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Soap Slash: Gay Men Rewrite the World of Daytime Television Drama

Soap Slash: Gay Men Rewrite the World of Daytime Television Drama

HOLLIS GRIFFIN Soap : Gay Men Rewrite the World of Daytime Drama

On Philip Kiriakis and Shawn- traditionally “male” television genres, Douglas Brady are two points in a hotly contested particularly science-fi ction, there is almost no with female character . scholarship on slash written about traditionally Philip and Shawn make up, fi ght, and make up “female” television genres, nor is there any again as they struggle for Belleʼs attention and substantive literature on gay male slash fi ction affections. But on the Internet, many slash fi ction authors. Though this particular fan practice authors refer to Philip and Shawn as “Phawn,” from this particular subject position is defi nitely combining their names to denote the fact that they a minority among a wider slash community, its have recast them as two halves of a highly romantic, authors constitute a vibrant presence within that erotic, even pornographic pair. In the slash story community. Gay male-authored slash fi ction of “Salem High,” one author has appropriated the two soap operas features fairly prominently on slash characters for a narrative in which they leave their fi ction websites, and I have examined a fairly girlfriends waiting for them outside of the locker large sample from slashcity.com, squidge.org, room after a big basketball win in order to celebrate and nifty.net. This fan practice raises interesting by engaging in mutual masturbation in the showers. questions about issues of gay male representation In other words: “Too Hot for Daytime TV.” within the genre, gay male audiences of soap While there is a considerable amount operas, what makes soap operas and their of scholarship on female authors slashing characters “slashable,” and how original soap

GET A LIFE?: FAN CULTURES AND CONTEMPORARY TELEVISION 23 Lauri Mullens, editor, Spectator 25:1 (Spring 2005): 23 - 34. SOAP SLASH

opera texts are appropriated and used by these narratives wherein the characters engage particular gay male soap fans. in homosexual sex, they donʼt necessarily narrativize these encounters as the basis for Gender, Genre, and Slash Fiction a sexual identity. Rather, for the slashed characters, “The whole issue of … sexual Constance Penley and Henry Jenkins have both orientation gets resolved in an idea of cosmic written extensively on slash fi ction, though neither destiny: the two men are somehow meant for examines the fan practice in any depth outside of each other and homosexuality has nothing to do heterosexual female writers slashing Capt. Kirk and with it.”4 I would argue that for gay men writing Commander Spock from Star Trek. Nevertheless, slash fi ction, questions of sexual identity are their work provides a useful starting point for foregrounded by the very nature of the subject this discussion. Penley uses a psychoanalytic positions they occupy, as well as the long history framework in her examination of K/S slash fi ction of gay male under- and misrepresentation in to argue that the fan practice offers a diverse range television programming. This isnʼt to suggest of identifi cations and object-choices to female slash that woman have not also been under- and authors.1 Furthermore, she identifi es one impulse misrepresented in television programming, but to write slash fi ction in the instance when fans are that the act of narrativizing male-male sex acts invested in a text as a whole but are dissatisfi ed is more likely to be attended by an investment with the quality of representations of their identity in identity politics for gay male slash fi ction categories in that text: authors than for female slash fi ction authors. Like Penley, Jenkins argues that slash fi ction As loyal as the women fans of Star writing is a fan practice that allows women Trek have been, they have always been to reclaim texts in which female characters vocal about their disappointment with are underrepresented or in which traditionally the women characters….There is bitter feminine interests in relationships and disappointment that these women of the go unaddressed. Yet he engages in problematic twenty-third century are still behind the essentialism in trying to account for the fact switchboard, at the doctorʼs side, or in that K/S and other fanfi ction is a fan practice miniskirts serving coffee to the men.…It dominated by heterosexual women. He asserts was, then, in large part, women fansʼ that reader interest in character development abiding love for the Star Trek universe and taking narratives beyond original texts is … and their disappointment [with] necessarily the realm of the female, yet never everything they felt was missing from considers the reasons why male writers engage in Star Trek that pushed them to begin the same practice.5 elaborating on the Star Trek universe.2 In his work with John Tulloch, Jenkins directly addresses the issue of gay-authored She also locates what I call “slashability” at the Star Trek slash fi ction. They explore gay fansʼ level of genre, contending that the science fi ction frustrations with a lack of gay representation in convention of alternate or mirror universes gives the seriesʼ various incarnations even though it is authors a highly effective way to mobilize the fi rmly in line with the Star Trek ethos of “Infi nite fantasy lives of their characters in a way that Diversity in Infi nite Combinations.” Yet they do so carefully and explicitly delineates imagination and by charging that writing slash narratives involving reality.3 homosexual relationships between characters is Yet Penley posits that while female slash not necessarily an “adequate” fan response to a authors who write K/S slash stories write lack of representation on a program.

