In “NASA/Trek,” Penley discusses slash fiction in relation
to Star Trek’s Captain Kirk and Mr.
Spock. The slash fiction was written almost exclusively by women and was
homoerotic in nature. Because science fiction is seen as an extremely masculine
and non-sexual genre, the creation of these slash stories rely on the
undertones and implications the viewers picked up in their watching of the
show. I agree with Penley that the slash fiction writers were feminist writers.
Though they were writing about a male/male relationship, these women reinvent
masculinity in pursuit of sexual equality. Their fiction works under the
assumption that “the idea of sexual equality, which will necessarily require a
renovated masculinity, is taking a long time to become a lived reality and is
hard to imagine, much less write” (Penley, 127). For these women, the
possibility of sexual equality is not a part of their personal realities and is
much easier to conceive in a futuristic setting. By writing about Kirk and
Spock, who live in the distant future, these women are able to create a world
where masculinity does not rule and “yielding phallic power does not result in
psychic castration or a demand to be extravagantly praised for having relinquished
that power” (Penley, 128). I thought that this was a really interesting and
innovative way for the women to encourage sexual equality without alienating
men, as feminists in the 70’s were prone to doing. This brought to mind Emma
Watson’s recent speech regarding the He for She campaign with the UN, where she
invites men to join in the feminist movement because they too are inhibited by
gender norms (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p-iFl4qhBsE).
This rewriting of Star
Trek allows for women to take charge of the show in a way that they otherwise
would be unable to. They create their own agency in a world that is otherwise
not extremely welcoming. The way that women created their own means of
participating in the show actually brought to mind T’Pring’s actions in the
episode of Star Trek we watched. I
found the Vulcan ceremony to be misogynistic and primitive. Spock basically
already had possession of T’Pring, and there was really not much she could do
about it. The way she handles the situation, though, shows how she could find
leverage even in a situation that seemed to work against her. By choosing Kirk
as her champion, she found a situation in which she would always get to be with
Stonn, the man she truly wanted to be with. Her ability to take charge of a
situation in which she had very little power paralleled the women slash fiction
writers to me. They did not participate in the creation of the show and there
were very few female characters with which they could identify (and the female
characters in the show were in the periphery and not very powerful), yet they
were able to find a way to not only partake more fully in the show and its
story, but also identify with the male characters.
While I agree with your analysis Penley's article "NASA/Trek", I disagree with some of your comparison of female slash fiction writers to the character T'Pring in Amok Time. First, your analysis of the Vulcan ceremony as "misogynistic and primitive" strikes me as incomplete. Especially in a TV series where "primitive" societies are often racialized and portrayed as an amalgamation of the cultures of many people groups subjected to Western imperialism (for an example, see Star Trek: The Next Generation, Season 1, Episode 4 "Code of Honor", available to stream on Netflix), it is problematic to call out the ceremony as "primitive" simply because it is different than how our society functions. Neither Spock nor T'Pring has much power in the situation. Spock will literally die if he does not return to T'Pring, and when he returns, he must either die or kill his captain. Although the situation is bad for both Spock and T'Pring, I am not sure that this is enough to say that the ceremony is misogynistic. Both of them have been betrothed since a young age, and neither of them seems to exert power over the other. Instead, they are both trapped by their biology and customs. Finally, after believing he killed Captain Kirk, Spock commends T'Pring on her logic throughout the situation. This is a kind of commendation that is rarely given to women, who are often thought to be too emotional to make logical decisions. This recognition of T'Pring's logic by Spock struck me as actually being less misogynistic than the humans portrayed by the series, or the "real world" at the time of the episode's release. Because of this, I would argue that T'Pring is actually a relatively strong female character, one that the female slash fiction writers could have identified with if T'Pring had a more significant role in the Star Trek series as a whole.
ReplyDeleteKayleen’s commentary on race and “primitive” societies portrayed in Star Trek is fascinating, and in my opinion, can be tied to a larger conversation about the Western media’s portrayal of gender in other cultures. Like the episode “Code of Honor” Kayleen mentions, much Western media portrays “other” cultures as uncivilized, antiquated, or even sometimes, savage. It’s a pop culture commentary on cultures that aren’t its own. In particular, there’s an often repeated ideas in American media has an oft-repeated that these primitive cultures, whether real peoples or fictional like the Vulcans, are inherently oppressive and irrespective of women. It’s interesting to note that pop culture, and in this case, geek culture, are used to make statements based on assumptions about other cultures. Take, for example, the 1932 film “The Mask of Fu Manchu”. In it, Boris Karloff plays a villainous character in yellowface racing to find Genghis Khan’s tomb, which will somehow give him the power to obliterate white people from the planet. Clearly, there are some blatant racial stereotypes as issues with this film. The subtle commentary on culture in the film, though, is that as Asians, Manchu and the rest of his people are innately oppressive to women. In one Fu Manchu monologue, he shouts “Kill the white man and take his women!” Here, Western pop culture has jumped from assuming an anti-white, violent mindset of Asians to assuming Asians feel a sense of ownership of women and have a violent (presumably sexually violent) attitude toward them. It’s tangential to Penley’s article, but it’s worth noting that gender has a clear, significant tie to geek culture, and also that geek culture in itself assumes ties between gender and other cultures.
