Cultural Studies essay
Mar. 3rd, 2005 12:35 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beccaelizabethIn Cultural Studies we spent a unit looking at popular fiction, specifically detective and romance fiction. The assignment to go with it was to write a bit of fiction and explain why it fit either the detective or romance genre. We could use pre existing characters.
Yes, I got to write fanfiction for credit.
Cultural Studies rules.
So,www.livejournal.com/users/beccaelizabeth/112350.html https://archiveofourown.org/works/51446 this, with about a dozen words tweaked, was the fiction section I handed in. I was a bit worried about the magic-sex but the teacher was enthusiastic about it, so that worked out. I spent months flapping around about the essay section, because as per usual I ended up with about a billion more words than would fit and I wasn't even sure what I'd written fit the assignment. 73% and a distinction says it did :D
So, I figured I would post it here. I can't find the question right now but it was very specific, we had to compare what we had written to one of the texts studied in class, and point out genre conventions and so on. Apparently I managed all that.
The only downer was I felt really unoriginal, because slashers write stuff like this about their work all the time. But apparently having read all that counts for bonus points too.
Have I mentioned I love cultural studies?
Anyways, the essay:
This story is a bit different from the conventional romance novel, which tends to be about heterosexual romance with an innocent yet independent female protagonist. This is about primarily homosexual romance with a male protagonist who strives to be independent but is not, at first glance, innocent. However he is innocent in the ways of same sex love, and while the reader might realise that the attraction between him and Ethan is 'at first sight', Ripper takes a lot of chapters to realise that what is going on with him and Ethan is both sexual and mutual. The only difference between that and most romance is gender.
Romance fiction 'offers us relations impossibly harmonised' (Modleski, 1982 p37). 'That women read romance fiction is, I think, as much a measure of their deep dissatisfaction with heterosexual options as of any desire to be fully identified with the submissive versions of femininity the texts endorse. Romance imagines peace, security and ease precisely because there is dissension, insecurity and difficulty.' (Light, 1984, p22)
Slash romance, written about male/male or female/female relationships, can arise from that same dissatisfaction differently expressed. It has been said that 'Romantic fiction is the most difficult genre to subvert because it encodes the most coherent inflection of the discourses of gender, class and race constitutive of the contemporary social order; it encodes the bourgeois fairytale.' (Cranny-Francis, 1994 p199). But by changing the gender of the characters the entire shape of the story gets changed. No more assumption that the power dynamic is based on the gender of the participants, the couple start out as equals. The stars of slash romance are often equals who are action heroes, saving the world every week. There are no stereotypical limitations based on them being 'gay' characters because who they choose to love doesn’t define who they are. While a lot of stories deal with the real world fact that outside factors can make same sex relationships difficult, that is usually just the obstacle in the middle of the story. Once the characters get together the relationship tends to be happy ever after, harmonised peace, security and ease.
'[Romance] presents women as some men would like to see them - illogical, innocent, magnetized by male sexuality.' (Snitow, 1984, p141) Slash romance presents men as some women would like to see them - emotional, unprejudiced and magnetized by male sexuality. That can lead to characterisation that gets complained about as too feminine. One of the perennial arguments about slash fiction is that a lot of it turns characters into 'women with dicks'. This is considered to be an example of bad writing, and by the standards of fanfic it is- fanfiction tries to emulate the world the writer is a fan of. But it isn’t necessarily bad fiction- it transforms a character but in a way that makes them more valuable to the writer. Of course the other complaint is that one character gets turned into the woman, which is interesting because it emulates in a m/m relationship what is stereotypically expected of a m/f one. That might be a conscious exploration of identity or a subconscious inability to imagine outside of that paradigm. It depends on the writer.
The text we studied that this story most closely resembles is 'Wuthering Heights'. Family duty conflicts with personal feeling. The choice between the socially acceptable relationship and the socially unacceptable, transgressive, relationship. Here the acceptable relationship is with Randall- buddy movie bonding through violence, homosocial relationships defined by going out, getting drunk and beating stuff up. The unacceptable relationship is with Ethan- homosexual romance, initially cloaked in the metaphor of magic but later expressed as a sexual relationship. That differs from the usual romance novel construction, but still has that 'good man, bad man' dichotomy and choice.
It also looks like the kind of story where the protagonist tries striking out away from societal expectation but it doesn’t work out and they go back to their usual lives. That irritates me, because I'm really rather political when I write. Still, it is one of the standard shapes for a romance novel. But with a slash reader’s understanding of canon, this instead resembles 'Wuthering Heights' because Rupert ends up miserable when he chooses the socially acceptable path.
***
Bibliography
Cranny-Francis, Anne, 'Feminist Romance', The Polity Reader in Cultural Theory (Polity Press, 1994).
Light, Alison, Returning to Manderley: Romance Fiction, Female Sexuality and Class, Feminist Review 16, 1984.
Modleski, Tania, Loving with a Vengeance, 1982.
Snitow, Ann, ‘Mass Market Romance: Pornography for Women is Different’, Radical History Review No. 20, 1984.
***
(I wrote the Bibliography up like we're supposed to, but actually all those quotes were in the unit reader, so I haven't read all that. Vaguely intend to get round to it. But my reading list is long, and my brain is easily filled.)
[link edited March 2022, deleted LJ added Ao3]
Yes, I got to write fanfiction for credit.
Cultural Studies rules.