24 SPRING 2005 HOLLIS GRIFFIN

The circulation of slash within [the misrepresented here, the practice of gay men gay] subcultural community cannot slashing soap operas comes into sharper focus as adequately substitute for their lack of one with both liberatory and resistant potential. access to the media, since the aired episodes, even within , enjoy an Gay Male Representation in Soap authority which cannot be matched by Operas any subcultural production and since [gay Star Trek fan organizationsʼ] push Soap operas have historically dealt with a for a gay character on the aired episodes variety of taboo social issues (i.e. , abortion, is intended as much for the consumption alcoholism, mental illness, and domestic violence), of closeted gay teenagers or straight but homosexuality has been largely disregarded by parents, and co-workers as for daytime melodramas. Tania Modleski contends the group itself.…Resistant reading is that “only those issues which can be tolerated an important survival skill in a hostile and ultimately pardoned are introduced on soap atmosphere where most of us can do little operas….An issue like homosexuality, which to alter social conditions and where many could explode the family structure rather than of the important stories that matter to us temporarily disrupt it, is simply ignored.”7 C. Lee canʼt be told on network television. It is, Harrington attributes this under-representation to however, no substitute for other forms of a combination of generic restrictions, network media criticism and activism.6 constraints, and assumptions about audiences.8 Because this programming deals While Tulloch and Jenkins do admit that writing so overwhelmingly with romance in general, slash fi ction can be a pleasurable fan activity and heterosexual romance specifi cally, it is very for television viewers in and of itself, they seem diffi cult to fully integrate gay characters into nonetheless to set up a hierarchy of worthy fan a soap opera landscape when all of the other activities in the face of inadequate representation characters are foreclosed as romantic possibilities. in original show texts. Surely there are many In addition, like so many television texts, possible reasons why slash fi ction authors engage storylines and characters are written into soap in this particular fan practice, but Tulloch and operas with economics in mind, and the broadcast Jenkins leave little room to consider how slash medium operates on the premise that stories will fi ction authors, of various genders and sexual not alienate audiences and advertisers. The genre orientations, might consider this fan practice an is predicated on the industrial assumption that effective political response to under-representation heterosexual women watch these shows for the in mainstream media texts. romantic storylines and that gay male characters— The extent to which gay slash fi ction authors and whatever romantic involvements that might rework soap opera storylines in fi ction highlights involve them—lie squarely outside what is the paradoxical nature of their fandom: a heavy perceived to be the key audienceʼs primary reason investment in this programming even though they for watching the programs in the fi rst place. very rarely see themselves represented in it. In Historically, gay male representation has been the next section, I trace the history of gay male relegated to the margins on soap operas, when it representation in melodramas has been dealt with at all. Soap operas generally and examine the means by which gay men have use marginal characters to introduce taboo social been relegated to the margins of soap opera. In issues like homosexuality so that they can be looking at how gay men have been under- and “embodied” by a single character. Joy Fuqua

