The Transformative Power of “Hot Gay Sex”: Queering Superman, Queering the Fan on the Televisionwithoutpity “Smallville” Boards
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Brigid Kelly The Transformative Power of “Hot Gay Sex”: Queering Superman, Queering the Fan on the TelevisionWithoutPity “Smallville” Boards When the television play writing games series Smallville and share their debuted on the WB creative productions, in October of 2001, it including fanfiction offered US audiences and art, are dedicated still reeling from the to discussions of effects of September 11th a reassuring picture of the show that take both a critical and humorous a Superman for the new millennium. With its approach.2 Much of this discussion concerned wholesome values, beautiful young cast and stories the perceived homoerotic subtext at play between in which a teenaged Clark Kent battles freaks to the show’s two male leading characters, Clark and re-establish normalcy by the end of every episode, Lex. Smallville became one of very few new shows to For many of these Smallville fans the attract a significant audience that season.1 show was, particularly in its first season, “the Almost immediately the show developed an gayest show on broadcast TV.”3 Many watched active online fandom of the type which has attracted because they found the idea of Clark Kent and much academic interest in the past decade or so. his future mortal enemy Lex Luthor, a pairing One prominent focal point for this fandom was they call “Clex,” engaging in “hot gay sex” to be TelevisionWithoutPity (TWoP), a site that recaps both provocative and powerful.4 Slash (pairing and critiques primetime shows, with a philosophy same-sex characters in non-canon romantic of “spare the snark, spoil the networks.” Most relationships) is nothing new to fandom, having of the information in this study was drawn from been recognized and documented for decades.5 For public posts on the Smallville discussion forum at these fans slash is more than simple transgression, TWoP (www.televisionwithoutpity.com), and from play, or pornography. For many fans the phrase other material recommended by TWoP Smallville “hot gay sex” in this context encapsulates a way fans, during 2002 and 2003. The message-board- of seeing that combines, and is structured by, a format forums, where fans can discuss episodes, shared approach to humour, erotica, and social GET A LIFE?: FAN CULTURES AND CONTEMPORARY TELEVISION 71 Lauri Mullens, editor, Spectator 25:1 (Spring 2005): 71 - 82. THE TRANSFORMATIVE POWER OF “HOT GAY SEX” only transform Smallville, but may experience a personal transformation, an entry into a new way of seeing in which the participant may experience the feeling of power, acceptance and freedom unlike anything he/she experiences in “real” life. My notion of “hot gay sex” in this instance refers not to physical sex, but to the very activity that keeps fandom alive. In this paper I refer to such activity in quotes as ‘hot gay sex,’ to distinguish it from actual or even fictional sexual activity, with an awareness that the use of the term is not without potentially problematic political implications with regard to queer identity and politics. In addition, as cybersex demonstrates, the online environment has made it increasingly difficult to distinguish between talking about sex and doing sex. Throughout this paper I examine fan productions, specifically discussions, fanfiction, art, and essays, which demonstrate the transformative elements of ‘hot gay sex.’ Smallville, with its ongoing theme of obsession, including depictions of stereotypically fannish behaviour such as watching, collecting, stalking and loving one-sidedly, speaks directly to fans. Being a fan also means being marginal, being “queer” in its old sense of peculiar or odd; it can also mean being transformed. When fans resolve Tom Welling as a young Superman in the WB’s Lex’s textual obsession with Clark by putting the Smallville. characters in bed together, they also change them, interaction. This way of seeing and engaging with from future enemies to soulmates and from straight the text is also profoundly transformative. Three to gay. In doing so they drag these characters elements are common to “hot gay sex” activities into a marginalised space more like the one they and productions: they are timely (“hot”), they themselves inhabit. Thus Smallville fans use the are (mostly) counter-hegemonic (“gay”) and they Clex pairing in fanfiction to explore, therefore, not produce pleasurable feelings through an exchange just what it means to become “queer” in the sense of signifiers (“sex”).6 The online environment of lived sexual orientation, but also what it means allows the fan community to respond rapidly, even to become a fan. in real time, to developments in the show. This real time (“hot”) response is something that has “Hot Gay Sex” in Liminal Spaces been enabled by the combination of the technology and its social implementation. The activities and Computers, like televisions, are now ordinary commentaries presented in this forum frequently household items; however, both also function