Slash in the Mainstream
February 19th, 2008 by AriI found something interesting the other day. I was flipping through my roommate’s issue of GQ when I found a small article describing popular slash texts. It was entitled “Lord of the Cock Rings” and gave the title, author, a brief synopsis, and a quote from each of the four texts (my favorite is “You’re a nice kid, but if it gets around that Tony Soprano swings both ways…you’re dead. Capeesh?”). This article interests me because it serves as an example of Dick Hebdige’s concept of the incorporation of subculture. Historically, slash has been very much an underground fan community. Due to its (homo)sexually graphic and fantasy-based content, it’s usually met with shock and disapproval when encountered in the mainstream. But here we see it as the subject of an article in a mainstream magazine. Like the television station that ran a story about “punk families”, this magazine makes money by covering innovative cultural phenomena. But by running an article about slash, GQ brings this type of fan production into the mainstream, and perhaps robs it of the exclusivity that has historically characterized it.
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I wonder whether the intentions of the subculture have any effect on Hebdige’s (and Debord’s) criticism of recuperation of dissent by the dominant culture.
What I mean is that do all of these “subversive” elements always wish to remain outside of the dominant culture? Do people create Slash in order to continuously differentiate themselves? If we choose to interpret Slash as an activist protest of gender/sexual identity constraints within society, then wouldn’t the acceptance of Slash be considered a success by the community?
Most of the time, I admit, this acceptance is actually a de-clawing of the subversion without producing any real change in society, but sometimes it is possible for society to progress.
If a subculture does get upset at the mainstream picking up its ideas, perhaps its goals were not so much to enact changes in society in general, but rather to simply hold oppositional beliefs in order to differentiate themselves.
Slash fans that get upset at its recuperation may be of this variety — to them, Slash is a somewhat exclusive community, and to put it in mainstream publications is to remove it from its context, history, and rules — it is defined as BEING a subculture, and if it is not isolated, it is a violation of its intention. Slashers never WANTED lots of people to like Slash.
I sometimes see punk as suffering a similar fate. Frankly, I think its main messages (I’m talking Sex Pistols-variety of punk) have been taken up by mainstream culture. The type of chaos, substance use, and anger that these groups promoted have penetrated many popular cultural elements — and yet many think this punk recuperation is a “de-clawing.” In fact, they simply don’t like widespread adoption of their ideals, regardless of the fact that this adoption is in the spirit of punk.
I guess what this leaves me wondering is at what point is slash actually being commercialized? I mean just because mainstream media – and I don’t know where people typically classify GQ – is covering a phenomena doesn’t mean it is being done solely for exploitation.
They are supposed to cover relevant cultural content and at this point it is pretty understandable that slash is getting recognition of this sort. It’s not as if they are commissioning the most respected fan fic writers for the next season of Battlestar Galactica.
What I do recognize is the fact that it takes away from the nature by which these forms are usually discovered or experienced. I remember when I used to do “tape” trading for Pearl Jam and Audioslave and it would take a lot of digging and emailing and feet dragging to find the live bootleg you wanted. With forums like this making them widely known, it takes away part of the mystique that made looking for it interesting in the first place.
Ultimately I think slash will come out remarkably unscathed in the greater culture of media. It is not commercially viable in the traditional sense and even if they sought to commercialize it effectively, I am intrigued to see how they would do that given its content and inside joke-esque humor. It is also a very niche oriented aspect of fandom for the and just because it is covered in a manner such as this does not mean it becomes more accessible, in terms of content, when newcomers do a bit of digging on their own. Like we discussed last week, not everyone comes away from an episode of Star Trek assuming Spock and Kirk are intimate.
GQ is a commercial publication whose primary purpose is to make money. It does this by publishing content that it thinks will satisfy the consumer, in this case an article on slash. In this sense, slash is being commercialized and capitalized on. As Noah points out, this magazine tries to cover relevant cultural content, but the object of this is no different than that of any other capitalist firm.
Well, slash certainly has become a more mainstream phenomenon with the advent of the Harry Potter novels and the popularity of fanficiton.net. It does make sense that, as slash becomes more accepted that it’ll reach more mainstream exposure. The degree of popularity of even implied slash in a humorous manner, http://youtube.com/watch?v=8uwuLxrv8jY
shows how people have begun to view it differently. GQ publicizing it is only an outgrowth of this.
As slash grows (ex: being on youtube) it is bound to adopt the “if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em” mentality of the mainstream. It seems to be a fine line that fandom balances on–the want for a large community and appreciation of the text and meta text; but without tainting the integrity of the fandom…a sort of exclusiveness in the large scale inclusion that is created through web posts, fanzines and conventions. With the accessibility of slash and fandom–how can you regulate who whether or not an editor of GQ comes across it? and do you have a right to be angry about it if they do? the rules of fandom seem to be unspoken within the fandom and thus the public may be unaware that the publication in GQ was offensive to the fandom.
I guess I understand the problems that a fan might have with the GQ publication, but I am interested in how grounded their anger may be. Just as Jenkins discusses with fanzines and copywrite laws…how justified are the writers of fanfic to be upset with the ‘unauthorized’ coping of their stories when the content is already under copywrite to someone else?
Although I haven’t had the opportunity to read the GQ article (I didn’t find a version floating around online though if someone could link it that would be wonderful) I do wonder if this involves incorporation into the mainstream. The description of the article as a list of authors, titles, and quotes, seems to be more of the phenomenon of “discovering” slash. Although this is a form of appropriation (discovering something usually is a way to stake some sort of claim on it) it doesn’t seem like the author is incorporating it as part of the dominant culture.
Articles that I *have* read from mainstream reporting where they talk about slash are more at the point that Hebdige describes as the “outrage and amusement” stage(look at these fans, they are weird). They are still “discovering” slash and what it means (isn’t it interesting that we’ve discovered these people for you to look at?).
I personally am not angry about the fact that fandom can be stumbled across by any old person with google (I think that this link is pretty in line with with my thoughts http://penknife.livejournal.com/289194.html?format=light).
However, the constant “rediscovery” of fanfiction and of slash in particular by mainstream authority figures is somewhat grating. It seems like an othering act, where the fans who are talked about in the articles are so different that they must be new, they must be constantly “rediscovered” by authority figures. Even if the article does recognize that slash and fanfiction has been around for a while, some authors act as if their attention to and interaction with slash is the truly interesting part.
When I’m being told that “You exist!” it feels like mainstream culture wants me to know that now that I have been “discovered” I can be part of a recognized subculture. They are going “I have discovered you!” while I am going “I’ve been here all along, what do you mean *you* discovered me?”. I guess what I am trying to say is that this “discovery” is actually a form of appropriation, though not as a way of incorporation, but of othering.