GET A LIFE?: FAN CULTURES AND CONTEMPORARY TELEVISION 25 SOAP SLASH states that this character can either be written opera universe. Gay clothing designer Hank Eliot out of the program with little disruption to the appeared sporadically on , but main storylines or the problematic issue can be the character was written out of the show to care “detached” from the marginal character after which for a boyfriend with AIDS who, conveniently, he/she can be made a permanent part of the soap lived in another city. Billy Douglas came out of opera community. One example is the “wanton the closet and was disowned by his father on One woman,” the taboo issue being her illicit sexuality Life to Live, but the character was tangential to the from which she is detached by marrying into a core narratives and the storyline disappeared from programʼs core family. But because homosexuality the program quickly and neatly. is so tied to a characterʼs identity, the “problem” of Fuqua indicates “it is the representation his/her sexuality can never be detached from the of the ‘everydayʼ in relation to gay characters character.9 In the 1980s and 1990s, the few gay which causes the diffi culty for soap opera. Gay male soap opera characters that were introduced characters can be represented, but only in terms of were marginal and narrativized at the level of the sexuality-as-problem paradigm.”10 This begs a “social problem,” and were then dispensed with larger question regarding the pleasure of these texts when they could not be incorporated into the soap for gay male audiences if their only representations on soap operas read like overly earnest, completely asexual public service announcements. In the next section, I examine some of the historical and theoretical implications of gay menʼs historic identifi cation with and appreciation for melodramas in an attempt to locate a capacity for gay male pleasure in soap opera texts.

Soap Operas and Gay Male Fandom

Gay male camp aesthetics and readings have usually been studied in terms of the actresses with whom gay male audiences most identify. However, in gay- authored soap slash fi ction, the characters appropriated from the original texts are male. Furthermore, the highly erotic nature of gay- authored soap slash points to a spectatorial involvement with soap operas beyond (Brady), Jay Kenneth Johnson (ex-Philip), Jason Cook simply making fun of them, (Shawn), in Days of Our Lives. which is what camp implies.

26 SPRING 2005 HOLLIS GRIFFIN

For this reason, it is useful to examine gay male melodrama and the notion of genre itself, with its spectatorial involvement with melodramas as a emphasis on formulas and repetitions—that allows generic form. Linda Williams casts melodrama the to keep experiencing … pleasure.”15 as a “body genre” because “the body of the Moreover, the seeming confl ict between subject- spectator is caught up in … the emotion or choice and object-choice in this theoretical model, sensation of the body on the screen.”11 Williams what DeAngelis calls “the being and the having,” locates this spectatorial over-involvement in can be explained by the fact that people inhabiting the Freudian fantasy of origin, whereby the subject positions frequently engage in these melodramatic genre is structured around the activities simultaneously.16 childʼs memory of wholeness with the mother. She also highlights how melodrama, as a genre, While identifi cation is based on is marked by a related temporal fantasy wherein likeness or similarity between subject “the quest for connection is always tinged with and object,…desire is based on a melancholy or loss.”12 perceived difference.…The perception While Williams deals largely with female of likeness helps to construct a subject subject positions and female characters, Michael position for both the viewer and the DeAngelis extends her framework to argue that narrative protagonistʼs entry into the the melodramatic form offers ample possibility for fantasy scenario, offering a necessary gay male identifi cation with, and erotic desire for, fi rst step for placement within a scene. male melodramatic characters and the male stars At the same time, the perception of who portray these roles. DeAngelis discusses difference between self and other the appeal of mainstream fi lm stars and the roles provides a required distance between they play in fi lmic melodramas geared (arguably) subject and object that activates the for heterosexual audiences. However, because dynamic of desire, spurring the fantasy soap opera actors frequently perform a kind of of contracting distance and overcoming excessive hegemonic masculinity on daytime spatial boundaries.17 television, his argument can be extended here. He posits that because melodrama is so participatory, The melodramatic origin of fantasy opens up a it enables and accommodates fantasies of same- variety of different subject positions with access sex desire among gay male spectators—even in to identifi cation and desire. As such, soap operas texts or at historical moments that would seem to address the gay male spectator even if, at face preclude them.13 DeAngelis states that this occurs value, the texts seem to offer little potential for because the fantasy of origin operates at two gay male identifi cation or erotic desire. different sites in melodramas: between a character Nevertheless, all of this takes place at the and a spectator as well as between characters in level of connotation and is easily denied by a text. The gay male spectator has an affective the obvious, preferred readings of soap opera investment in the male actor “in an attempt to texts. As Alexander Doty states, “conventional forge and maintain a bond with [him].”14 At the heterocentrist paradigms [have already] decided same time, this spectatorial fantasy of reunion and that expressions of queerness are sub-textual, reconnection can take place when two characters sub-cultural, alternative readings, or pathetic and are united on screen. delusional attempts to see something that isnʼt Of course the character unions as imagined in there.”18 Yet gay-authored soap slash moves the slash fi ction here are not going to be realized in queerness19 from the connotative to the denotative the original soap opera texts as they air on daytime level by appropriating characters, storylines, television any time soon. Yet as DeAngelis states, and generic conventions to rewrite the world of ultimate return to a state of oneness with the mother daytime television. In the next section, I will is always impossible but “poses no defi nitive examine how the generic form of the soap opera obstacle in the realm of fantasy. What remains offers slash writers the potential to make a soap crucial is the continuous dynamic—offered by operaʼs queerness extant and not just latent.

