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mandragoraI was just reading this entry in arachne's journal regarding a programme on celebrity plastic surgery. And that got me thinking about the celebrity cult that seems to be reaching epidemic proportions at present and the what appears to be sudden popularity of RPS. I'm thinking that the two are connected.
I realise that people have been interested in the lives of the celebrated for a long, long time, probably ever since mankind developed the earliest form of society. I bet that the best hunters, or those people who made particularly good water pots etc were ogled and gossiped about rather more than the lesser lights in the tribe. In more recent times Lord Byron was swooned and exclaimed over, with women following his exploits in breathless anticipation.
There were magazines detailing the (supposed) lives of Hollywood stars that were certainly in existence by the 1930s and apparently they were incredibly popular. The top gossip columnists of the day had power to ruin careers by what they printed, pretty much all of which was believed by a public that was perhaps rather more trusting of the media than today. Of course, in those days the gossip columnists often didn't dare to print the *real* scandal - it was considered to be just too shocking for the public's tender sensibilities.
So, yes, people being interested in the lives of 'celebrities' has a long pedigree, that I'll accept. But I do think that nowadays it's reached hitherto unknown proportions. There's tittle tattle about everyone who's ever had their 15 minutes of fame, perhaps best exemplified by the success of Big Brother, which has built up an avid viewing public over the course of the past 3 series. Or at least the programme has built up a tremendous viewing audience in Britain; apparently it's been rather less successful in the US, which is interesting. But in Britain, at least, there have been endless tabloid articles devoted to the contestants and the minutae of their lives. Another very popular programme was Pop Idol. I know people who made a big event out of the final voting night, having Pop Idol parties etc. I really shouldn't snigger, being an unashamed fangirl of various SF and fantasy TV series and novels. But. I Just Can't Help It.
Ahem. Anyway this leads me onto the present popularity of RPS.
Apparently, stories featuring real people, usually featuring a starring role by the author, have also been with us for a long time. Again, Lord Byron springs to mind as someone who featured as the lover in many a fantasy pinned by a chaste Victorian maiden ;). When it comes to slashers, of course we're way too cool to go the Mary Sue route, or at least way too cool to in any way publish any Mary Sue fantasies that we possibly may have lurking in a drawer somewhere... So, we write slash stories starring two, or three, or four etc of our BSO instead. (I do, of course, realise that there are lots of good and valid reasons to write slash other than as frustrated Mary Sue-rs, but don't want to get into the whole 'why do we write slash' thing here).
But it seems likely that slashers have been writing RPS for at least as long as people have been writing slash. Which is getting on for quite a long time now. But. They didn't used to publish them.
When I got into slash, in 1996, RPS was so underground that it took me a long time to even hear of such a concept. Now, it's everywhere.
So, what's changed? Part of it may be that as slash becomes more 'mainstream' as more and more people become introduced to it through the net those people who used to get a frisson from writing stuff that was perceived to be cutting edge look elsewhere for that buzz. And RPS perhaps fulfils that for some of those people.
Another point is that some writers who were already well known for writing character slash became interested in RPS, typically NSync, or BBS, and started writing it. Many of these writers write pretty damn good character slash and, presumably, produce equally good RPS. This probably had a knock-on effect of drawing in more character slashers to check out the RPS out of curiosity and, well, we all know how easy it can be to get sucked into a new fandom that way.
But I also wonder whether part of the reason for the sudden visibility of RPS is because of the cult of celebrity. As the public's obsession with celebrities increases, may it not also have an effect on the preponderance of RPS? If people become ever more interested in celebrities, and there is more and more information available on those celebrity's lives, the easier it becomes to obtain info upon which to base RPS stories. Plus, the potential reading audience for these stories also increases the more that celebrities are lauded in the media. It's become increasingly the done thing to follow the details of celebrity's lives amongst the mass of the public.
Are RPS slashers simply following the same path?
In my case, I have pretty much zero interest in reading RPS, no matter how good it is. I accept that some of it is truly excellent because I'm told that this is the case by people whose opinions I respect. But it just doesn't float my boat.
