Why Slash? (1990 essay)

Meta
Title:	Why Slash?
Creator:	[C A] (a native French speaker)
Date(s):	printed in May 1990
Medium:	print
Fandom:	it was printed in a Starsky & Hutch apazine, but it address many fandoms
Topic:
External Links:
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Why Slash? is an essay that was printed in the May 1990 issue of the Starsky & Hutch apazine, Tell Me Something I Don't Know!.

While the essay was in a Starsky & Hutch publication, it encompasses many fandoms.

The introduction: "I found my file on Why Slash again.So, here goes: WHY SLASH? I am very free in my generalizations and my use of "obviously", and I state a lot of things I haven't the faintest shred of evidence for. That is just my way of putting things. This is more free-associative reasoning than my belief in a ultimate truth on the matter."

Some Topics Discussed

• females emphasize more with characters, want them to feel more, shows impact woman emotionally more than men
• slash and fanfiction
• male buddy shows
• misogyny in fanworks
• lack of appealing female characters on television and movie screens
• wanting to do heroic things, identifying with the hero

From the Essay

Why are so many women interested in slash in the context of media related material?

Women who want/need to find this type of relationship in TV series are women who are likely to get a lot of emotional satisfaction from fantasy life and fictional daydreaming (either due to dissatisfaction with real life or fertile imagination or what-have-you). Thus TV series or movies) will have a stronger impact on then, because their empathy with the fictional characters will be fairly strong and more rewarding. I use empathy here, in the sense of "identification". This does not mean that the woman thinks she is the hero, or imagines herself to be him, but that she views the fictional piece from that character's point of view, and her emotions parallel this: anguish when he is hurt, triumph when he wins etc...

TV is an easy, convenient source tor fictional material, which also allows sharing with a great number of people, and made slash fandom possible: it benefited from the structure of general fandom. (ie, hanging around male gay friends does not lead one to form clubs, fandom does).

So in this society, someone feeding their fantasy life with TV fare will come across the traditional pattern:

-the dashing hero

-the buddy (his confident and accomplice)

-the screaming ninny (his romantic interest)

Other type of characters exist, but those are the stereotypes which come easily to mind.

The problem being, that the only one she can reliably identify with is the dashing hero, since he is usually the main character, the heroine being seen less often, usually a supporting character 2) he does all the exiting things and seem to enjoy then (If the woman has spunk, it is not a value in itself, but a source of excitement or annoyance for the hero. At worse, it is considered as cute.)

Those were the reasons why to identify with the Hero.

Here are the reasons not to identify with the heroine:

1) A woman, having internalized the values of our culture, might feel that women are devalued per se, regardless of script, making the woman-heroine a worthless object to identify with (and thus explaining why the young male viewer, who might not feel able to defeat a swarm of Klingons single-handed, is less likely to identify with the heroine to escape that feeling of inadequacy).

2) When female characters are shown to be effective and powerful, it is either through their "feminine wiles", or they are portrayed as ugly frustrated lesbians. In no way can they escape their "feminine" nature, whereas the man seems to be a sexless norm. Who wants to identify with the Russian general played by Lotte Lenya in "From Russia with Love", especially since she loses in the end?

As to women powerful through the use of their beauty and seduction (ie their power to manipulate men to further their schemes), they could easily become alien, incomprehensible creatures for "average" women full of self-doubt or teen-age angst.

3a) The screaming ninny has a second-rate role, and does not display as her main characteristics
 qualities thought to be valuable in our society today: resourcefulness, courage, self-determination. (Princess Leia might be one tough broad, but the story nevertheless starts with her having to be rescued,
and you never see her piloting anything. Then she is supposed to be a leader, but you don't see much of
 that.)

3b) The screaming ninny displays as her main characteristics the image of a feminine ideal that many women don't have, don't think they have, feel guilty for not having, feel guilty for wanting, and/or think is demeaning and of another age, although it is still omnipresent in the medias.

So if one insists on having a fantasy live fed by TV series, How can one adapt? The main hero is male as a rule. He is the one to whom the adventure happens, and the one who makes it happen. He must pit his wit and resourcefulness against danger and foes. And he does not have to be beautiful. If he is, that is very nice, and if he is not, no one makes him feel guilty for it. At most, he is expected to be handsome, if that. His character and personality is felt to be more important than his face.