GET A LIFE?: FAN CULTURES AND CONTEMPORARY TELEVISION 27 SOAP SLASH

Locating “Slashability” in the Soap and closure that is supposed to attend a male- Opera female coupling. While scholars have identifi ed a distinctly feminine pleasure in this prolonged A soap opera can never be discussed teleologically; yearning for heterosexual closure, my argument scholars have characterized these texts as having is that by never fully resolving romantic “an infi nitely expanding middle” with constant tensions, making them constantly open to new interruptions from both inside and outside the controversies and clashes, the soap opera form diegesis. Characters are interrupted by various is rife with opportunities for the gay male slash intrusions in individual scenes, storylines are author to mine it for material and queer the broken up as programs cut between storylines or narrative. Yet this is not the only place where the cut to commercials within individual episodes, unstable codes employed by soap operas can be and narratives cut across episodes as storylines used to queer narratives. In catering to what is are dropped for days, weeks and years and are perceived to be (by both the television industry then re-introduced at some later point in time. and academics) an overwhelmingly female Robert Allen has stated that soap opera writers audience, soap opera narratives deliberately take advantage of these gaps by leaving narrative put the bodies of male soap opera actors on questions unanswered in order to constantly draw display.23 The taut physiques of these actors are viewers back to programs by prolonging suspense featured prominently, in various states of dress and preventing an ultimate telos.20 and undress. This excessive performance of Tania Modleski argues that these interruptions hypermasculinity invites queer interpretations of should be seen as the means by which women the roles they portray. who work in the home, their attention constantly In his work on male pin-ups, Richard Dyer diverted by household and familial duties, can states that the spectacle of unclothed male enjoy soap operas: muscularity attempts to naturalize and legitimize the modelʼs male power and dominance while The fl ow within soap operas … reinforces helping to avert the castrating gaze that attends the very principle of interruptability male-as-spectacle.24 While the penis and the crucial to the proper functioning of women phallus are confl ated in the popular consciousness, in the home.…The formal properties of they are not at all one and the same. Because daytime television thus accord closely the penis can only suggest phallic power, Dyer with the rhythms of womenʼs work in the locates an excessive quality in male imagery that home. Individual soap operas as well as attempts to bolster what it can never really achieve the various programs and commercials with a cloak of muscle and performed virility tend to make repetition, interruption, and so as not to imply passivity, and by extension, distraction pleasurable.21 homosexuality.25 But because sexualized male imagery and She also states that the narrative conventions common gay visibility have increased to such a large to the genre, those that “[place] ever more complex extent in both popular culture and society at obstacles between desire and fulfi llment makes large, I would argue that a soap opera actorʼs expectation an end in itself,” thereby investing the performance of hypermasculinity calls into “waiting” that is characteristic of work traditionally question the very heterosexual identity it is done in the home by women, with pleasure.22 This, intended to signify; it can read as a kind of gay however, points to the widely assumed gendered macho drag. Judith Butler calls such a gender homogeneity of soap opera audiences, an assumption performance troubled by the very existence of gay male-authored soap opera slash fi ction. a repetition of the law into I contend that the net effect of these gaps hyperbole.…Interpellation thus loses and prolongings is that the characters in the its status as a simple performative, diegesis never achieve the moment of happiness an act of discourse with the power

