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absurd, you say? well, when i said subCULTURE, i meant a culture of sort, which means there are enough people to make it into a cultural phenomenon. slash fan fic is a hugely popular theme in current web-writing, online-journals, personal webpages, and web-rings. these days i've seen lots of slash fan fic around Pirates of the Carribean, Harry Potter, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, etc. etc. and the list is growing. interestingly enough, the writers of slash are mostly women, not necessarily lesbian- or queer-identified, who write about men-on-men romance and/or sex. i entered this subculture without really knowing its full extent late in high school reading & writing fan fic on a certain Korean boy band (embarrassed cough) that was insanely popular then. what i didn't know then but know now is that all those teenaged girls and women in their twenties who read & wrote slash experimented with their sexuality and many continue to have relationships with women. :O there HAVE been criticisms of this phenomenon, however, as everything needs to be critiqued. there are lots of slash out there that are voyeuristic of male-on-male sexuality, where the female writer is actually homophobic and it shows in the story as mockery of same-sex desire. BUT... i believe there's a huge tension in these individual's hold on their hetero-centrality and her desire to explore a social taboo: homo-sexuality. also, as women who have comparatively less social/sexual agency than men, they can exercise a certain power by controlling sexual acts BETWEEN men. so needless to say, i'm VERY interested in slash fan fic as a cultural phenomenon, as cultural production (eep! big word), and, of course, as pure entertainment (yahoo!). but before i ramble on even further on the theory, let's get to the FUN stuff. all in all, my favourite characters are in Lord of the Rings and more recently Master & Commander: Far Side of the World. 
Russell Crowe as Captain Jack Aubrey (left) Paul Bettany as Dr. Stephen Maturin (right) Directed by Peter Weir (Dead Poets Society) if this movie doesn't scream out SLASH then i don't know what would. it is an absolutely perfect film - better homoerotic subtext than even Lord of the Rings, which is saying a LOT. the subtext is elegant and cerebral: the friendship between Jack, the captain of HMS Surprise and Stephen, the ship's physician, is full of an erotic tension and intense comradship. in the original novel series they are called 'bedfellows', a term that is titillating for any slash fan. when he's not stomping round the deck and giving out orders, Jack retreats to the captain's quarters at night and plays the violin with Stephen who holds the cello. they 'make music' together, a fabulous analogy to sex. Jack, with his broad muscled shoulders and musky masculinity, holds the agile violin in his calloused hands. Stephen, the intellectual with frail yet steady fingers that tend to the shipmates' injuries, cradles the cello between his slender legs. thus, the metaphor is complete. at one point near the end, they flip back and forth from one playing his instrument and the other plucking the strings on his own, curiously resembling 'tumbling' in bed. my favourite part, though - and here comes a spoiler - is when Stephen is injured and operates on himself while Jack anxiously watches with his hand on Stephen's torso for emotional support. the effect is much like the birth of a child, Stephen the mother and Jack the father. if that wasn't enough, in the next scene you see Stephen in white sleep clothes recovering from his surgery so similar to how a new mother would look after childbirth. i couldn't contain my joy at seeing that brilliant connection. Bach's cello suite number 1 never sounded so seductive. it frequents my WINAMP playlist now. Jack and Stephen's friendship marks one of the finest slash interpretation ever made in a film adaptation of a novel. there is a sweet parallel between two boy officers on the ship whose growing friendship is much like that between Jack and Stephen. alas, i only watched the movie once so far. i'm for sure buying it on DVD, but i fear it won't happen until after the Oscars... since this movie would be nominated for many awards, in which case the production company would maximize on the box office sales well after the Academy Awards. Salty Seamen: Jack/Stephen fan fic Cruise Director: Jack/Stephen fan fic & prose  The Theban Band: as part of a larger archive of slash fan art, this site features high quality photo-manipulated images. also femslash.  : good ol’ LOM. easy to browse, well organized under character name and under pairings. i wish the fan art section was a bit more organized.
 i have heard (and rightly so) many complaints and criticisms from women that there are just not enough women in Tolkien's world. when they do appear, they are either Mary-like figures, de-sexed and motherly, or a monster, like Ungoliant or Shelob. i think that what is known as “femslash” (slash fan fic depicting romance and/or sex between female characters) allows for an entry into the text of the Rings so that these archetypical and insignificant characters can come to life in the imagination of the fans.
what puzzles me though is how women writers read & write femslash when they themselves may not be sexually inclined toward women. what does it mean for women to write femslash? what are they exploring by doing this? for me personally, writing Eowyn/Arwen femslash allowed me to explore my own sexuality when i was just coming out, as well as to develop in Eowyn a gender-ambiguous character. [you can find my personal analysis of Eowyn here] granted, femslash is not nearly as popular as male-on-male slash (masclash or manslash??), but i think it’s a genre worth exploring for sure. image: "Ignorance" by Nellas (from LibraryOfMoria.com) |
