[LMB] Re: Slash (was OT) now Bujold Romance/Slash Meta

[paal at gis.net]

----- Original Message Follows -----
> Kirsten, then Lois:
> 
> > To which I reply (as she no doubt expects me to) that we live in a
> > Dionysian age, those of us in the West (the rest of you can pipe up
> > with your local zietgeist, of course) and hence have rather more
> > use for Apollonian correctives.

Aaaarrrggghhhh!! on Dionysian versus Apollonian... again, this form of
metaphor/reference just Does Not Work for me. Yes, I know that Dionysus
was one of the ancient gods of revelation and celebration involving
being drunk as a skunk and in ritual awe and ecstasy tearing apart those
those unfortunate animals or males set up as sacrificed, or found
intruding on the rituals, and there sometimes there were some ritual
rationalist sorts of things about Apollo BUT it is still dealing with
-religion- and -belief- and when I think Dionysian, I think of e.g. the
unknown Elysian Mysteries and the known excesses of celebrants of
Dionysian revels, and thinking Apollo, there are some at least equally
gruesome things done, that were at least equally chilling for being done
NOT in a -drunken- state of altered conscious, but done in cold
calculating semi-sociopathic or psychopathic calculation.... 

> I HAVE been known to quote Auden's Hermetic Decalogue from Under Which
> Lyre ... even though I have committed a social science or two in my 

Hermeneutics and such never quite stays with me, my willing suspension
of disbelief and the related apparatus necessary to keep the pattern in
mind such that it will tie down and be something tangible and accessible
to me, fly the coop.... and they lack the entertainment value of e.g.
some of Graham Hancock's writings...

> time. So, it's a fair cop, they'll never make an Apollonian out of me.
> 
> More seriously, it seems to me we live in a pseudo-Dionysian age (no, 
> not the Areopagite).
> 
> Lots of tease and titillation, lots of consumerism and materialism,
> but  speaking as a sex educator and activist, what we mostly have is
> pleasure  in service to something else, usually selling things, not
> pleasure for  the sake of pleasure.

Again, for me Dionysian refers to involving altering of conscious
state...
 
> But anyway.
> 
> Lois:
> 
> > *** We might if they were correcting the right things.  Alas...  ***
> 
> What she said. But also, because slash is a subgenre of
> erotic/romantic  fiction. So the other answer is "well, they could,
> but in this genre,  the odds are right up there with the odds that the
> handsome plumber is  just going to fix the sink and leave."
> 
> I have many theories about 'why slash', all operating at once, the
> most  recent being "because certain tv shows and books, many of which
> I for  whatever reason like a lot, contain numerous cases of men
> behaving as no  men on earth do, leading to plot and characterisation
> holes of a size  and shape which can ONLY be satisfactorily plugged by
> assuming that the  two buddies are in fact at it like crazed weasels."
> 
> Due South comes to mind, as does Man From Uncle.
> 
> Also also, antagonists get slashed with almost as much alacrity (and 
> often with more smuttiness) as friends. And for parsing this, neither 
> the Dionysian nor the Apollonian models have a lot of good leads.
> 
> Lois McMaster Bujold wrote:
> 
> > Remember, a key sign of a status emergency is a heated or violent 
> > response disproportionate to the apparent cause.  It's not a concept
> > to  be blithely applied to every human interaction to come down the
> > pike.   Just to certain bewilderingly whacko ones.  ***
> 
> Riffing off that bit:
> 
> One thing worth remembering is that there really _is_ a there there. 
> Slashers are not the only people who pick up on this sort of subtext 
> between male characters, only the people who find it narratively or 
> erotically intriguing enough to actually produce or go looking for 
> fiction that deals with.
> 
> So if "status emergency" plays a part in slash, I rather suspect that 
> it's not in the slashers' arena, but rather in the various ways in
> which  writers and actors manage whatever anxiety about meal-male
> relations (of  all sorts, not necessarily rumpy-pumpy) presents itself
> in the attempt  to write or perform male friendship (or antagonism).

Joe Haldeman has hit on some of it over the years--he's solid enough in
his skin and identity to hug other men, be a past Gaylaxicon honoree,
and to wear the very silly tiara there. Dignity, Joe?!  Most other men
probably would run in the other direction or duck to avoid such things,
from a combination of social dis-ease about it, identity-attack, and
considering it beneath their dignity.