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icarusSomeone asked if I wanted to discuss slash on a conservative Tolkien site that does not allow slash stories to be uploaded. Hmm. Rabid Christians, site owner (male) who hates slash. Not sure I'll bite. But here's what I more or less would say, if I wanted the headaches:
I am a slash writer, as well as a long-term (if inactive) member of the Barrow-downs. I mostly left the Downs because, after a year and a half, I found the discussions revolved through the same topics over and over again. I am very religious, but Buddhist, not Christian. Buddhism is a monastic religion and so has no rules about who you should or shouldn't sleep with -- since a Buddhist monk shouldn't sleep with anyone. The gay/hetero argument is irrelevant.
I write slash because it is outside of canon. It's a challenge for me as a writer to build plausibility for it, to keep true to the flavor and voice of Tolkien while ranging far afield.
It is so far "off the map" from Tolkien that I feel it is less intrusive on his vision. I'm on a completely different page, borrowing the world and characters and texture in much the same way that he borrowed from Beowulf (most here probably know Tolkien was a noted Beowulf scholar and began his lectures by quoting Beowulf in Old English; he's known for completely changing the view of that work with his essay The Monsters and the Critics).
I feel that to keep true to the flavor of Tolkien it's important to have a greater meaning, what Tolkien in his essay On Fairy Stories called a "piercing glimpse" beyond the fabric of story. But we are, fortunately, not restricted to the same themes as Tolkien.
The underlying theme of The Lord of the Rings is endings, death, and what lies beyond it. This theme is largely why the work has such spiritual meaning for many; (though if anyone asserts that the LotR is inherently Christian, I will bean them with the allegory stick - Tolkien's vision of fairy tales is both more general and more profound than any specific religious doctrine. According to Tolkien, indoctrination is the antithesis of the Fairy Story).
Endings, the afterlife and so forth are not the only themes for a Fairy Story. Or for a Tolkienesque story.
According to Jung, mythological archetypal themes correspond to natural rites of passage, stages of life. Including the final stage into the next life - whatever that may be - which Tolkien addresses. Other main stages include crossing into adulthood, marriage, coming into one's inheritance or maturity. These are all troubled stages with no pat answers, thus the need for mythological archetypes (forgive me fellow non-Christians) to "work out your own salvation."
The romance contends with the theme of sacrifice and inter-dependence of relationships, and is a very important thread in the world of mythology and fairy tale. While it is appears superficial (like fantasy itself), in fact, the way a relationship subsumes the self is a very difficult and tangled matter. It is a crisis of identity, a negotiation of boundaries, and either taking ones place in the world of family, or acting against that role (such as in Tristan and Isolde, or the elven maiden Luthien). Anyone who believes romance does not belong in Tolkien's world needs to re-read the story of Beren and Luthien, and note what Tolkien has written on his gravestone.
Slash adds, for those who do not have doctrinal problems with it (note I do not say spiritual as many Christians do accept homosexuality), an added degree of poignancy to this crisis of identity, boundaries, and ones role in society. Not to mention the confusion of ones role in an agrarian and feudalistic society of the majority of Middle Earth, and the complex class distinctions in the Shire. (I particularly am fascinated by the latter.) It takes the same fundamental questions of the romance and looks at them from another angle.
The vast majority of slash readers (and writers) are women, I think largely for the same reasons that little girls play house: relationships seem to be important to women. Men, regardless of their feelings about homosexuality, tend to be... uncomfortable with slash. Most are unable to bypass the visuals of two men together (let alone two hobbits) to even begin to deal with the theme. It doesn't have the same interest or impact. I'll confess that female/female slash makes me equally queasy.
But do not dismiss romance or slash as being automatically pornography. There's a great deal of depth available in the subject, particularly if you have a perceptive author.
That said, much of fanfiction is really lousy, and slash is no exception. The LotR fanfiction tends to be worse than most because Tolkien's voice is unusually difficult to capture, and few people understand why the story is so powerful.
I am a slash writer, as well as a long-term (if inactive) member of the Barrow-downs. I mostly left the Downs because, after a year and a half, I found the discussions revolved through the same topics over and over again. I am very religious, but Buddhist, not Christian. Buddhism is a monastic religion and so has no rules about who you should or shouldn't sleep with -- since a Buddhist monk shouldn't sleep with anyone. The gay/hetero argument is irrelevant.
I write slash because it is outside of canon. It's a challenge for me as a writer to build plausibility for it, to keep true to the flavor and voice of Tolkien while ranging far afield.
It is so far "off the map" from Tolkien that I feel it is less intrusive on his vision. I'm on a completely different page, borrowing the world and characters and texture in much the same way that he borrowed from Beowulf (most here probably know Tolkien was a noted Beowulf scholar and began his lectures by quoting Beowulf in Old English; he's known for completely changing the view of that work with his essay The Monsters and the Critics).
