“They Cavort, You Decide”
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LOUISA ELLEN STEIN “They Cavort, You Decide”: Transgenericism, Queerness, and Fan Interpretation in Teen TV “Two lives, forever linked by fate. Bound by a Smallville’s epic teen fantasy and The OC’s realist destiny neither can escape.” So proclaimed the teen melodrama. WB’s promotional spot for Smallville’s third season. While this phrasing might bring to mind “The hug at the end? Ryan’s longing iconic romantic figures such as Romeo and Juliet, gaze at cute sleeping Seth? The romantic the two lives in question belong instead to the sailboat? Oh yeah they totally want each teenaged Clark Kent, Superman to be, and Lex other.” Luthor, his eventual archnemesis. Smallville maps the growing pains of Clark and Lex against Fan comments such as the above exemplify the epic fantastic narratives of victims and saviors, starting trajectory of much of slash fan discussion, heroes and villains. FOX’s teen melodrama, The as fans consider what they see as textual evidence OC, similarly traces the friendship between two of a program’s queer meanings (“the hug at the young men with different backgrounds and life end, Ryan’s longing gaze at cute, sleeping Seth”) paths. Wealthy but geeky Seth and James Dean and then introduce their queer interpretations (in style rebel Ryan become unlikely friends when this case, that Seth and Ryan “clearly want each Seth’s family adopts Ryan into the fold. Thus, both other”). Similarly, the title of the discussion thread The OC and Smallville feature friendships between at which this quote was shared, “They Cavort, men with strikingly different backgrounds and You Decide,” points to two dimensions of fan assumed futures, and, perhaps not surprisingly, engagement, with “they cavort” referring to what both shows have active fandoms who read the fans see in the televisual text, and “you decide” characters’ investment in one another as more than suggesting viewer analysis. However, the “you just friendship. However, the generic structures decide” portion of this equation is open ended of the two programs differ significantly, and to say the least. Fans “decide” not only whether these differences shape fan discourse on potential two characters are sexually and/or romantically queer meanings. This essay will chart the involved, but also whether such meanings are similarities and differences between the simply products of their own interpretations or generically inflected queer readings elicited by are instead present in the text. Fans also address GET A LIFE?: FAN CULTURES AND CONTEMPORARY TELEVISION 11 Lauri Mullens, editor, Spectator 25:1 (Spring 2005): 11 - 22. THEY CAVORT, YOU DECIDE the broader significance of their queer readings, generic divisions. We can most usefully apply reflecting on questions familiar to us as media the term transgenericism to generically mixed scholars, as they consider the ramifications of media texts which cannot be easily separated into queer meanings for the television programs being their component generic parts. Unlike traditional read queerly, the audiences engaging with them, understandings of genre combination as a hybrid and the popular cultural contexts within which joining of clearly separate generic pieces, my these meanings are situated. use of trangenericism implies the particular way Building on Alexander Doty’s consideration in which television programs such as Smallville of the ways queer meanings function in our mesh generic discourse, with each generic element mainstream media experience, this essay shedding light on its new partner(s) so that their examines queer discourses in both The OC and specific synthesis contributes to the overall Smallville, first looking closely at the texts of the meaning, effect, and affect of the program. programs themselves to consider what the fans While Smallville is an exemplary instance of might see as “cavorting,” and then addressing a specific teen fantasy transgeneric formation, we the fan interpretations surrounding these queer can also consider The OC to be transgeneric, in meanings.1 In the process, I am less concerned the loosest sense at least. Although The OC does with whether queer meanings are best located not incorporate unexpected elements like fantasy, within the text itself or in reader interpretation, the teen genre itself draws on an amorphous set or with whether one of these programs is more of elements often associated with other generic “queer” than the other, although I will argue discourses such as comedy, romance, and that queer meanings function differently in the melodrama. While Smallville merges markedly two programs because of differences in generic divergent generic discourses, superimposing teen composition. My overarching goal is to explore generic