WARNING by childrenofthegrave_deviantart]]> Slash fiction sexualises overtly non-sexual male bonding. It got its name from the convention of using the forward slash to mark the names of characters being paired, for example, Kirk/Spock for Star Trek, which is where the phenomenon is believed to have begun. Basically, during the 1970s women began penning stories of romantic male pairings in fanzines to protest a lack of any ongoing romantic arc in their favourite television series. This came at a time when female heroes were rarely seen in action-oriented narratives, and as such, became a way for women to envision an egalitarian romance.
Artist unknown: http://farm1.static.flickr.com/160/437808368_822f6b3e2d.jpg?v=0
Now I know what you’re thinking, if women longed for strong female characters, why didn’t they just create a strong woman in their fan fiction rather than making the men ‘go gay’? Truth is, they did. These stories became known as Mary Sue stories. However women much preferred to slash their male leads, first because they came, in the words of MIT media theorist Henry Jenkins, “ready-made”, and second, because they found that they could no sooner relate to these new super-independent-Scully-like-characters than they could to their Star-Trek-space-bimbos-of-the-week. But there are other reasons too, in their study of the subject Salmon and Symons discovered that women who enjoyed a traditional heterosexual romance could generally also enjoy a male/male romance, this led to the pair theorising that slash was a subgenre of romance. Further, many slash writers take the 'two is better than one' view, arguing that, why fantasise about one ‘ragged hero of unadulterated masculinity’ when you can get two.
By Zcache
Other ‘types’ of slash you might not know about include: Real Person Slash (which pairs real life heterosexual men in homosexual love). In the Supernatural fandom (one of the fandoms I am particularly interested in) these stories are called J2 (because they pair the real life actors Jared and Jensen). J2 is interesting to study because the characters, like Sam and Dean from the show, have a lot of ‘slash potential’ (they live together, car pool to work together each day and often joke about each other’s sexuality).
By Tove & Madde 2009
I am attracted to the topic for its interdisciplinary reach (into media, gender, cultural and literary studies) as well as its prospects for generating theory. There is a very real gap in knowledge waiting to be explored here. Stand by for more on these gaps and how I look to fill them as the year progresses.
Night has brought to those who sleep. Only dreams they cannot keep… by Wallse8]]>
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Previously, everything I knew about Seattle was gleaned from TV shows. For example, I’d vaguely heard of the Space Needle, had seen some shots of the ferries, and was excited about the possibility of meeting McDreamy in Seattle Grace Hospital. The moment I stepped out of my hotel, the illusion of being in a film or TV show began. I felt that I’d stepped onto the set of Grease when a 1950’s boy walked past, complete with a greased ducktail hairdo, black shoes, white socks, and a plastic comb in his back pocket. I followed him for 3 blocks and he did his hair at each set of traffic lights, shoving the comb back into his pocket each time. I arrived at the famous Pike Place markets and watched the fish sellers hurling giant salmon at each other next to rows and rows of cut flowers, and saw the famous ferries ran to and fro across Puget Sound. McDreamy and Meredith Gray did not appear on the deck of any of these, so I headed on to see the Space Needle. A marvel of 1960’s architecture, it was built for the 1962 World’s Fair (where the microwave was first unveiled!). I couldn’t decide whether I was in the opening credits for Frasier or some 60’s movie- the Needle is indeed very spacey!