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necessarily achieved via an effeminate gender performance. As Butler charges “hegemonic is itself a constant and repeated effort to imitate its own idealizations….[It] is beset by an anxiety that it can never be fi nally or fully achieved, and … is consistently haunted by [the] domain of sexual possibility.”28 As a result, male soap opera characters frequently resemble roles performed by men in gay male subcultures, and their placement in various gay romantic and erotic scenarios within slash narratives is not much of a stretch of the “Men of Days” Calendar (1999) imagination. to create that to which it refers, and Gay-Authored Soap Slash Fiction: creates more than it ever meant to, Resistance, Liberation, Porn? signifying in excess of any intended referent. It is this constitutive failure Jenkins outlines a number of different narrative of the performative, this slippage devices utilized by slash authors that provide a between discursive command and its good practical foundation for the discussion of appropriated effect, which provides how original soap opera texts are appropriated the linguistic occasion and index for a and reconstructed in gay male-authored soap consequential disobedience.26 slash fi ction. His list includes personalization, eroticization, refocalization, cross-overs, and moral In her conceptualization of drag, Butler leaves realignment.29 As I have stated, personalization room for an ambivalent drag, a performance that and eroticization fi gure prominently in gay male- both denaturalizes and reidealizes heterosexual authored soap slash. Personalization is a narrative gender norms.27 Thus, a male can displace notions device used by slash authors to rework narratives of heterosexuality even via a performance of so that they are more refl ective of the authorʼs masculinity. personal experiences.30 Eroticization allows Moreover, within gay male subculture a taut slash writers to explore the erotic dimensions physique is idealized to such a large extent that it of charactersʼ lives and to transform censored troubles any connection between musculature and television texts into narratives that explore heterosexuality. Macho drag can also be read as sexuality and sexual themes.31 Gay male slash an excessive performance of masculinity wherein authors employ these narrative techniques to those who perform it are doing so in order to rewrite daytime melodramas according to the disprove the belief that homosexual identity is needs and desires that have gone unrepresented in

GET A LIFE?: FAN CULTURES AND CONTEMPORARY TELEVISION 29 SOAP SLASH

the genre for so long, capitalizing on the genreʼs mode of address and the gay erotic potential that exists—sometimes quite blatantly—in the original show texts. Jenkins defi nes refocalization as the device some writers use in order to bring secondary characters to the foreground of slash fi ction, and shift attention away from the programsʼ central fi gures.32 In “Days of Our Summer, Part II,” based on male characters from Days of Our Lives, the author focuses attention on Jason, a teen character who goes to high school with children from the programʼs core families but remains on the periphery of the main storylines. In “Gay ,” a long-running gay-authored slash series, the author constantly focuses attention on peripheral characters. The nameless male characters who act as villain Lorenzo Alcazarʼs bodyguards and henchmen on the program are featured as main characters in the fi rst installment. In the third and fourth installments, the butler of the core family on General Hospital is the main character even though he is rarely a fi gure in main storylines in the original program text. A cross-over story is a single slash story that features characters from different programs. An example is “Soap Chat,” a fi ve-part slash serial where the author uses characters from nearly every soap opera on television. While the series revolves around Dr. Colin MacIver from , the stories also feature a number of other characters, including J.T. Hellstrom from The Young and the Restless, Joey Buchanan also from One Life to Live, from , and from The Bold and the Beautiful. The author appropriates these characters in order to place them in different sexual pairings throughout the seriesʼ fi ve installments in what is truly a testament to the breadth of the authorʼs knowledge of different programs, but also the depth of his investment in daytime television. Moral realignment is a narrative device whereby slash authors “invert or question the moral universe of the primary text, taking the villains and transforming them into protagonists.”33 Perennial villain Stefan Cassadine is the main character in the second installment of the “Gay General Hospital” series. Throughout the course of the story, the author explores the sense of loss Stefan

