From: Lisa Williams lcw@dallas.net
just that there *is* evidence from canon for the characters' sexual orientations, they're not just blank slates.
Sure; I have no quarrel with that -- but they're not writ in stone, either.
Exactly how *do* you regard canon, then? I tend to regard canon as a very fixed thing: it's 52 episodes, and we have to take it as read, and that includes mistakes and lamentable casting decisions, etc. If Blake reveals in the series that he is 34 at the time of "Breakdown", I may go away and write a story saying that he's 55 at the same time-- but it's not going to fit the canon, however good a story it is.
I also note that different people received different impressions, and the whole lot could cite canon (generally along the lines of "He did this, which could mean that") in their favor.
Not exactly. For instance the discussion about the scene in "Duel" where Blake and Avon cling to each other in an explosion and stay clung afterwards. Betty cited this as proof of homoeroticism, as they cling to each other for an unusually long time. "Gosh," thought I, "maybe she's right!" But then I went back and watched it, and found that there *was* a more obvious nonhomoerotic explanation (the danger of being hit again had not yet passed, as Jenna had not given the all-clear, and as soon as the all-clear was given Blake and Avon sprang apart). Just because you can cite canon for something doesn't mean the citation can withstand argument.
Only the "he did this" is canon.
Yes. But within that canon there is a definite visual grammar for showing sexual interest, which can be both inferred from scenes in which the dialogue says that sexual interest is meant to be shown and extrapolated from there onto other scenes without such dialogue (but in which there is a possibility of sexual interest). In the end, a lot of it came down to looking at instances in which this grammar is employed by the principals-- and the canonical "he did this" of showing sexual interest cropped up in a lot of opposite-sex cases but no same-sex ones for the principals.
What it means is personal interpretation.
Um, no. It means visual, onscreen evidence for sexual interest, and when it is shown and when it is not shown.
There are people who can see possibilities for pairings (het or slash) which I find totally unbelievable, and those who can't see the ones that I'm willing to accept.
"Possibility" and that other word you use, "potential," is a lot different from "canon." You could, for instance, say to me "it is entirely possible, Fiona, that you were born in Madagascar." "Rubbish," I would say, producing my birth certificate. "I was born in Toronto." "Ah," you would say, "but it's still *possible* that you were born in Madagascar, but your parents falsified your birth certificate." I'd be forced to admit the possibility (although why my parents would do a complicated thing like that is puzzling), but on the Occam's Razor front I'd probably take the balance of evidence as being for my being born in Toronto.
Or, to get back to the slash front: as I said, yes, the slash interpretation can be made, has been made and will be made-- but retconning it back onto our screens is something else entirely.
When I see slash potential for a particular pair, it isn't something I'm inventing out of whole cloth and imposing on an unyielding framework,
No, but you're reacting to the canon as given within a particular way. There's a very interesting passage in Bacon-Smith where she describes an older fan introducing a new one to a TV series, with OF talking to NF, telling her how to interpret what's on the screen. Somebody else yesterday made the point about how reading a slash story changes how you view them afterwards, within the series as well as in fanfic. When people make an interpretation, they are doing it within a particular cultural framework, and according to the input they receive from other fans. If you made a slash reading, and your friends in fandom said "that's ridiculous" (as happens in DW fandom from time to time) you might find yourself rethinking it. We don't make our interpretations in a vacuum.
If I see it, it's because it's blatantly obvious to me, not because I'm making an effort to twist things.
Never said you were, but I'm also saying, 1) there is canon, and 2) that your interpretation is made within a particular social context.
There are cases where I can
*intellectually* understand how other people are arriving at a slash interpretation, but I just don't *feel* it myself and hence don't find it believable -- and there are cases where it leaps up and hits me right in the face. Nor can I tell you exactly why, barring a few conditions I've managed to figure out. Either I see it, or I don't. I don't expect other people to regard things the same way I do, but I do expect them to realize that these are *fictional* characters and open to *multiple*
But once again, as with the discussion earlier this month, it's all coming down to "feelings" and "notions." If you'd like to play the game with me, you yourself can try and come up with a hard-evidence example of same-sex sexual interest by one of the principal characters on B7.
interpretations, no single one of which is the One True Way.
And it's entirely possible that my parents are ex-KGB agents who have been working for thirty-odd years to destroy any evidence that they were on Madagascar in the early seventies. But I'm inclined to doubt it.
But to get totally off the slash topic, I've never liked the whole "there is no One True Way" phrase, I have to say. If the Allies, standing in liberated Belsen, had said "sure, the Germans killed off between six and ten million civillians in concentration camps, but it was entirely justified within their ideology, and because There Is No One True Way, we'll just let them get back to it," the world would be one denazification programme poorer. Or, would you say "[name of list member deleted] has just said some very offensive things about [name of other list member deleted] and made her very, very upset, but she doesn't have to apologise because There Is No One True Way?" IMO Do What Thou Wilt is *not* The Whole Of The Law, and some actions are more justifiable than others.
Fiona
The Posthumous Memoirs of Secretary Rontane Available for public perusal at http://nyder.r67.net
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Fiona Moore wrote:
Exactly how *do* you regard canon, then?
I regard it as what we literally saw and heard on the show itself. Explanations of *why* so-and-so did such-and-such, what he was thinking or feeling, are interpretation, not canon.
If Blake reveals in the series that he is 34 at the time of "Breakdown", I may go away and write a story saying that he's 55 at the same time-- but it's not going to fit the canon, however good a story it is.
Well, if you came up with some reason for him to have *said* that he's 34, it would fit the canon because it would not contradict what happened on the show -- Blake said that he's 34. If you wrote a story where he actually *said*, at that point, that he was 55, then *that* would contradict canon and would hence be striking out into AU territory.
