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Okay.
This is something that has bugged me for-fucking-ever, and that most authors, I think, don't actually, consciously think about. Hell, I don't like to think about it, if only because anthropology as a discipline has gone so ass-over-teakettle about identifying potential ~influences on one's work that you practically can't get to the essay without reading about how the author was once bitten by a moose or some shit, so obviously that influences their understanding of the natives of Bongobongostan, who cover themselves in paint and feathers pretty much solely because they don't live in a place that moose find very congenial. Yadda yadda yadda, it's important that we know that EE Evans-Pritchard wasn't ACTUALLY living with the Nuer when he wrote his umpty jillion books about them, WHATEVER, DONE.
However, as we all know, the internet is srs fucking bzns. The internet may even be Sparta, for all I know.
So let's all take a deep breath and realise something.
You are reading this through Livejournal. I am writing this through Livejournal. We are communicating via the medium of the internet, and the internet is preeeeetty fucking stratified by class. (It's also stratified by age, but unless someone wants to introduce me to a granny slasher, I don't care about that.)
We are communicating about a subject that I think is pretty fucking firmly the purview of at least the middle class, whatever that means nowadays. The internet, in other words, has become our leisure time.
And this would lead to what logical conclusion?
That we all are at least middle class, relatively privileged people.
We have the education, the skills, and the time to learn to negotiate the internet and use it where past generations used visiting the sick. Fine, so far as it goes, but all of that is the setup for what I wish to bitch about today, so if you're not following, reread the above paragraph. We are all privileged fuckers here.
I'm having trouble with voice in this, actually - this could easily be a dear author: die rant, given how much time I had to spend making some works social-class appropriate. We're gonna go with the fannish context, but know that there is significant overlap with ~real authors here.
So. We're all privileged fuckers, so obviously we invest all our time in figuring out new ways to stick Tab A into Slot B and go UNF UNF UNF as we do it. We are not fighting off cholera, bandits, police repression, censorship, we are not concentrating solely on finding food, shelter, clothing, our missing loved ones, etc. When something is for porn, you know that that thing is about the most decadent of the cultural elaborations since the Kwakiutl were tossing shit off the side of a cliff as a potlatch. In fact, the internet could be considered the willful destruction OF a civilisation, since so few of society's mores actually apply to it.
Why, then, in our pursuit of porn, do we not consider class when we're writing porn? I am not asking this because I get off on fucking Marxist-Leninist theory, or because I want everyone to have pity on the working man (ha! see what I did thar?), I'm asking because it is a reasonable fucking question.
I think that the assignation of bandom-villain status is classist. Here's why.
The three most common villains I've run across, where there is some other information to suggest that, you know, that might possibly be the tiniest bit of a misclassification, are Bert, Gabe, and William. Bert's the skeevy weird dude who - put your tinhats on with me - broke up with Gerard, Gabe's got creepy eyes and an intense personality and seemingly takes nothing seriously, and William is occasionally overly friendly with dudes, so he's obviously a slut.
These are the gimmes of bandom, and I am up to here with them.
Let's take 'em one at a time, shall we. We shall, because I fucking say so.
Bert: Okay, seriously, I kind of want to give him cookies and a hug, but he'd totally get lost in my cleavage. Bear in mind, this is one of the biggest assholes in MCR-centric fandom. He and Gerard were REAL close on Warped 2005 - REAL CLOSE. His mom, I think it was, gave him a picture of the two of them. BEFFIES 4EVA, at the very least. He is little, he is dirty, he is an ex addict, he is possibly slightly crazy in ways out of the norm for bands, who tend to be more than a little off level as it is. His girlfriend died of an overdose while pregnant with their child, his parents threw him out when he was a teenager for not adhering to their faith (Mormonism, BE SURPRISED) and he panhandled and lived at, I think, Quinn's house when he wasn't being homeless as fuck. He is possibly semi-openly bi; I seem to recall this, at any rate, but it's Bert, so who knows. He's pretty fearless about - well, about everything, but about stuff like labelling based on sexual orientation he makes all of FBR look like the shyest straight boys to ever walk the earth. He loves puppies, and his friends, and small children, and he tends not to do the very Scandinavian NO TOUCHY thing. Obviously, Bert is a skeevy dude who broke Gee's heart and deserves to hang, because his other pastime is curbstomping puppies.