I feel that to keep true to the flavor of Tolkien it's important to have a greater meaning, what Tolkien in his essay On Fairy Stories called a "piercing glimpse" beyond the fabric of story. But we are, fortunately, not restricted to the same themes as Tolkien.
The underlying theme of The Lord of the Rings is endings, death, and what lies beyond it. This theme is largely why the work has such spiritual meaning for many; (though if anyone asserts that the LotR is inherently Christian, I will bean them with the allegory stick - Tolkien's vision of fairy tales is both more general and more profound than any specific religious doctrine. According to Tolkien, indoctrination is the antithesis of the Fairy Story).
Endings, the afterlife and so forth are not the only themes for a Fairy Story. Or for a Tolkienesque story.
According to Jung, mythological archetypal themes correspond to natural rites of passage, stages of life. Including the final stage into the next life - whatever that may be - which Tolkien addresses. Other main stages include crossing into adulthood, marriage, coming into one's inheritance or maturity. These are all troubled stages with no pat answers, thus the need for mythological archetypes (forgive me fellow non-Christians) to "work out your own salvation."
The romance contends with the theme of sacrifice and inter-dependence of relationships, and is a very important thread in the world of mythology and fairy tale. While it is appears superficial (like fantasy itself), in fact, the way a relationship subsumes the self is a very difficult and tangled matter. It is a crisis of identity, a negotiation of boundaries, and either taking ones place in the world of family, or acting against that role (such as in Tristan and Isolde, or the elven maiden Luthien). Anyone who believes romance does not belong in Tolkien's world needs to re-read the story of Beren and Luthien, and note what Tolkien has written on his gravestone.
Slash adds, for those who do not have doctrinal problems with it (note I do not say spiritual as many Christians do accept homosexuality), an added degree of poignancy to this crisis of identity, boundaries, and ones role in society. Not to mention the confusion of ones role in an agrarian and feudalistic society of the majority of Middle Earth, and the complex class distinctions in the Shire. (I particularly am fascinated by the latter.) It takes the same fundamental questions of the romance and looks at them from another angle.
The vast majority of slash readers (and writers) are women, I think largely for the same reasons that little girls play house: relationships seem to be important to women. Men, regardless of their feelings about homosexuality, tend to be... uncomfortable with slash. Most are unable to bypass the visuals of two men together (let alone two hobbits) to even begin to deal with the theme. It doesn't have the same interest or impact. I'll confess that female/female slash makes me equally queasy.
But do not dismiss romance or slash as being automatically pornography. There's a great deal of depth available in the subject, particularly if you have a perceptive author.
That said, much of fanfiction is really lousy, and slash is no exception. The LotR fanfiction tends to be worse than most because Tolkien's voice is unusually difficult to capture, and few people understand why the story is so powerful.
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no subject
Date: 2004-08-07 01:48 pm (UTC)I often think romance is devalued in the literary field because it's important to women. This is a phenomenon that has been noted in the working world--as more women enter a profession, salaries tend to drop and the prestige tends to be reduced; the unconscious misogyny at work here is that if women are interested in it, it can't be of importance to men. There is a presumption that the Great Themes are the proper concern of [heterosexual] men, and to be approached in the way that [heterosexual] men approach them. The concerns of women aren't so much in opposition to this as irrelevant to it, except in a few realms grudgingly conceded to them (childbirth, for example). Writing slash enables women to step outside this, even if awkwardly, and I think makes many men uncomfortable not just for the fact of the visuals of two men together, but also for the glipmses it presents of true female inner life (knowing it is largely written by women)--which is not always what they would want it to be.
There's a question of two different approaches to Tolkien's work on the part of fanfic writers:
1) is to see oneself building on the work of a certain author; this takes Tolkien's own politics, culture, and faith into account and tries to extrapolate what he would have thought about a given M-e question. (This approach tends to be more hostile to slash and even explicit het sexuality, as Tolkien was known to be very Catholic and slightly prudish)
2) [and this is the one I use] to "accept" Tolkien's premise that this world really existed and that all writers about Middle-earth are historians and translators; Tolkien himself merely the first and greatest. Knowing as I do how often certain issues are simply left out of historical texts, well...
People using the two different approaches without thinking about them in quite this way tend to have a communication gap. :)
That's an excellent essay!
The only thing I'd add is that I have heard many people who argue against slash use attitudes towards homosexuality in medieval Europe as the basis for their argument. I think medieval Europe is all but irrelevant for understanding Middle-earth, as the dominant institution there was the Church--which M-e conspicuously lacks.
no subject
Date: 2004-08-07 03:43 pm (UTC)Bravo. :)
no subject
Date: 2004-08-07 07:06 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-08-07 10:14 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-08-07 10:15 pm (UTC)