The screaming ninny is a physical ideal few can match. She is sure of her charm, and sure that screaming her head off is the proper response to danger. She is a reminder of values you don't share, and which you must reject for your own sanity if you are not confident that people will obey and rescue you if you wiggle your ass at then.

It is worthy to envy someone who is efficient and resourceful, thus, the hero.

It is less so to want to be beautiful in order to be seductive and manipulative, thus the heroine.

In the first case you want to be a responsible human being, in the second, it is vanity and scheming.

So you're not her, and you do not want to be her.

So the male hero is perceived as a "person", and the easiest one to "feel" the adventure with.

Again, "Identify" is an unsatisfactory word, since you don't think you are him. But what he is made to feel, you feel by proxy, as if it happened to you.

And if you are of the daydreaming kind, you will "borrow" him, to make him feel some more interesting things.

And let us say that you do not want sex or romance to be absent from your daydreams (a not unlikely supposition). If you are identifying with the male hero, seeing the adventure from his viewpoint, who the heck are you going to fancy? Not him, because since you are living the adventure through him, the point is to make him feel the feelings of sex and romance, so that you can experience them. So, he has to have a relationship with someone else. With someone you can enjoy as well. And that person is unlikely to be the screaming ninny. Even if you are a Lesbian, you might not find her very attractive.

Of course, you can daydream strong worthy female characters, but that is hard work, and by that time, you could have internalized enough of our society's values to make the prospect unexciting. Or you can daydream yourself in the script (Hi there, Mary Sue). This is to say there are other options. But it is hard to do while you are watching the show.

So how does sex and romance come into this? Through tenderness more than ravishing lust. That is where the male buddy comes in. The woman who is in empathy with the hero, will like his buddy as well. If the buddy is attractive enough, she is going to more than like him, she might get to feel sexually attracted, but in the story, but she can only do it through male hero as well (whose motives she is long used to interpret in a way that pleases her), and if she wants to experience being sexually attracted to the buddy within the story, she can only do it through the male hero, (and vice versa: one identifies with more than one character, usually, and can easily switch from one to the other according to need).

And what type of relationship do buddy and hero have? On the screen, there is a caring relationship. It is not tainted with sexism, with expectations of a given role, because the one is female and the other male. It is equality. Not in practical terms: the buddy can be less or more strong or skillful than the hero. But his weaknesses is not perceived as something that makes him in essence inferior or different. Their "perfect" relationship is valorizing, because it is "earned". ie, their loyalty towards each other is born from what they've been through together. They are attracted to each other's personalities, not through their gonads (at least at first stage) or devalued" prettiness. (indeed, when a man is attracted to a plain" woman, it usually turns out that she's a beautiful woman with mussed hair, or heavily rimmed glasses and hair in a tight bun).

If that relationship is attractive because it is equal, why are there a non negligible number of slash-zines, where one male partner dominates the other in such a fashion as to make John Norman's Gor series look non-sexist?

Seems that even if some fan fiction depicts one partner as dominant, the lovers are not different in nature: a woman can safely indulge in S&M and rape fantasies without guilt feelings, since the setting is gay male, and thus it proves nothing as far as female psyche is concerned. Safe, as I told you.

There is also the Hurt/Comfort debate to get into at that point, but that won't be now, since Hurt/Comfort is more often ampersand than slash, (ampersand means that no actual sex is taking place or is intended, although mutual liking, or teasing can be pretty extreme).

This is the best way I can explain "Why slash."

These theories account only very partially for Lesbian women enjoying reading and writing male slash.

Also, I have little experience of Adult non-slash material, though I've enjoyed some which was Blake's 7 related. Otherwise, straight sex in slash: bizarrely it is not absent, and some of it is quite attractively described, although often with quite an unpleasant twist: Straight sex in Bodie/Doyle slash consists of (in my samples, anyway) of air-brained women. As to to straight sex in S/H: Kira and Hutch's ex-wife get to play the nasty scarecrows. Maybe the next question should be: misogyny in slash?