30 SPRING 2005 HOLLIS GRIFFIN feels as a result of his rocky relationships with family members Lucky and Nikolas in the original show text. Yet I donʼt want to discount the profound pornographic quality of nearly all of these slash stories. Many of these stories create a kind of “gay pornographic utopia” whereby sexual encounters between male characters are used to solve the problems presented in original show texts. For instance, the “Gay General Hospital” story that features Stefan and and Lucky Spencer, resolves the charactersʼ confl icts with a highly graphic ménage a trois. On the show, they are bitter enemies, but in the slash narrative they resolve their differences via a sexual encounter. On Days of Our Lives, stepbrothers Austin Reed and Lucas Roberts fought for Carrie Bradyʼs affections in a storyline that stretched across several years in “real” time and featured Lucas plotting and scheming to keep his brother and Carrie from achieving happiness as a couple. Yet in slash stories like “Samesex: Lucasʼ Master” and “Austin and Lucas,” the authors resolve the heated confl ict between the two step-siblings by featuring the pair in erotic narratives. In “Austin and Lucas,” Lucas tells Austin, “You see, itʼs been a long time since Iʼve had sex, and I am offering to leave Carrie alone if youʼll screw me over good.” And because this is a slash story written by a gay male fan who has probably imagined this situation while watching the program on many different occasions, Austin eagerly complies. Another common attribute of these slash narratives is a borrowing of generic conventions in creating seriality. Things like surprise intruders, hostage taking, blackmail, and secret electronic surveillance all fi gure prominently in these stories, though they all result in further sexual pairings between the “poached” male characters. In a slash series based on The Young and the Restless called “Young & Restless Men,” imprisons and Bradley Carlton in a dungeon Opposite page, top to bottom: in his mansion to get revenge on Bradley for (Victor Newman) in The Young and the Restless; having an affair with his wife and trying to take Kyle Lowder () in Days of Our over his business. While they are having sex, Lives; Jason Cook (Shawn Douglas Brady) Victorʼs son Nick watches and tapes them on the in Days. This page, top to bottom: Cameron Newman mansionʼs intricate surveillance system. Mathison (Ryan Lavery) in All My Children; In the second installment of “Young & Restless Tyler Christopher (Nikolas Cassadine) in General Men,” Nick blackmails Bradley with the tape in Hospital; (Rex Brady) in Days.

