HOLLIS GRIFFIN Soap Slash: Gay Men Rewrite the World of Daytime Television Drama On Days of Our Lives 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 love triangle with female character Belle Black. 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 romance 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 fandom, 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. rape, 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, friends 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 soap opera 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 daytime television 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 As the World Turns, 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.