So,
So, I figured I would post it here. I can't find the question right now but it was very specific, we had to compare what we had written to one of the texts studied in class, and point out genre conventions and so on. Apparently I managed all that.
The only downer was I felt really unoriginal, because slashers write stuff like this about their work all the time. But apparently having read all that counts for bonus points too.
Have I mentioned I love cultural studies?
Anyways, the essay:
This story is a bit different from the conventional romance novel, which tends to be about heterosexual romance with an innocent yet independent female protagonist. This is about primarily homosexual romance with a male protagonist who strives to be independent but is not, at first glance, innocent. However he is innocent in the ways of same sex love, and while the reader might realise that the attraction between him and Ethan is 'at first sight', Ripper takes a lot of chapters to realise that what is going on with him and Ethan is both sexual and mutual. The only difference between that and most romance is gender.
Romance fiction 'offers us relations impossibly harmonised' (Modleski, 1982 p37). 'That women read romance fiction is, I think, as much a measure of their deep dissatisfaction with heterosexual options as of any desire to be fully identified with the submissive versions of femininity the texts endorse. Romance imagines peace, security and ease precisely because there is dissension, insecurity and difficulty.' (Light, 1984, p22)
Slash romance, written about male/male or female/female relationships, can arise from that same dissatisfaction differently expressed. It has been said that 'Romantic fiction is the most difficult genre to subvert because it encodes the most coherent inflection of the discourses of gender, class and race constitutive of the contemporary social order; it encodes the bourgeois fairytale.' (Cranny-Francis, 1994 p199). But by changing the gender of the characters the entire shape of the story gets changed. No more assumption that the power dynamic is based on the gender of the participants, the couple start out as equals. The stars of slash romance are often equals who are action heroes, saving the world every week. There are no stereotypical limitations based on them being 'gay' characters because who they choose to love doesn’t define who they are. While a lot of stories deal with the real world fact that outside factors can make same sex relationships difficult, that is usually just the obstacle in the middle of the story. Once the characters get together the relationship tends to be happy ever after, harmonised peace, security and ease.
'[Romance] presents women as some men would like to see them - illogical, innocent, magnetized by male sexuality.' (Snitow, 1984, p141) Slash romance presents men as some women would like to see them - emotional, unprejudiced and magnetized by male sexuality. That can lead to characterisation that gets complained about as too feminine. One of the perennial arguments about slash fiction is that a lot of it turns characters into 'women with dicks'. This is considered to be an example of bad writing, and by the standards of fanfic it is- fanfiction tries to emulate the world the writer is a fan of. But it isn’t necessarily bad fiction- it transforms a character but in a way that makes them more valuable to the writer. Of course the other complaint is that one character gets turned into the woman, which is interesting because it emulates in a m/m relationship what is stereotypically expected of a m/f one. That might be a conscious exploration of identity or a subconscious inability to imagine outside of that paradigm. It depends on the writer.
The text we studied that this story most closely resembles is 'Wuthering Heights'. Family duty conflicts with personal feeling. The choice between the socially acceptable relationship and the socially unacceptable, transgressive, relationship. Here the acceptable relationship is with Randall- buddy movie bonding through violence, homosocial relationships defined by going out, getting drunk and beating stuff up. The unacceptable relationship is with Ethan- homosexual romance, initially cloaked in the metaphor of magic but later expressed as a sexual relationship. That differs from the usual romance novel construction, but still has that 'good man, bad man' dichotomy and choice.
It also looks like the kind of story where the protagonist tries striking out away from societal expectation but it doesn’t work out and they go back to their usual lives. That irritates me, because I'm really rather political when I write. Still, it is one of the standard shapes for a romance novel. But with a slash reader’s understanding of canon, this instead resembles 'Wuthering Heights' because Rupert ends up miserable when he chooses the socially acceptable path.
***
Bibliography
Cranny-Francis, Anne, 'Feminist Romance', The Polity Reader in Cultural Theory (Polity Press, 1994).
Light, Alison, Returning to Manderley: Romance Fiction, Female Sexuality and Class, Feminist Review 16, 1984.
Modleski, Tania, Loving with a Vengeance, 1982.
Snitow, Ann, ‘Mass Market Romance: Pornography for Women is Different’, Radical History Review No. 20, 1984.
***
(I wrote the Bibliography up like we're supposed to, but actually all those quotes were in the unit reader, so I haven't read all that. Vaguely intend to get round to it. But my reading list is long, and my brain is easily filled.)
[link edited March 2022, deleted LJ added Ao3]
Commenting late . . .
Date: 2005-03-06 10:32 pm (UTC)I liked your comparison to Wuthering Heights - family duty conflicting with personal feeling, the initial cloaking of the sexual relationship, (in a magic metaphor, in this case).
While you may feel slightly unsatisfied because some of your thoughts are familiar ground to slash writers, I think you express them well and they are not necessarily familiar to your teacher or college audience.
I also empathise with your desire to be more political in your writing, yet you make a nice point with: ". . . changing the gender of the characters the entire shape of the story gets changed. No more assumption that the power dynamic is based on the gender of the participants, the couple start out as equals." Because it is a very interesting thing to notice that if changing the gender changes our assumption of the power dynamic, then we need to go back and look at the power dynamic again. In other words, was our initial assumption also situationally incorrect?
Well. I'm babbling. But, anyway. Liked the essay and the particular part of your fic that you linked to it.
Lola