Fan Comments

Your article on "Why Slash" was interesting and sound reasoning, but [there's nothing that] isn't that new as a reason for the phenomenon. I just don't feel it's necessary to keep hashing the premise over and over again, or to need to find reasons for writing or enjoying something. It's difficult enough to tell outsiders (mundanes) about our fannish life, as [M R K] mentioned in her letter; we shouldn't have to explain ourselves to our fellow fans. You like it, or you don't. You believe the premise, or you don't. You see it for these characters, or others, or all male-male duos. It's a turn-on, a curiosity, a valid premise to write about, a gross-out — whatever. It exists. You've talked about how explicit scenes can go on too long, about psychological reasons women like "/" relationships, what I want to know is, what is your opinion of a "/" relationship for Starsky and Hutch? What do you think of those characters, either in the context of "/" or otherwise? Let's get to some commentary about Starsky and Hutch, not that I mind the discussion of slash fandom as a whole, but because this is a Starsky and Hutch publication. Some of us have read other universes (but as I've pointed out elsewhere, if all you know of slash is K/S or even B/D, it's something else again when you get to S/H) but others haven't, so the references are meaningless to them. Hurt/comfort and slash theory are fascinating topics, but after being in fandom 14 years, I guess I'm about as tired of discussing that subject as [T B] is writing explicit scenes. We all like it to a greater or lesser degree (hurt/comfort or slash, friends) so why try to figure it out? As they used to say about the space program, if you have to explain it to someone, that person isn't likely to be able to understand anyway.

As a lesbian, I don't actually see that "we" need a special explanation for why "we" like slash. I love women, but I'm also attracted to attractive men. I just don't want one of my own. Lesbians are, after all, women too. We were brought up with the same tv shows, the same silly-ninny heroines, S it seems to me that, if anything, we rejected them more than straight women have. The only tv woman I can remember wanting to be was Catwoman--not because I wanted Batman, but because she was so cool. And, I know very well that, for me, writing SH is a way to write a sexual relationship without it becoming too personal, too much of myself--I can write intimacy while still distancing myself enough to feel safe. Misogyny in SH? I don't think so. (And this is from a woman who can tell you why "I Dream of Jeanne" is a more feminist show than "Bewitched." Anybody who wants to know, send a sase, you'll hear from me within the week. No joke] If you think THE REPORTER in The Heroes is a jerk, what do you think of S&H in the same episode? If she's an airhead, they're macho dweebs. Vanessa. She left Hutch—that's reason enough for a fan to dislike her. But she was not only a thief (not nice] she was a double-crossing thief, S she was using Hutch. She'da screwed him once, split the next day, S left him once again trying to figure out what he'd done wrong. And as for Kira — I can't, right off hand, think of any actual fan fie that shows her as such a bitch, S I can think of a couple that show her with some understanding. And why not? In a lot of ways, isn't Kira us? All she wants is both of them; S she's not the cause of the problems in their relationship, she's a symptom.

[C], as usual, offers a fascinating and thoughtful article on WHY SLASH. And apologises for her generalisations in advance. Ah, maybe that's what I should do, then no one could jump down my throat. Yes, I do view the piece from the hero's p.o.v. -- both in reading and writing. However, the excellent CAGNEY & LACEY don't fit with the 'feminine ideal' as quoted. They are not ugly or frustrated, and they do not rely on feminine wiles to get their way. Just a point. Princess Leia: I always thought of as a figurehead leader. And the 'earned' relationship puts me in mind of the dialogue in Plato's 'Symposium'. (My copy is one of the Penguin Classics, translated by Walter Hamilton.) The introduction has one of the best explanations of Platonic love, in a nutshell -- 'Platonic love, in spite of the meaning commonly attributed to it, is a common search for truth and beauty by two persons of the same sex inspired by mutual affection'. In a nut shell, that also describes what I love about SH. To quote again -- C.S. Lewis, this time — (and inaccurately, as I cannot find my source-book!) "Love does not consist of gazing at each other, but of looking outwards in the same direction."

As for growing up with and rejecting the same silly ninny heroines, I will second the notion. I'm a straight woman, and all I can say was that I never found even ONE heroine that I wanted to emulate when I was growing up. My role models were male largely because they took action instead of fluttering helplessly. I'd watch some woman in a film or t.v. series shrieking away in a moment of crisis , and I'd say, "I'm not going to be like that. I'm going to be like (fill in the name of whatever hero I was watch ing) and gra b the gun and shoot the nasty." I have no idea if this helped prepare me to accept a slash relationship. Personally I doubt it. As [M B] commented in her letter, it all depends on whether or not you believe in the relationship. I'm not someone who sees every male male relationship in slash terms, but SH just made me nod my head and wonder why I hadn't noticed it the first time through the series. Love is love and theirs seemed as plain to me as the proverbial nose on the face.