elements onto the apocalyptic, superheroic, how fans understand their own engagement and to and fantastic, The OC thus meshes together more consider what we, as scholars of media reception, commonly associated generic elements. These might learn about media spectatorship from the differences between The OC’s and Smallville’s fan perspective. The multilayeredness of these transgenericism directly affect the queer meanings programs, together with the complexity of fannish elicited by the text, allowing Smallville to pose responses, offer us both an interpretative model queerness metaphorically, while The OC offers the and a way to understand how viewers engage with possibility of addressing sexual identity overtly as mainstream media texts. a social issue. Not all subtexts are created equal: “Maybe I am a freak.” Comparing “Smallville” and “The OC” These transgeneric differences shape the range Smallville is one of a recent influx of teen fantasy of queer representations in both shows, as programs that mix generic discourses in ways that Smallville’s fantastic dimension facilitates a challenge traditional understandings of genre as metaphoric articulation of queerness which can stable category.2 Recent trends in genre theory have have no place within The OC. To start with expanded discussions of genre from categories of the most obvious: Smallville slash fans share media texts to textual and extratextual discourses their readings of Lex Luthor as a hard-to-miss moving both through and beyond media texts. queer figure in various online venues such as These approaches inform my choice to look at fanforum, livejournal, and slash fan fiction transgenerically inflected discourses of queerness archives. While the Smallville text periodically not only in the television texts themselves but reasserts Lex’s heterosexuality, viewers point to also in the metatext of fan interpretation.3 I multiple signs linking Lex with otherness—his use the term transgeneric to describe the way in baldness, his wardrobe, his penchant for the color which television programs such as Smallville mix purple, and rumors of his wild urban past. In generic discourses in text and metatext to blur addition, while Smallville’s characterization of 12 SPRING 2005 LOUISA ELLEN STEIN Fanart slashing Smallville’s Lex and Clark, entitled “Magnetic,” by GothGirl. Lex draws on traditional, non-fantastic cinematic deal not only with his parents, friends, popularity, representations of queerness, Smallville also and romance, but also with his newly-discovered hyperbolizes Lex’s queerness through fantasy. We alien identity. As a confused and marginalized alien learn that Lex has been transformed by the meteor teen, Clark’s plight is read by many slash fans as shower which brought Clark to earth; thus his a metaphor for gay teen experience. A commonly difference is dually signified through his meteor retold Smallville slash fanfiction narrative depicts induced baldness as well as his culturally marked Clark coming out to Lex as both gay and an alien wardrobe. Furthermore, Smallville presents Lex in the same conversation, thus rendering explicit as acutely aware of his own difference. Toward this metaphoric representation of alienation as the end of Smallville’s third season, Lex begins to queerness, framed within sympathetic adolescent wonder whether he is a meteor mutant, a recurring coming-of-age angst. This metaphor extends even metaphor for otherness throughout the program. further, to Smallville’s many “freaks of the week,” He voices this concern to Clark as he wonders, as each episode features young teens discovering “Maybe I am a freak.” Smallville slash fandom strange, meteor induced powers which they must draws on all of these elements, including Lex’s hide from their friends, family, and community. self-proclaimed “freakishness,” to embrace Lex as Thus Smallville evokes queer meanings an overtly queer figure. on multiple levels, coding at least one of its If Lex is the most evident queer figure central characters through traditional cinematic in Smallville, he is certainly not the only one. and cultural representations of queerness while Smallville’s overall premise centers on Clark, as he presenting others metaphorically through its faces the normal trials of teenage life. Clark must transgeneric intermeshing of teen and fantasy.4 GET A LIFE?: FAN CULTURES AND CONTEMPORARY TELEVISION 13 THEY CAVORT, YOU DECIDE In addition, many viewers recognize Smallville’s issues of class, family, high school social central focus on a same-sex attachment (between hierarchies, romance, and sexual identity. Thus, Clark and Lex) as more romantic than homosocial. The OC walks a different line than Smallville in Indeed, Smallville’s transgeneric merger of terms of queer meanings; where Smallville’s teen superheroic