I never have been particularly interested in the 'lives of the stars'. Nor have I ever had a crush on a pop star. When my contemporaries were swooning over the likes of The Bay City Rollers (and, God, how happy am I that I managed to avoid *that* particular horror) or, if they were cool, Marc Bolam of T-Rex (much, much better), I was crushing on Ensign Chekov of Star Trek!
It's not that I don't like pop and rock. I've been to plenty of concerts, even hung out with a few bands in my time. But I never had fantasies about the band members and me. These were reserved for Chekov, in the very early days, then Spock as I grew up a bit, also Bodie and Doyle of The Professionals etc. I was always interested in the fictional characters rather than the actors who played them. I felt that I knew the characters in ways that I could never get to know the actors who portrayed those characters. And that interest persists to this day (proof that fangirls are born, not made?).
I've bought precisely one celebrity autobiography in my time, David Niven's 'The Moon's a Balloon', which I bought because The Sunday Times gave it a good review, saying that Niven was a gifted writer and that it was very entertaining and funny. Incidentally, they were right. I've bought biographies of famous people, of course, but these tend to be historical personages rather than actors or popstars (at present I'm reading A Beautiful Mind, about mathematician John Nash). Although I did buy a biography of The Beatles once; again it got good reviews.
When it comes down to it, I don't really get the interest in RPS because I just don't 'get' why people are interested in popstars and actors' lives. Ah well, to each their own, I guess.
I realise that people have been interested in the lives of the celebrated for a long, long time, probably ever since mankind developed the earliest form of society. I bet that the best hunters, or those people who made particularly good water pots etc were ogled and gossiped about rather more than the lesser lights in the tribe. In more recent times Lord Byron was swooned and exclaimed over, with women following his exploits in breathless anticipation.
There were magazines detailing the (supposed) lives of Hollywood stars that were certainly in existence by the 1930s and apparently they were incredibly popular. The top gossip columnists of the day had power to ruin careers by what they printed, pretty much all of which was believed by a public that was perhaps rather more trusting of the media than today. Of course, in those days the gossip columnists often didn't dare to print the *real* scandal - it was considered to be just too shocking for the public's tender sensibilities.
So, yes, people being interested in the lives of 'celebrities' has a long pedigree, that I'll accept. But I do think that nowadays it's reached hitherto unknown proportions. There's tittle tattle about everyone who's ever had their 15 minutes of fame, perhaps best exemplified by the success of Big Brother, which has built up an avid viewing public over the course of the past 3 series. Or at least the programme has built up a tremendous viewing audience in Britain; apparently it's been rather less successful in the US, which is interesting. But in Britain, at least, there have been endless tabloid articles devoted to the contestants and the minutae of their lives. Another very popular programme was Pop Idol. I know people who made a big event out of the final voting night, having Pop Idol parties etc. I really shouldn't snigger, being an unashamed fangirl of various SF and fantasy TV series and novels. But. I Just Can't Help It.
Ahem. Anyway this leads me onto the present popularity of RPS.
Apparently, stories featuring real people, usually featuring a starring role by the author, have also been with us for a long time. Again, Lord Byron springs to mind as someone who featured as the lover in many a fantasy pinned by a chaste Victorian maiden ;). When it comes to slashers, of course we're way too cool to go the Mary Sue route, or at least way too cool to in any way publish any Mary Sue fantasies that we possibly may have lurking in a drawer somewhere... So, we write slash stories starring two, or three, or four etc of our BSO instead. (I do, of course, realise that there are lots of good and valid reasons to write slash other than as frustrated Mary Sue-rs, but don't want to get into the whole 'why do we write slash' thing here).
But it seems likely that slashers have been writing RPS for at least as long as people have been writing slash. Which is getting on for quite a long time now. But. They didn't used to publish them.
When I got into slash, in 1996, RPS was so underground that it took me a long time to even hear of such a concept. Now, it's everywhere.
So, what's changed? Part of it may be that as slash becomes more 'mainstream' as more and more people become introduced to it through the net those people who used to get a frisson from writing stuff that was perceived to be cutting edge look elsewhere for that buzz. And RPS perhaps fulfils that for some of those people.