GET A LIFE?: FAN CULTURES AND CONTEMPORARY TELEVISION 31 SOAP SLASH order to convince Bradley to sleep with him. But examined print slash. Also, Star Trek fandom at the end of the second installment, the author is characterized as one famously devoted to the reveals that a fourth character had been watching dogma of the show, as well as one that is famous Bradley and Nickʼs encounter through a window. for the culture of consumption built around that True to the form on which it is based, the interloper fandom. The playfulness and valorization of “bad isnʼt introduced until midway through “Young & art” so central to the gay male camp aesthetic raise Restless Men, Part III,” and Nick, Bradley, and the possibility of a more fl ippant involvement with Victor (who by this point in the series has even soap operas and slash fi ction among gay men. had sex with his son) canʼt imagine what heʼll do Related to Dyerʼs notion of camp as being at the with this information… heart of gay identity formation, the gay soap slash I As gay male slash authors rewrite the soap examined contains an element of dialogism as many opera according to their own interests and fantasies, of the writers include notes at the bottom of stories they do so by using the excessive style and generic encouraging readers to send notes and story ideas conventions that are characteristic of the genre. for inclusion in future series and narratives. This But unlike the case of Star Trek, where there is a appears to be a way for this fan community to forge religiosity about the dogma attending the program adequate gay male representation in secondary texts among its slash-writing fans, soap slash authors since the original show texts have historically failed often make fun of soap opera style and conventions to do so. Also, these stories frequently begin with even as they adopt them in their narratives. For disclaimers akin to “this is what might happen if example, in “Days of Our Summer, Part I,” the we actually got our way,” denoting the fact that the author pokes fun at the soap operaʼs history as a soap slash authors are frequently engaging in this low-brow form of entertainment and makes several particular fan activity as a form of liberation and tongue-in-cheek references to various narrative resistance to a dominant system of representation devices used in the original Days of Our Lives that has left their desires hidden at the level of text. This includes several send-ups of the showʼs connotation for so long. dependence on mysterious villain Stefano DiMera and suspension of realism via narrative events like Conclusion brainwashing and kidnapping. The author of the “Gay General Hospital” series pokes fun at earnest Being a gay male soap opera fan myself, I have to moments in soap opera by including lines like “He admit a more than passing interest in how other gay could take anything but a goddamn after-school male fans negotiate identifi cation and desire in a special…” in the narrative. The dialogue of the television genre that has all but erased gay men from “Gay General Hospital” series also includes ironic, their texts even as they prominently feature ostensibly humorous statements that point to the camp wit heterosexual male characters that are so infi nitely present in a lot of gay male-authored soap slash: queerable. Being that the organization of television “Hey, letʼs not forget the real reason weʼre here. as an institutionalized communications medium Sex, and lots of it!” and “Enough of this soap opera precludes much viewer involvement with texts detritus! Just kiss already!” beyond reading strategies and various fan practices, Richard Dyer has noted the centrality of this slash fi ction appears to be a powerful means by which camp aesthetic to gay menʼs identity formation, some fans can act out resistance to dominant systems and its championing of kitsch highlights how of meaning. Nevertheless, I do not wish to valorize gay male soap slash authors differ from the slash one form of viewer resistance and liberation over authors that have been studied to date.34 Jenkins another. As such, I see this as part of a larger project and Penley state that science fi ction slash generally in which interviews with actual gay male soap slash contains a high level of editorial professionalism, authors could shed some light on the pleasure they fi nd but the particular slash writing I am looking in writing slash fi ction. To what extent do they see the at involves less of that policing. One reason act of writing as an end in and of itself? for this could be that I examined slash fi ction Still, the very presence of gay male-authored published on the internet while Jenkins and Penley slash fi ction complicates current conceptualizations

32 SPRING 2005 HOLLIS GRIFFIN of slash fi ction writers as a group. Further analysis A Note on Methodology of who is reading this slash fi ction and why is necessarily rooted in a discussion of how fans In using the internet as a source for gay male- enjoy slash fi ction in relation to their viewings authored soap slash fi ction, I was faced with the of the shows on which the stories are based. Does diffi culty of determining authorship in a medium one replace the other? Do fans see writing and/or notorious for its anonymity. As such, my sample reading soap slash as something distinct from includes fi ction written by self-identifi ed gay men. watching the show? This was easier to determine in some cases than At the same time, gay male-authored soap in others. I want to highlight the fact that the slash also complicates notions of soap opera Nifty Web Archive is a website wholly devoted audiences. The level of affective investment to the publication of erotica written by gay men. implied by the many long-running gay-authored As such, their many pages on gay male slash soap slash serials published on the internet fi ction provided a valuable resource. When using troubles common conceptualizations of the typical websites linked to slashcity.com and squidge.org, soap opera viewer as a heterosexual housewife. I only included slash fi ction when I was able to As daytime audiences continue to shrink and determine that the author was in fact a gay male. television networks face stiffer competition from cable programming than ever before, the soap Slash Fiction Used in this Analysis: opera industry may benefi t from taking note of From nifty.net: “Austin and Lucas,”“Days of their vital gay male fan base. Of course, even if Our Summer, Parts 1-3,” “Daytime, Dark and this were to happen, the pornographic content of Dangerous,”“Dudes of Our Lives, 1-2,”“Gay gay male-authored soap slash would still never General Hospital, 1-6,”“Salem High,” “Soap fi nd its way to daytime television. As a result Chat, 1-5,”“Young & Restless Men, 1-6” of this, the practice of writing slash fi ction will always contain a signifi cant amount of resistant, From other archives: “Days of Revenge,” “A liberatory potential. Days of Our Lives Sex Story: Lucasʼ Master”

HOLLIS GRIFFIN is a graduate student in the media studies program at the University of Texas at Austin. A graduate of Cornell University, he was a publicist in City for several years prior to graduate school, working for Penguin Putnam, Routledge, and Grove Press. He now serves on the editorial board of The Velvet Light Trap and is Senior Features Editor for FLOW: A Critical Forum on Television and Media Culture.

