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juushikaI've always been concerned with the boundaries of fetishization in my unending quest towards to collect/consume unusually intimate relationships—relationships which are unusual because of the nature of their intimacy and/or because of the way that intimacy manifests—so this conversation about repressed passions is relevant to my interests, particularly:
darkemeralds:
The distinction I offered is that forbidden relationships necessarily exist in conversation/argument with society—a conversation about what society forbids, and why, and what are the consequences of refusing to conform. Which is a broad, accessible theme, particularly in the context of romance/fanfic/fandom/id media, where the reader's desires (in fiction, but also just, in general, as an act of having desires, sexual or otherwise, while [probably, given demographics] female/queer/marginalized) are also in argument with society and its restrictions on how female/queer/marginalized desire manifests.
It puts me in mind offranzeska's But What I Really Want is to(o) Direct, which contrasts how fandom appropriates from gay men and gay men appropriate from women. Why do we borrow other people's narratives or conflicts or images? "Sometimes, allegory gets closer to one’s own internal experiences than literal depiction does"—lateral/allegorical/non-literal/borrowed representation is more accessible, for any number of reasons: less confrontational, less personal, more idealized, while still engaging familiar anxieties and desires. Appropriation has well-deserved negative connotations, but the value of that representation, of marginalized groups building productive narratives, remains. It's a really good essay & makes me want to read the texts referenced.
Forbidden love and unusual intimacy share similarities but don't directly overlap. I'm fairly conservative re: unusually intimate relationships: incest good! cannibalism good! interracial relationships bad!—insofar as the last doesn't trigger the same narrative kink. Cultural violations and taboo aren't synonymous, nor should they be; there's a productive innateness in treating some things as taboo, like incest (genetics!) and cannibalism (disease! murder!) which doesn't/shouldn't apply to racism, homophobia, etc. The more objectively and obviously taboo is an easier avenue for the unusually intimate—even though I cognitively view incest, cannibalism, etc. as morally neutral. My rational brain believes that; my id still thrills in the taboo. And it's that particular tension which reminds me of being 14 and discovering the evocative, titillating thrill of shipping anime boys with each other, which was absolutely more exciting because of ~the gay.~ I was a liberal teenager from a liberal background, and fictional ~the gay~ was a tool towards exploring my own identity, but the social deviancy of it was still a significant part of the draw.
And there are also gray areas like sexualized violence—not taboo, in fact intrinsic to society. An effective unusually intimate relationship probably differs in consent or type of violence or partner dynamics, but it still indicates a) a gray area, b) how I divide "appropriate/suitable" from "inappropriate/unsuitable" unusually intimate relationships is self-serving and complicated, and c) all of it is about tension and anxiety. It's about using fictionalized, fetishized, idealized narratives to explore perhaps only laterally related internal conflict, and the tension of "is this appropriate?" is itself one of the tensions explored. That discomforting gray area isn't a deterrent so much as it is part of the conversation—a conversation about how society limits desire and interaction, and why.
I don't think fetishization/appropriation is so completely & guiltlessly resolved as in the "But What I Really Want" meta. Representation matters, but it can still operate within existing prejudices, see: misogyny in gay cis men, which doesn't undermine the value of co-opting female icons, but does complicate it. So this doesn't resolve my anxiety about lines drawn between exploring the taboo as an avenue for exploring my own marginalized identity/desire, or the concept of taboo as prejudicial or fetishistic. But it was an angle I hadn't considered which goes a good way towards explaining part of why I find this umbrella of relationship dynamics intriguing.
And, mostly, I wanted an excuse to preserve & tag the above quote.
darkemeralds:I want to make a case within the blindly-patriarchal world of official publishing and editing that "forbidden love" is a whole separate kind of story from other love stories. A category of its own, with different conventions and expectations. That the forbiddenness (including interracial, same-sex, different religions, feuding clans--take your pic, whatever society forbids in the time and place of the story) isn't some incidental obstacle to true love, but is the story.
In this regard, I contend that The Bridges of Madison County and Brokeback Mountain have more in common with each other and with West Side Story, than with, say, Pride and Prejudice.
But though I feel the difference, I'm having some trouble defining it in terms the straight white American male persons who still run my industry can quite grasp.
The distinction I offered is that forbidden relationships necessarily exist in conversation/argument with society—a conversation about what society forbids, and why, and what are the consequences of refusing to conform. Which is a broad, accessible theme, particularly in the context of romance/fanfic/fandom/id media, where the reader's desires (in fiction, but also just, in general, as an act of having desires, sexual or otherwise, while [probably, given demographics] female/queer/marginalized) are also in argument with society and its restrictions on how female/queer/marginalized desire manifests.
It puts me in mind of
franzeska's But What I Really Want is to(o) Direct, which contrasts how fandom appropriates from gay men and gay men appropriate from women. Why do we borrow other people's narratives or conflicts or images? "Sometimes, allegory gets closer to one’s own internal experiences than literal depiction does"—lateral/allegorical/non-literal/borrowed representation is more accessible, for any number of reasons: less confrontational, less personal, more idealized, while still engaging familiar anxieties and desires. Appropriation has well-deserved negative connotations, but the value of that representation, of marginalized groups building productive narratives, remains. It's a really good essay & makes me want to read the texts referenced.Forbidden love and unusual intimacy share similarities but don't directly overlap. I'm fairly conservative re: unusually intimate relationships: incest good! cannibalism good! interracial relationships bad!—insofar as the last doesn't trigger the same narrative kink. Cultural violations and taboo aren't synonymous, nor should they be; there's a productive innateness in treating some things as taboo, like incest (genetics!) and cannibalism (disease! murder!) which doesn't/shouldn't apply to racism, homophobia, etc. The more objectively and obviously taboo is an easier avenue for the unusually intimate—even though I cognitively view incest, cannibalism, etc. as morally neutral. My rational brain believes that; my id still thrills in the taboo. And it's that particular tension which reminds me of being 14 and discovering the evocative, titillating thrill of shipping anime boys with each other, which was absolutely more exciting because of ~the gay.~ I was a liberal teenager from a liberal background, and fictional ~the gay~ was a tool towards exploring my own identity, but the social deviancy of it was still a significant part of the draw.
And there are also gray areas like sexualized violence—not taboo, in fact intrinsic to society. An effective unusually intimate relationship probably differs in consent or type of violence or partner dynamics, but it still indicates a) a gray area, b) how I divide "appropriate/suitable" from "inappropriate/unsuitable" unusually intimate relationships is self-serving and complicated, and c) all of it is about tension and anxiety. It's about using fictionalized, fetishized, idealized narratives to explore perhaps only laterally related internal conflict, and the tension of "is this appropriate?" is itself one of the tensions explored. That discomforting gray area isn't a deterrent so much as it is part of the conversation—a conversation about how society limits desire and interaction, and why.
I don't think fetishization/appropriation is so completely & guiltlessly resolved as in the "But What I Really Want" meta. Representation matters, but it can still operate within existing prejudices, see: misogyny in gay cis men, which doesn't undermine the value of co-opting female icons, but does complicate it. So this doesn't resolve my anxiety about lines drawn between exploring the taboo as an avenue for exploring my own marginalized identity/desire, or the concept of taboo as prejudicial or fetishistic. But it was an angle I hadn't considered which goes a good way towards explaining part of why I find this umbrella of relationship dynamics intriguing.
And, mostly, I wanted an excuse to preserve & tag the above quote.