oppose or undermine the official storyline, thus as key channels of information which then has functioning as evidence of the existence of a the power to shape how we see the world. A counter-hegemonic force among fans of the show. negotiation takes place between the receiving of In slash fiction, sex (an exchange of signifiers) information and the making sense of it—a liminal functions to reveal truths and transform lives. The event. Thus, watching television and using the same could be said of fans’ online discussions Internet both invite participants into liminal (also an exchange of signifiers), wherein fans not processes. Two key aspects of liminality are a 72 SPRING 2005 BRIGID KELLY position outside the ordinary business of society, the grown-up demands of work and family. All the and temporariness. Henry Jenkins has written of threads function as “discourse networks” where the “weekend-only world” of fan conventions, fans can adopt their own kind of “defiant cultural which, though they last only a few hours, give capital.” And for these TWoPers, a knowing fans “power and identity” which help them cope appropriation of teenage discourse is one kind of with everyday life.7 Even if a person could watch cultural capital.8 As Brown suggests about the television all day, for example, advertisements soap opera, which revolves around women’s lives, disrupt the narrative flow of each show, forcing providing “imaginative-emotional” material from the viewer back into awareness of basic needs. which, through discussion, women “reimagine Fans generally go online in windows of free time, their roles and feel again what it is to be a either covertly while at work, or in the evenings woman,”9 these boards provide fans with a forum after daily chores are completed. Thus, this kind through which to re-experience an adolescence of participation, whether watching a favourite that has already passed. show or talking online, is special, and can only last However, because liminal activities for a limited time, after which the individual must transform, they cannot be experienced twice. Once exit this liminal space and re-enter the world of adolescence is over, an adult can never experience daily drudgery. Engagement with television texts it again. The adult fans of TWoP enjoy playing and online fan communities retains this sense of at girlishness, but they make distinctions between extra-ordinariness, even though both technologies themselves and Smallville’s real thirteen-year-old have increasingly commonplace roles in daily girl fans, who frequent other boards. Ironically, activities. one of the main ways they do this is by imitating A third key function of liminality is the teenager’s online “voice,” loosely constructed, transformation. As fan spaces are liminal, they personalised and heavily peppered with Netspeak invite fans to investigate texts and explore (acronyms and abbreviations) and idiosyncratic possibilities—what might happen if.…. In doing so, fans transform the text for themselves. But they may also undergo personal transformations as their explorations and interactions expose them to new pleasures and new ideas. Adolescence is a liminal period, where excessive affective attachments, vacillation between child-like and adult-like behaviours and even undefined sexual orientation, are socially supported. They are also supported and enacted (re-enacted) on the Smallville discussion threads of TWoP. Smallville, which revolves around teenagers’ lives, provides these fans with material (and a venue for participation), which enables them to feel again what it is to be a teen. Gay, straight, single and partnered women alike engage in same-sex flirting, and swoon over pictures of actor Michael Rosenbaum (Lex) on his dedicated thread, where, when not intelligently discussing his career, they may jokingly plot to stalk him, create nicknames for his penis, and plan schemes where they can all marry him. (It is perhaps significant that male fans, while not excluded, are rarely participants). These activities are not meant as serious; they are simply a playful break from GET A LIFE?: FAN CULTURES AND CONTEMPORARY TELEVISION 73 THE TRANSFORMATIVE POWER OF “HOT GAY SEX” spelling. Fans who know each other online are Netspeak only fleetingly, and for comical effect. attuned to each other’s usual online voices. Thus it is clear that this play at “teenageness” is just However, it is only under certain conditions that, play, and that only in certain circumstances is that this type of self-presentation is acceptable. this appropriation of teenage excess acceptable. The site discourages excessive Netspeak, along Members of this particular community, who with incorrect spelling and grammar, verbal tend to be beyond adolescence, therefore play at redundancy and multiple posts. Any fan who occupying the liminal space that is adolescence, persists in violating these would be directed to from which they are more or less removed. the board rules, which also explicitly disallow pictures, signatures and animated “emoticons,” Turning Superman Queer features regularly found on boards frequented by younger fans.