Just because you can cite canon for something doesn't mean the citation can withstand argument.
And coming up with an alternate explanation which you find more convincing doesn't mean that someone else's is invalid, either. Yours may not be more convincing to everyone, and it's still an *explanation* -- an interpretation. And interpretations vary between individuals. Some will be convincing to many more people than others, but there isn't a vote to determine one "correct" interpretation to which everyone is obligated to subscribe. No matter how much you support your own version, no matter how obviously "right" it seems to you, other people are *still* going to receive different impressions.
which can be both inferred from scenes in which the dialogue says that sexual interest is meant to be shown and extrapolated from there onto other scenes
"Inferred from." "Extrapolated." These are what I mean by personal interpretation.
"Possibility" and that other word you use, "potential," is a lot different from "canon."
Well, of course -- I was talking about what's being portrayed in fanfic, not about canon. I'm sorry that wasn't clear. Fanfic is an extrapolation from canon, and hence is concerned, by nature, with interpretations, possibilities and potentials *based* on canon.
Or, to get back to the slash front: as I said, yes, the slash interpretation can be made, has been made and will be made-- but retconning it back onto our screens is something else entirely.
I don't think I understand the phrase "retconning it back onto our screens". Clarify, please?
There's a very interesting passage in Bacon-Smith where she describes an older fan introducing a new one to a TV series, with OF talking to NF, telling her how to interpret what's on the screen.
Irrelevant, in my case, both as concerns B7 and my slash perceptions generally. I saw B7 years before I had any contact with other fans, and more years before I knew there was such a thing as slash fanfic for it -- by which time my own perceptions, which were based on my watching the show, all by my lonesome, were long since established. And as far as seeing slash elsewhere, I've been doing that virtually all my life (I can trace it back to age 5, which is about as early as I have coherent memories to draw from), and it wasn't until a few years ago that I had any idea other people did, too. That's around three decades of my forming very strong slash-type impressions, without any other fans telling me what to think. And then are all those pairings where I *don't* see slash, period, despite -- now -- having a lot of contacts in slash fandom who *do* see it.
Never said you were, but I'm also saying, 1) there is canon, and 2) that your interpretation is made within a particular social context.
I agree with both of those points -- though it sounded from the preceding paragraph like you might be making some mistaken assumptions about my own social context. Your interpretation, too, is made within *your* social context. But this is rather obvious, is it not?
If you'd like to play the game with me, you yourself can try and come up with a hard-evidence example of same-sex sexual interest by one of the principal characters on B7.
I don't understand at all what you're getting at here. There are lots of moments which strike me as slashy (forgive the shorthand), which probably *wouldn't* strike you that way, and which *canonically* consisted of, e.g., two characters looking at each other. Most, if not all, of them have undoubtedly been cited in the course of previous discussions. I don't know what you mean by a "hard-evidence example"; if you're asking for a mad, passionate clinch between two same-sex characters, we both know there wasn't such a thing in the series, so why ask? What is the object of this "game"? I'm missing something here, and I have an uneasy feeling you're assuming that I'm making some kind of claim that I'm *not* making... (I'm afraid Harriet may be quite right about alien mindsets.)
the world would be one denazification programme poorer.
And the shadow of Godwin looms... I was saying to myself only this morning that someone was going to invoke Godwin in this thread before very much longer (which indicates either that I am prescient or that I've been online *much* too long.) My comment was stating, very clearly and specifically, that fictional characters will be interpreted in different ways by different people, with no one interpretation being the single "correct" one. I believe taking it completely out of context to imply an "anything goes" attitude toward human actions, with gratuitous dragging in of a Nazi reference, is close enough to qualify for Godwin status, even if it doesn't strictly meet the criteria.
Well, I guess that's that, then. Thread over, thanks for playing. I've got a bunch of Eroica stuff to go work on, anyway.
- Lisa
-- Lisa Williams: lcw@dallas.net or lwilliams@raytheon.com Lisa's Video Frame Capture Library: http://framecaplib.com/ From Eroica With Love: http://eroicafans.org/
In thinking of slash (especially f/f) in the larger context, I normally think of contrasting Blakes 7 with my other fandom -- Xena.
As with Blakes 7, the show started with purely subtextual elements, but once the way in which many fans were interpreting it became known, it became deliberate policy to insert them into every episode. Thus each episode contains deliberately tantalising clues that always fall short of an outright declaration (much to the dismay of many fans). We call this "the subtext" and divide fanfic into "gen" and "alt" depending on whether the author considers the relationship between the central characters to be sororal or saphic.
As with Blakes 7, anything other than gen is extra-canonical but I would deny in both cases that it is uncanonical just because some labourious hetrosexual explanation can conceivably be constructed.
Whereas the majority of B7fic is gen and the majority of slash is m/m, Xena fic is almost evenly divided between the two, and the overwhelming majority of slash is of course f/f. That the show has such a large lesbian fan base belies any claim that f/f is insulting to them in any way -- much the reverse.
One slash fan writer has written three episodes of the show itself, on the invitation of the producers, who were impressed with her work. The cast have been broadly supportive of the slash, signing such items as artworks. Lucy Lawless has been known to put in appearances at lesbian clubs for her gay fans, and Lucy and Renee appeared at the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras in 1999.
As with Blakes 7, the anti-slash position has been attainted with a sorry list of crimes over the years, including destruction of web sites, verbal and physical abuse and assault and some have been gaoled.
In Xena fandom, it's still possible to have anti-gay beliefs, but you won't be allowed to express them openly on most mailing lists and chat channels. You'd also have to be aware that the opinion of many cast, crew and fans is that your beliefs are (as Robert Trapert said) "beyond contempt".
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Fiona Moore -
Lisa Williams -
Ross Mallett