the way someone thinks about sexuality would naturally lead to it being presented differently
Venture Brothers (which is an acquired taste... brilliant show but I wouldn't recommend it to 80% of the people I know) really got me thinking about an extreme version of slash which reacts to the presence of slash in society. VB is the first show I've seen produced in my own lifetime that's totally het -- it celebrates maleness (or rather, guy-ness) while satirizing it. After I stop laughing, I think, huh, white males really don't have a stereotypical role in society. I mean, they have a *real* role in society, but there's not an acceptable universal image out there, when in past eras there was *always* a generally accepted homogenous image. Like, I dunno, The A-Team.
Anyway, the thing with that is they're at that level of humor where they say "that's so gay" or they make fun of het characters for having same-sex yet nonsexual relationships with each other. AKA playground / boys bathroom humor. And surprising myself, I didn't find it at all offensive. (Don't even ask about the gay yeti.) Because the context was "we're guys. we have emotions. but what do you want us to do, be gay?" So in that sense, there were tons of slashpoints in VB.
Yet all of them were put there deliberately, to satirize the existence of slashpoints.
This sounds very roundabout... but... I'm a bisexual fairly-liberal Asian-American female. And I'm almost sure I could sit down with a bigoted homophobic white male and neither of us would be put off by the "gay factor" by itself. (The bodily fluids maybe. But not that.)
And because VB has no agenda in terms of slash, it made me realize how much other slashy materials *do* have an agenda. So many of them are playing to the camera, playing up the sex, and in that sense one source of slashiness is the familiar game of "sex makes money." It's the fad, everyone else is slashing, slashers (and gay people with disposable income) spend money.
Or they could be trying to promote awareness. Or they could be trying to celebrate the male aesthetic. Or they might want to go into genderbending drama / slapstick / art, and that's the lingo of the moment.
VB's agenda was to have no agenda. They were too busy making their parody / satire / house party of uber-masculinity. So I could write a slash story for any number of characters in VB, but they've already made fun of me, the slasher, and my little slashy story too. They've already slashed themselves for the sake of funny, and not the sake of *slash*.
In short, the agenda creates context. And so measuring how much that context is subverted depends on the agenda.
using Venture Brothers to make a point. eek.
Venture Brothers (which is an acquired taste... brilliant show but I wouldn't recommend it to 80% of the people I know) really got me thinking about an extreme version of slash which reacts to the presence of slash in society. VB is the first show I've seen produced in my own lifetime that's totally het -- it celebrates maleness (or rather, guy-ness) while satirizing it. After I stop laughing, I think, huh, white males really don't have a stereotypical role in society. I mean, they have a *real* role in society, but there's not an acceptable universal image out there, when in past eras there was *always* a generally accepted homogenous image. Like, I dunno, The A-Team.
Anyway, the thing with that is they're at that level of humor where they say "that's so gay" or they make fun of het characters for having same-sex yet nonsexual relationships with each other. AKA playground / boys bathroom humor. And surprising myself, I didn't find it at all offensive. (Don't even ask about the gay yeti.) Because the context was "we're guys. we have emotions. but what do you want us to do, be gay?" So in that sense, there were tons of slashpoints in VB.
Yet all of them were put there deliberately, to satirize the existence of slashpoints.
This sounds very roundabout... but... I'm a bisexual fairly-liberal Asian-American female. And I'm almost sure I could sit down with a bigoted homophobic white male and neither of us would be put off by the "gay factor" by itself. (The bodily fluids maybe. But not that.)
And because VB has no agenda in terms of slash, it made me realize how much other slashy materials *do* have an agenda. So many of them are playing to the camera, playing up the sex, and in that sense one source of slashiness is the familiar game of "sex makes money." It's the fad, everyone else is slashing, slashers (and gay people with disposable income) spend money.
Or they could be trying to promote awareness. Or they could be trying to celebrate the male aesthetic. Or they might want to go into genderbending drama / slapstick / art, and that's the lingo of the moment.
VB's agenda was to have no agenda. They were too busy making their parody / satire / house party of uber-masculinity. So I could write a slash story for any number of characters in VB, but they've already made fun of me, the slasher, and my little slashy story too. They've already slashed themselves for the sake of funny, and not the sake of *slash*.
In short, the agenda creates context. And so measuring how much that context is subverted depends on the agenda.