Gabe: Conflicted dude. Don't believe me? Go read the lyrics to Being From Jersey Means Never Having To Say You're Sorry and come back. Done that? Good. Gabe wrote that song, so far as anyone knows, and this is a theory that flies to me, as a goodbye to the Jersey hardcore scene when he started Cobra Starship - and the scene, like it or not, is not really a place to float major, groundbreaking work. This song, for example, would not fly in the scene. He takes EVERYTHING waaaay too seriously (almost as seriously as William, actually) but is better at pretending like it's all bullshit, life's a game, and he's throwing the party at the end of the world. He started a band to change the world, for fuck's sake, and he's not shy about saying that - but unlike MCR, who also started a band to change the world and are deadly earnest about it, he hides it by saying that he had a vision of a cobra, who told him that humanity was fucked, and in the time left to us Gabe had to start a band to teach emo kids not to be such pussies and hipsters not to take themselves so seriously. He's not in this to save your life - except he totally is, he's just not saying it the same way. Obviously, Gabe is a creepy rapist because he wrote a song called "It's Warmer In The Basement" and also "The Church Of Hot Addiction".
William: This dude is a hider. Seriously. Don't believe me? Watch TAITV - there are very few shots of William where he's not acting like he's completely and totally aware of the camera even though he's TRYING not to be. He has no ability at ALL to forget that there's a camera in the room, and he comes off super earnest when he talks to the camera. He's a smart dude - 4.0 all the way through high school - and he's eloquent (sometimes I wish he would stop, actually, because it makes me a little bit nuts). But he is, from all I can see, simultaneously a nice guy - no one has ever said he was a fucking dick and they're not shy about saying that about Mike Carden, his bandmate - and a very shy one. So when he opens up physically, it's with pretty much three people: Gabe, Travis McCoy, and Nick Scimeca, who is not in a band. He's not even particularly touchy-feely with his band - unlike with MCR, or Panic, or FOB, some members of whom cannot get through a very short interview without touching. William also left home as a high school senior to live with Mike Carden and play music because his family disagreed so intensely with his choice of music as a profession that they wanted him to stop. He was working part time at the Gap, playing music part time, and going to school full time - and still making straight As and, for all I know, still playing on the baseball team. Obviously, William is a slut and never has had a problem in his life that couldn't be resolved by, basically, being white and pretty.
Now that I've proved I can regurgitate sufficient portions of the work other people have done, there is a point to this. The backgrounds and the crimes have been listed. Bert: skeevy because he broke Gee's heart. Gabe: creepy rapist because he's got weird eyes (I am never making this up). William: slut because he's shy and takes comfort from three very specific people.
Let's toss a monkeywrench in there.
Brendon: I don't like Panic, not one tiny bit. I will never like Panic. There is literally nothing they could do to get me to be a fan of theirs. As such, I am a lot fuzzier on the timeline of events here, but you can't be in scene fandom and not pick up a few things, so I'm gonna go the fuck ahead and hope that I have gotten this right. Brendon was also kicked out of his house for being not-sufficiently-Mormon and wanting to play music instead of going on mission. Brendon also worked part time and went to school. Brendon and his parents have, evidently, reconciled since it became obvious that playing music was the right decision, though everything I've seen suggests that relationship is a touch bit strained (I also expect it to fly apart if Spencer does any more ground-laying work for Brendon to come out as bi or gay.) Personally, if it were me, they could crawl on fucking broken glass to grovel at my feet and I'd not have shit to do with them, but that's me.
Brendon, however, does not get a bad rap in fandom. Brendon's a spaz, he's a musical prodigy, he looks hot in girl jeans (he has, I think, actually SAID that he HAS to wear girl jeans because of his butt, which is, uh, womanly at best) and he's VERY pretty, if you're into that sort of thing. I will never not want to slap Brendon in the face with a haddock, so I won't judge you, but I also won't judge whether he's hot. I don't even care if he is. But he is not a rapist, a slut, or a generally-all-purpose bad guy; in fact, when Brendon is characterised as a slut, the times I've seen, it's entirely more positive than it is when it's William being labeled.
Normally, I would throw my hands up in the air and stomp off and say "FINE, FUCK YOU ALL, BE WRONG IF YOU WANT," because there is nothing I can do about it if someone is wrong on the internet, short of stalking them, caging them, and gradually brainwashing them into believing MY point of view, which is obviously correct. (Yours is wrong.) But! Two more MASSIVE points to introduce, in case you've lived through the wall of text so far!
The Gimme: A writing "technique" wherein nothing needs to be explained, it merely needs to be accepted.
Social class: Remember what I said above about the internet and its users? Yeah. We're all privileged, and presumably, in the sectors of fandom I've interacted with, we all have someone in our family who loves us without reservation and supports us. Few, if ANY, of us, have dealt with the things that Bert and William and Brendon have. Few of us have seemingly felt so strongly that we would be mocked for doing something that we felt was necessary that we had to hide why we were doing it, like Gabe.
