fiction we like. I usually try to refrain from killing people for not liking science fiction just because I do...honest.
The only thing that annoyed me a bit was the whining, martyred tone of some of the posts.
[snipped]
I believe that [I] mentioned that all one had to do was trot over to the various archives and see how much of the fanfiction there could be categorized as "straight slash" to the criteria that [J] expounded upon. And quite a bit of it does.
We've more than proved that gen and slash can co-exist, so why not these two genres without putting each other down?
But, I can't help someone who wants to try to support the insupportable assertion that "straight slash" is the only real slash. Can you honestly see every archive and zine changing their story definitions to "slash" vs. "gayfic" to suit a handful of writers who apparently want the distinction of being the sole purveyors of slash?
I think the only person(s) who cares about an absolute definition is the one who might be thinking of using a definition in some kind of professional article or essay or thesis or other public forum, wherein a definition would be very important upon which to establish one's thesis.
I couldn't care less about any definitions of "slash," "gen," etc., unless someone tries to tell the rest of the world that these are agreed-upon terms within our fandom culture. That's kind of setting oneself up as an authority, or even leader, when one isn't.
So, if even she can't find many or any pure examples in classic slash of this apparently elusive genre, did it ever actually exist?
What if a story doesn't come out and say one of the guys is gay? Does it count if it's implied? Is it gayfic if Starsky likes bedding women, but really loves wearing their underwear? Or is that gen?
How has 'REAL slash' become embattled. I'm on more than just S&H lists. A few others are different fandoms and on some are people that have been doing the whole fandom thing for as long as you. I haven't read or even heard about any embattling going on.
In your opinion they've been rewritten. Ask anyone else and they might say they don't quite see the guys exactly the same. I can't help the fact that most every time I put an episode of the guys on it screams to me 'gay Hutch' I think Hutch is as gay as the day is long. Whether he knows it or not...well, haven't got that part figured out. Starsky...I don't know. When I write I don't write out that 'I'm gay', says Hutch. It comes out in other ways...subtle ones I hope.
The problem here, is that you think the guys should be written as you see them. It doesn't matter how I or anyone else sees them. You insist this doesn't work in S&H. It doesn't work for you even though it might work for me. We're different. That's why we have two different opinions. . . same goes with everyone else.
I'm straight. I was born straight. That's what I am. I know a few gay people who say they were born gay. That's what they are. They don't have a choice in how they were born. They got a choice in who they sleep with, what they eat for dinner, who they are going to spend their lives with and so on. It's the same for everybody. If you want to get down to it. . . there is this little thing called pheromones that kicks in when someone is physically attracted to another. Whether that turns into love or not. . . who is to say.
The one thing we'll never agree on is slash. Slash is two people of the same sex story. Some stories have them getting it on, others have them falling in love and many are a combination of the two. I think telling people here what love is and what it's not is a little presumptuous on your part. Some of us do have a clue what romantic love is.
You would have saved yourself a whole lot of trouble just saying you like soppy romantic stories about two straight guys. I'm sure there are writers who do that. It ain't me since I'm not much of a romantic. I don't see the guys overly romantic. Starsky probably a little more than Hutch. I don't see Starsky bringing Hutch flowers unless it's a potted plant that looks good in the greenhouse. I don't see Hutch serenading Starsky under his window. I don't see much in the way of candlelight dinners...maybe for an anniversary or something.
Starsky might find it romantic if Hutch got the Torino a new paint job or if he got tickets to Wrestlemania. Hutch might think it's romantic when Starsky gets Hutch a new guitar or takes him to a Johnny Cash concert.
Romance is in the eye of the beholder.
You talk like gayfic is nothing but porn. I still haven't quite figured out this 'REAL slash' thing, but why don't you just say you don't like blow by blow sex and prefer more romantic stuff?
I wrote a gen story not long ago and got it published. Not a smidgen of slash in it, but I liked the exploration of Starsky's character. I like how he and Hutch dealt with the situation. I like the depth they conveyed to one another about how tough it was for them. You don't have to have slash in order to find that depth you're looking for. One story I may find it shallow. The next one could be different. I could go back to the one I thought was shallow and find it had more depth than I realized. These things are open to interpretation and leeway must be given to those who see this differently than you. Otherwise, you sound rigid and unwilling to consider other points of view.
I want good stories. There's a ton of them out there. If I'm in the mood for the guys teasing each other over the other liking 'Designing Woman' I'll read it. If I'm in the mood for some BDSM action, I'll read it. If I'm in the mood for tattooing, prison rape, cotton candy sex or whatever. . . I'll read it. If I'm in the mood for safe I'll read it. If I'm not, I'll find something that makes me squirm in my chair. But, hey. . . what makes me do that and what makes you do that are more than likely two different things.
You said early in this essay that you don't want the characters you love revised, twisted or whatever. You want them left alone. That's how you see you're right. You like the guys how you see them. That's fine. Nobody's gonna argue with that. But nobody here is saying their vision of the guys is the only right one. We're pretty accepting of how people see the characters they love. I may not agree with that interpretation, but who the hell am I to say 'that's wrong'?
I'm not going to attempt to enter into the main thrust of this discussion, because I think the head of that pin y'all are tap dancing on is way too crowded as it is.