gladdecease (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
gladdecease) wrote2019-05-03 08:43 pm
gladdecease) wrote2019-05-03 08:43 pm
Entry tags:
making the glass opaque; or, creators reacting poorly to their slash fandoms
(One of these days I'll figure out how I want to handle dw/pf crossposting, but today is not that day.)
I've been thinking about this quote a lot since I returned home from Endgame and saw some of the dissatisfied responses from the Steve/Bucky corner of the Internet. For all that the meaning of slash has changed since Jenkins first defined it - the "straight women fetishizing men" characterization of slash feels very outdated, and you don't see people arguing about whether canon queer romances should count as slash, though such relationships don't have that metaphoric glass standing in the way - something of this sentiment remains true, especially in big budget franchises with long histories and limited canon queerness, such as the movie universe inspired by Marvel comics.
With acceptance of queer people increasingly mainstream, it's no longer laughable to imagine a character from one of these franchises being revealed as queer. And with the wall between fan and creator made traversable by the Internet, fans are requesting that those dreams of canon queerness become reality. Take down the glass, they ask, with petitions and campaigns and tweet after tweet after tweet, until creators and writers cannot ignore their existence - or the presence of the glass. And that awareness provokes a response.
As far as I've seen, creators respond to the existence of slash fans in one of two ways: they knock on the glass, or they make it opaque.
The opaque glass between Steve and Bucky feels particularly cruel in Endgame, where there's no issue taken with a homoerotic joke between Tony and Steve - who, before the Marvel Cinematic Universe existed, were the far bigger slash ship - because Tony is safe. Tony is fully independent of Steve's story, as well as an incorrigible flirt, and someone in a long-established heterosexual relationship, so Tony ogling Steve's butt isn't seen as implying anything. Bucky, who is a side character in Steve's story, who doesn't have so much as a romantic interest in sight, is not safe.
Bucky, who died right in front of Steve in the last movie - which, talk about your Wrath of Khan-style hands-on-the-glass moments - doesn't get so much as a "glad to see you're alive again" nod when he comes back from the dead. Even though the mirror to this scene (Tony watching Peter Parker turn to dust) got name-dropped as traumatic early on in Endgame, was the primary motivation for Tony's involvement in the time heist, and was resolved with an emotional hug upon Peter's return... Bucky and Steve got nothing. That emotional arc wasn't resolved, and with Steve gone from the story now it never will be.
Because the creators decided that acknowledging that these two care about each other is dangerous. Because the slash fandom showed the creators that there were hands pressed against the glass, and in their frantic backpedaling to assure people who hadn't even seen the glass that they weren't going to remove it, the creators stripped their franchise's deepest friendship of its emotion and meaning.
When I try to explain slash to non-fans, I often reference that moment in Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan where Spock is dying and Kirk stands there, a wall of glass separating the two longtime buddies. Both of them are reaching out towards each other, their hands pressed hard against the glass, trying to establish physical contact. They both have so much they want to say and so little time to say it. Spock calls Kirk his friend, the fullest expression of their feelings anywhere in the series. Almost everyone who watches the scene feels the passion the two men share, the hunger for something more than what they are allowed. And, I tell my nonfan listeners, slash is what happens when you take away the glass. The glass, for me, is often more social than physical; the glass represents those aspects of traditional masculinity which prevent emotional expressiveness or physical intimacy between men, which block the possibility of true male friendship. Slash is what happens when you take away those barriers and imagine what a new kind of male friendship might look like. One of the most exciting things about slash is that it teaches us how to recognize the signs of emotional caring beneath all the masks by which traditional male culture seeks to repress or hide those feelings.-Henry Jenkins, quoting from his essay "Normal Female Interest in Men Boinking," way back in 2008.
I've been thinking about this quote a lot since I returned home from Endgame and saw some of the dissatisfied responses from the Steve/Bucky corner of the Internet. For all that the meaning of slash has changed since Jenkins first defined it - the "straight women fetishizing men" characterization of slash feels very outdated, and you don't see people arguing about whether canon queer romances should count as slash, though such relationships don't have that metaphoric glass standing in the way - something of this sentiment remains true, especially in big budget franchises with long histories and limited canon queerness, such as the movie universe inspired by Marvel comics.
With acceptance of queer people increasingly mainstream, it's no longer laughable to imagine a character from one of these franchises being revealed as queer. And with the wall between fan and creator made traversable by the Internet, fans are requesting that those dreams of canon queerness become reality. Take down the glass, they ask, with petitions and campaigns and tweet after tweet after tweet, until creators and writers cannot ignore their existence - or the presence of the glass. And that awareness provokes a response.
As far as I've seen, creators respond to the existence of slash fans in one of two ways: they knock on the glass, or they make it opaque.
Knocking on the glass: speaking warmly or affectionately of their fans in interviews, writing scenes that wink and nod at the fans, saying yes, I see you... without actually removing the glass.
Queerbaiting, by some standards.
Making the glass opaque: laughing uncomfortably or avoiding the subject whenever the existence of the fans or the slash ship is mentioned, avoiding writing scenes with those characters interacting, or if the plot makes that difficult, then putting up as many barriers as possible to a personable, emotional interaction. If the characters were amiable, they act more like coworkers. If they were best friends, they'll try to hang out the next time they're in town, promise.
Sometimes the creator will write in an explanation for this sudden coolness, but to invent a reason would be to acknowledge that they are intentionally changing the relationship, which will undoubtedly draw calls (justified or not) of homophobia, so more often there is no in-story explanation.
Queerbaiting, by some standards.
Making the glass opaque: laughing uncomfortably or avoiding the subject whenever the existence of the fans or the slash ship is mentioned, avoiding writing scenes with those characters interacting, or if the plot makes that difficult, then putting up as many barriers as possible to a personable, emotional interaction. If the characters were amiable, they act more like coworkers. If they were best friends, they'll try to hang out the next time they're in town, promise.
Sometimes the creator will write in an explanation for this sudden coolness, but to invent a reason would be to acknowledge that they are intentionally changing the relationship, which will undoubtedly draw calls (justified or not) of homophobia, so more often there is no in-story explanation.
The opaque glass between Steve and Bucky feels particularly cruel in Endgame, where there's no issue taken with a homoerotic joke between Tony and Steve - who, before the Marvel Cinematic Universe existed, were the far bigger slash ship - because Tony is safe. Tony is fully independent of Steve's story, as well as an incorrigible flirt, and someone in a long-established heterosexual relationship, so Tony ogling Steve's butt isn't seen as implying anything. Bucky, who is a side character in Steve's story, who doesn't have so much as a romantic interest in sight, is not safe.
Bucky, who died right in front of Steve in the last movie - which, talk about your Wrath of Khan-style hands-on-the-glass moments - doesn't get so much as a "glad to see you're alive again" nod when he comes back from the dead. Even though the mirror to this scene (Tony watching Peter Parker turn to dust) got name-dropped as traumatic early on in Endgame, was the primary motivation for Tony's involvement in the time heist, and was resolved with an emotional hug upon Peter's return... Bucky and Steve got nothing. That emotional arc wasn't resolved, and with Steve gone from the story now it never will be.
Because the creators decided that acknowledging that these two care about each other is dangerous. Because the slash fandom showed the creators that there were hands pressed against the glass, and in their frantic backpedaling to assure people who hadn't even seen the glass that they weren't going to remove it, the creators stripped their franchise's deepest friendship of its emotion and meaning.