Why Do We Slash Jim and Blair?

An Answer That Is Really a Question

By Marmoset

In her article for SF Gate -- "Spock Does Mulder: Women-written 'Slash' Fiction Couples Male Characters from Film and TV" (http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/eguide /archive/1999/09/30/neva.dtl) -- Neva Chonin revealed the 'secret' that is slash fiction to the online world at large. And in her lively article, she presents some explanations that people have posed for why the fans of slashfic, who are mostly heterosexual women, like this stuff -- like writing and reading it.

Many of the reasons mentioned were ones I had read in other articles. The list of possible reasons goes like this:

    * Slash is "a form of sensual empowerment"
    * Slash frees the writer "from traditional male -female power dynamics, [allowing] better characterization and erotic exploration"
    * Slash allows writers to express "how they would like men to be (gruff but loving," stoic but vulnerable).
    * Slash writers write about men because there aren't enough strong female characters in popular culture to write about.
    * Slash is just fun and funny
    * Slash writers "use sex as a way of redefining masculinity"
    * Slash allows the writers to "reconfigure gender"
    * Slash writers can "[explore] the possibility of existing outside [the conventional male and female roles], of combining elements of masculinity and feminity into a satisfactory whole...."

One television show that Chonin mentions as a source for slash writers is The Sentinel.

I look at all those reasons up there for slash writers to slash Jim and Blair and realize that I've seen elements of those things in TS slashfic.

However, after reading the commentary on the Sentinel Adult Discussion list [SenAD] for over a year, I would have to say that one reason has been left out: it is just quite possible that some slash writers write what they see on the show itself.

Chonin hints that television shows offer scenes that can feed a slash writer's imagination -- the scene in which Krycek kissed Mulder sent all sorts of people at alt.tv.x-files to their modems for days! But The X-Files has not spent a lot of time developing the relationship between Mulder and Krycek -- whatever one can imagine it to be. Hell, Chris Carter has taken 7 years to develop the Mulder-Scully relationship in dribs and drabs. For the first 3 or 4 seasons, fans were divided about whether there was any UST at all between Mulder and Scully , let alone between Mulder and Krycek.

But in The Sentinel, the relationship between Ellison and Sandburg has been front and center. The adventure begins and ends with that partnership. The various cases they go on serve mainly to illuminate what they learn together about Ellison's senses and about how to work together as a team.

And although not true of all slash fans of this show, many of them say that they 'see the slash' right there on the screen. They cite the facts that the guys are always getting into each other's personal space -- even when they don't have to -- that they give each other these adoring looks and gentle, affectionate touches to the arm, the back, the chest, the face, back of the neck, top of the head, their hair. But even more than these physical displays of closeness and intimacy are the ways they talk about each other, to each other, act in relation to each other, the sacrifices they make for each other. Many fans see that these two characters truly love one another and have an unbreakable bond -- a bond that is soul-deep. And they have seen the evidence of it on screen; they don't have to go far to extrapolate a 'partnership in all things'.

So I would suggest that many fans of Sentinel slash could add one more reason to the list up there -- they write Jim/Blair stories because the original Jim/Blair story has been begun for them and all they have to do is fill in what happened when the camera wasn't looking, or what is likely to happen next, given what they've already seen.

But is this really true? Or if it's true, to what extent is it true?

As an informal, non-scientific way to 'test' this, I've put up one of those freevote.com voting booths asking Sentinel fans to give their opinions on the question -- do you see slash, when you watch The Sentinel?

To see this just go here.

Since June 13, 2000, people have read this essay.





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