DeleteI think it's fascinating that the first instance (and also the most iconic instance) of the fans claiming some agency over the source material came from women as a reaction to a sci-fi TV show with few key female characters. Fan fiction and fandom involvement in TV shows/movies/books/comics/etc. has only grown since the 60s, and it is often seen as a way of reclaiming the media (or some aspect of it) that the fans feel hasn't been explored in the way it deserves. In this light, the slash fiction writers (and female participants in the fandom in general) are placing their stamp on Star Trek that seems to have written them out, which is a feminist endeavor, no matter how each individual personally viewed themselves. As Carlee pointed out, it allows women to rewrite masculinity in a way that promotes equality, as well as making them more relatable to women in a show where there are so few key females with whom to identify. It also makes it impossible for the women on the show to be sexually objectified by either Kirk or Spock, because they are so fascinated with one another. This is a brilliant, though unconscious, strategy to legitimize the few female characters that are present. They are not there to serve any sexual purpose, so what is left is for them to actually be present for their own sake and to further the plot, as the male characters are.
ReplyDeleteI think we can see these phenomena in "Amok Time". T'Pring, the character who could most easily be sexualized and subdued in this situation, instead takes agency over the situation in which she had no say and acts with logic to get what she desires.
I wish the reading had delved more into fan fiction about T'Pring, especially since we screened Amok Time. From my own personal stories that I have read, T’Pring has a very varied representation and characterization. Some time’s she’s cruel and behaves in ways that are apparently shameful to the writer, and some time’s she’s praised on her cold logic and inner strength. Amok Time has a negative and, as you argued, misogynist view of T’Pring (although Spock gives her respect for her superior logic, he also chastises her, claiming Stonn would not “want her” once he “had her”), but fans do not wholly support her character. While fan fiction might have feminist themes such as empowerment and equaling gender dynamics, slash shippers do not necessarily favor female characters.
ReplyDeleteAlong the issue of feminism/gender dynamics in slash, I found the fan vid we watched in class very interesting. The tone of the video is very sexually aggressive, pairing moments of rage and violence as passion and sex. The narrative of the video implies Spock raping Kirk, hitting him and then aggressively mounting him. It goes along Jenkins article, which fan writers, primarily women, want narratives “about religion, gender roles, their sexuality and men’s about prostitution, seduction, and intemperance, about unwanted pregnancies and desired education” (477-478). Kirk and Spock would never share a sexually aggressive story line in the original text, but women who might desire that dynamic build it into the one between Kirk and Spock in their stories. Since there’s no female character in the pairing, where traditionally the male character would be sexually aggressive to the female one, the fan vidder had liberty to put the narrative together.
Hi Carlee! Your post provided a critical reading of Penley's piece, and I enjoyed reading it. I did want to complicate your argument that slash fiction acts as an "interesting and innovative way for the women to encourage sexual equality without alienating men, as feminists in the 70's were prone to doing." Female slash writers in the 70's were completely re-configuring current conceptions of traditional masculinity; not only that, but they imagined uprooting the entire heteronormative, patriarchal structures that governed society and replaced it with a utopian vision in which all men "recognize their own homosexual tendencies" and the gay couple became the desired ideal where "love and work can be shared by two equals" (129). To me, this seems a much more radical position than even 2nd wave feminism of the 70's, which advocated for attention on things like domestic abuse, marital rape, equal education, legal inequalities, reproductive rights, and the Equal Rights Amendment. Slash fiction writers were completely re-hauling heteronormative structures which work to naturalize and normalize heterosexuality and posit it as the only state-sanctioned, moral, and acceptable sexual identity. I think wanting men to "recognize their own homosexual tendencies" is something that many men would find very alienating (129), even today, and even asking men to conceive of a world in which "masculinity does not rule" is quite radical, as patriarchal masculinity has an institutional hold over our systems, cultures, and lived experiences.
ReplyDeleteOne interesting facet of Penley’s piece that hasn’t been discussed in much detail is that of her discussion as to how female Star Trek fans – and slash writers in particular – conceive of technology, which is something I see as vital to understanding Penley’s piece. To Penley, their conception of technology involves not only the combination of “technologies of the body, the mind, and everyday life,” but is also heavily based upon a vision of “technology” that “sees everything in the world […] as interrelated and subject to influence by more utopian […] desires than” those embedded in modern-day technology, a duality which speaks volumes about the perspective of these fans (118). These writers are less interested in writing about technology in a technical sense insofar as they are interested in the character-driven situations (ala Jenkins) it allows them to discuss; it is why Alexis Fegan Black once said to aspiring Slash writers that “writing what you know should be on a more emotional level rather than a technological one” (118-119). In this way, when Penley refers to the “technology of the body, the mind, and everyday life,” she is really, in a sense, referring to a way of imagining a more utopian vision of human interactivity, one wherein masculinity does not have to be inherently dominating or crushing.
ReplyDeleteYet, this essentially escapist vision has a darker side to it as well, as this reinterpretation of masculinity happens only within a context where women play a bit part. After all, as Penley portrays it, much of the impetus for writing these works comes from the fact that these writers feel alienated from their bodies, which are sites of constant struggles for social, cultural, and political equality. Far from embracing a Foucault-esque view wherein the self can become a source of pleasure, these writers instead believe their bodies – or, rather, the misogyny and societal expectations thrust upon them because of their bodies – to be sources of misery. Indeed, Penley claims that Kirk and Spock’s relationship represents “a perfectly understandable idealization of the gay male couple […] in which love and work can be shared by two equals” among a group of mostly heterosexual fans, and while that is undeniably true, the fact that “the fans feel” such a relationship “to be almost unattainable for a heterosexual couple” betrays a sense that such a relationship is equal to K/S writers only because it avoids, instead of attempting to answer, the issues of gender inequality entirely (129-130).