Case (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
case) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
fandomsecrets2013-05-15 06:34 pm
case) wrote in fandomsecrets2013-05-15 06:34 pm
[ SECRET POST #2325 ]
⌈ Secret Post #2325 ⌋
Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.
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Notes:
Secrets Left to Post: 02 pages, 037 secrets from Secret Submission Post #332.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 1 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.
no subject
On the one hand? It's better to have something there, to keep poking things as far as the network's willing to go. I would love if a showrunner just sort of subtly worked gay subtext into something between two characters until it was all but blatant and then that pretty much forced the network's hand. (Not that I think that will happen any time soon because denial is a powerful thing.)
On the other hand...queerbaiting is really, really fucking annoying. The definition of queerbaiting I use is when two characters of the same sex have a relationship that, if two characters of the opposite sex had it, would instantly be declared romantic but the show goes out of its way to stress they're totally straight and not into each other. Frequently played for comedy. It's really frustrating. Is it so damn much to ask that they actually step across that line and offend the bigots who would be offended by it? Are they against it themselves?
On the third alien hand, subtext is not necessarily queerbaiting. If they're not playing it off as a joke, going 'no homo,' making sure we know the characters are totally into the opposite sex (which is all sorts of other skeevy things because it also leans heavily on bisexual erasure), then it's not actually...baiting. It's just subtext. Subtext is subjective. Two people can view the same work of media and get entirely different things out of it.
So: I don't want queerbaiting. That's fucking teasing. But I will take subtext. I'd prefer explicit text, of course, but that's probably not going to happen for a while because the people who make and greenlight media need to catch up to the rest of society first. Who knows when that'll happen.
Of course, when the current younger generation starts running things...
no subject
(Anonymous) 2013-05-16 12:58 am (UTC)(link)It's really frustrating. Is it so damn much to ask that they actually step across that line and offend the bigots who would be offended by it? Are they against it themselves?
I agree with your definition, and this is really what bothers me on a fundamental level. Because baiting basically does go through the motions of setting up and establishing this sense of a relationship, and then it tears down. It wants you to believe that something is there, but it tells you there's nothing and feeds that you're just seeing what you want to see because you're weird--hdu taint pure male relationships like that?
This is especially frustrating in anime and manga fandoms, though, because it's also a marketing practice and yet establishes a hard line for people to point at and shame fans who "see things" between the male characters.
Yet, when the choice is either "nothing" or "more of the same", I know I kept chomping at that carrot the industry loved to hold over my nose.
On the third alien hand, subtext is not necessarily queerbaiting
I also agree with your views on this. Although, more relevant to the OP, I often don't find myself feeling like the homoerotic foeyay subtext is necessarily negative just because I'm queer, and it doesn't feel threatening to me. Like that scene from Bond was witty and flirtatious and I loved it.
Yet whenever I think of this whole "homosexual stereotypes = villain" thing, the one classic example I always think of is... Scar. From the Lion King.
no subject
(Anonymous) 2013-05-16 01:30 am (UTC)(link)no subject
This basically sums up my feelings about this. Take a show like Sherlock. I haven't watched it past the third episodes, but I thought the amount of "slash subtext" combined with "don't worry, no actual homo" was bordering on awkward. It's something I associate with TOS Kirk and Spock, not with a series made in 2012.
no subject
(Anonymous) 2013-05-19 05:52 am (UTC)(link)Sherlock is so awkward I have to watch it in short segments because of all the second hand embarrasment and I can't watch it with someone else in the room.