Another point is that some writers who were already well known for writing character slash became interested in RPS, typically NSync, or BBS, and started writing it. Many of these writers write pretty damn good character slash and, presumably, produce equally good RPS. This probably had a knock-on effect of drawing in more character slashers to check out the RPS out of curiosity and, well, we all know how easy it can be to get sucked into a new fandom that way.
But I also wonder whether part of the reason for the sudden visibility of RPS is because of the cult of celebrity. As the public's obsession with celebrities increases, may it not also have an effect on the preponderance of RPS? If people become ever more interested in celebrities, and there is more and more information available on those celebrity's lives, the easier it becomes to obtain info upon which to base RPS stories. Plus, the potential reading audience for these stories also increases the more that celebrities are lauded in the media. It's become increasingly the done thing to follow the details of celebrity's lives amongst the mass of the public.
Are RPS slashers simply following the same path?
In my case, I have pretty much zero interest in reading RPS, no matter how good it is. I accept that some of it is truly excellent because I'm told that this is the case by people whose opinions I respect. But it just doesn't float my boat.
I never have been particularly interested in the 'lives of the stars'. Nor have I ever had a crush on a pop star. When my contemporaries were swooning over the likes of The Bay City Rollers (and, God, how happy am I that I managed to avoid *that* particular horror) or, if they were cool, Marc Bolam of T-Rex (much, much better), I was crushing on Ensign Chekov of Star Trek!
It's not that I don't like pop and rock. I've been to plenty of concerts, even hung out with a few bands in my time. But I never had fantasies about the band members and me. These were reserved for Chekov, in the very early days, then Spock as I grew up a bit, also Bodie and Doyle of The Professionals etc. I was always interested in the fictional characters rather than the actors who played them. I felt that I knew the characters in ways that I could never get to know the actors who portrayed those characters. And that interest persists to this day (proof that fangirls are born, not made?).
I've bought precisely one celebrity autobiography in my time, David Niven's 'The Moon's a Balloon', which I bought because The Sunday Times gave it a good review, saying that Niven was a gifted writer and that it was very entertaining and funny. Incidentally, they were right. I've bought biographies of famous people, of course, but these tend to be historical personages rather than actors or popstars (at present I'm reading A Beautiful Mind, about mathematician John Nash). Although I did buy a biography of The Beatles once; again it got good reviews.
When it comes down to it, I don't really get the interest in RPS because I just don't 'get' why people are interested in popstars and actors' lives. Ah well, to each their own, I guess.
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no subject
Date: 13 August 2002 10:53 (UTC)Ditto
Date: 13 August 2002 11:23 (UTC)For me, the life of an actor or singer, no matter how celebrated, pales into insignificance compared to the life of an Immortal, or someone who is on a starship exploring the galaxy, or that of a Canadian Mountie who just happens to have the ghost of his dead father hanging around, or that of a CI5 agent, or of the heroes who have to destroy the One Ring etc.
By comparison, someone in a BoyBand just doesn't cut it. However, from talking to other slashers who like RPS at least one said that she likes it because it allows her to explore ideas that she loathes in character slash. For example, a genderfuck story in character slash is not her thing, but if it happens to a member of NSync then this leads to te consideration of contemporary issues that she would like to explore in that setting. Which I though was interesting, but not sufficiently so to tempt to to read any RPS. I remain disinterested.
But I'd happily read a story about Byron/Shelley or Keats/Shelley. Part of it is that a good story of necessity should explore the mores of the time, and as I'm always interested in the historical perspective, that would be interesting to me in and of itself. I think that such stories are, strictly speaking, RPS but once people are dead they're fair game for any old thing you want to make up about them and I suspect that they wouldn't give rise to the same objections that some character fanfiction slashers have to RPS.
I also agree with your comments about the members of BoyBands projecting semi, or even entirely, fictional personas. I think it does make them rather more fair game regarding the publication of fictional stories about them than some poor bugger who is simply a working actor.