GET A LIFE?: FAN CULTURES AND CONTEMPORARY TELEVISION 33 SOAP SLASH

Notes

1 Constance Penley, “Feminism, Psychoanalysis anda the Study of Popular Culture,” in Cultural Studies, eds. Lawrence Grossberg, Cary Nelson, and Paula A. Treichler (New York: Routledge, 1992): 488. 2 Ibid., 489. 3 Ibid., 491. 4 Ibid., 487. 5 Henry Jenkins, “Star Trek Rerun, Reread, Rewritten: Fan Writing as Textual Poaching,” in Television: The Critical View, 6th ed., ed. Horace Newcomb (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000): 476-477. 6 John Tulloch and Henry Jenkins, Science Fiction Audiences: Watching “” and “Star Trek” (New York: Routledge, 1995), 264-265. 7 Tania Modleski, Loving with a Vengeance: Mass Produced Fantasies for Women (Hamden, CT: Archon Books/Shoestring Press, 1982), 93. 8 C. Lee Harrington, “Homosexuality on All My Children: Transforming the Daytime Landscape,” Journal of Broadcasting and Electronic Media 47, no. 2 (2003): 221. 9 Joy V. Fuqua, “‘Thereʼs a Queer in My Soap!: The /AIDS Story-Line of One Life to Live.” in To Be Continued...: Soap Operas Around the World, ed. Robert C. Allen (New York: Routledge, 1995): 201. 10 Ibid., 209. 11 Linda Williams, “Film Bodies: Gender, Genre, and Excess,” Film Quarterly 44, no. 4 (1991): 4. 12 Ibid., 11. 13 Michael DeAngelis, Gay Fandom and Stardom: James Dean, Mel Gibson, and Keanu Reeves (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2001), 10. 14 Ibid., 6. 15 Ibid., 6-7. 16 Ibid., 9. 17 Ibid., 16. 18 Alexander Doty, Making Things Perfectly Queer: Interpreting Mass Culture (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993), xii. 19 My intention here is not to confl ate “gay man” with “queer,” but to adopt Dotyʼs terminology in placing gay male readings both within and adjacent to queer readings as something different from though not completely unrelated to identity categories and their labels. 20 Robert C. Allen, Speaking of Soap Operas (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1985), 78-79. 21 Modleski, Loving with a Vengeance, 100. 22 Ibid., 88. 23 Bradley S. Greenberg and Mark G. Woods, “The Soaps: Their Sex, Gratifi cation, and Outcomes,” The Journal of Sex Research (August 1999): 253, http://infotrack.galegroup.com. 24 Richard Dyer, “Donʼt Look Now: Instabilities of the Male Pin-up,” Only Entertainment 2nd ed. (New York: Routledge, 2002), 128. 25 Ibid., 134. 26 Judith Butler, “Gender is Burning: Questions of Appropriation and Subversion,” Feminist Film Theory: A Reader, ed. Sue Thornham (New York: NYU Press, 1999): 337. 27 Ibid., 338. 28 Butler, “Gender is Burning,” 338-9. 29 Henry Jenkins, Textual Poachers: Television Fans & Participatory Culture (New York: Routledge, 1992), 162. 30 Ibid., 171. 31 Ibid., 175. 32 Ibid., 167. 33 Ibid., 168. 34 Richard Dyer, “In Defense of Disco,” Only Entertainment (New York: Routledge, 2002), 153-154.

34 SPRING 2005