Your social class informs your vision of the world. If you don't think that's true, let me rent you a $500/month apartment in South Park for a few weeks and we'll see how you function, living in Seattle's version of fairly extreme, ethnically-based poverty. I don't think that's gonna go well.
I think - and this is where I sound deadly earnest, PLEASE SHOOT ME - that because of social class there is very little credence given to Bert, Gabe, and William's situations. I think that they are very abstract at best to most writers, and completely alien at worst - so it's easy to demonise later actions rather than placing them truly into context. So WHAT if Bert and Gerard broke up? Isn't it possible that Gerard, whose life more closely mirrors the middle-class ideal, could have been the one to say "No, this isn't working"? The pretty one is not always dumped by the skeevy one, people! Isn't it POSSIBLE that Gabe isn't actually a creepy rapist, despite his eyes? That he actually DOES want to save your life and maybe his own as well, with his music, and that he DEFINITELY wants to see a fucking change in the world? Isn't it possible that William is so overwhelmed by the stardom that he also courts that he takes refuge in comfort with a very small group of people, yet is not, actually, fucking all of them, much less anyone else whose path he crosses?
Brendon didn't make a choice, true. But it's a lot easier to accept what's happened to him, and to empathise with it, because he did not go on to become a fucking junkie. Bandom is an amazingly virginal place, and I don't mean that physically; for all I know, everyone in bandom goes to an orgy every night of the week. But in terms of extrapolating from what is known to what could be, there is an AMAZING sympathy gap, and that gap happens the moment that someone exhibits behaviour that is difficult to reconcile. What would you like Bert to have done, while living on the streets? SHOULD Gabe never have formed Cobra? If William had a choice in the matter now, do you think he might choose to be a baseball player instead of a musician?
No. You think - you have decided, through your lens of privilege and comfort, that hard choices equal easy answers, and the answer for those three people is that they are demons, sometimes very, very fucking dangerous ones. But you have not faced the same choice. You can't extrapolate what YOU think should have happened into what IS because you don't know what happened, what the motives were - all you know is that Bert is not nearly as pretty as Gerard, and that Gabe can't take a reasonable picture to save his life and that William likes to very, very openly grab Travis or Gabe whenever they are performing together - and three quarters of the time, "grab" is the wrong fucking verb. The actions you judge are not placed into the context of where they came from; I think that's because, for much of bandom, where they came from is literally unthinkable, unsympathisable, and not understandable.
You have, through lack of empathy, turned these peoples' very real lives and choices into a fucking gimme.
Take off your fucking glasses the next time you decide who your villain is. Don't go with a fucking stock character just because you don't understand how they came to be where they are, and who they are. Find someone who's really a fucking villain and use them instead.
Don't let your privilege inform your work. Don't let your privilege keep you from trying to see and understand what might really be going on, rather than whatever the hell construct fandom is fucking playing with today.
This is something that has bugged me for-fucking-ever, and that most authors, I think, don't actually, consciously think about. Hell, I don't like to think about it, if only because anthropology as a discipline has gone so ass-over-teakettle about identifying potential ~influences on one's work that you practically can't get to the essay without reading about how the author was once bitten by a moose or some shit, so obviously that influences their understanding of the natives of Bongobongostan, who cover themselves in paint and feathers pretty much solely because they don't live in a place that moose find very congenial. Yadda yadda yadda, it's important that we know that EE Evans-Pritchard wasn't ACTUALLY living with the Nuer when he wrote his umpty jillion books about them, WHATEVER, DONE.
However, as we all know, the internet is srs fucking bzns. The internet may even be Sparta, for all I know.
So let's all take a deep breath and realise something.
You are reading this through Livejournal. I am writing this through Livejournal. We are communicating via the medium of the internet, and the internet is preeeeetty fucking stratified by class. (It's also stratified by age, but unless someone wants to introduce me to a granny slasher, I don't care about that.)
We are communicating about a subject that I think is pretty fucking firmly the purview of at least the middle class, whatever that means nowadays. The internet, in other words, has become our leisure time.
And this would lead to what logical conclusion?
That we all are at least middle class, relatively privileged people.
We have the education, the skills, and the time to learn to negotiate the internet and use it where past generations used visiting the sick. Fine, so far as it goes, but all of that is the setup for what I wish to bitch about today, so if you're not following, reread the above paragraph. We are all privileged fuckers here.
I'm having trouble with voice in this, actually - this could easily be a dear author: die rant, given how much time I had to spend making some works social-class appropriate. We're gonna go with the fannish context, but know that there is significant overlap with ~real authors here.
So. We're all privileged fuckers, so obviously we invest all our time in figuring out new ways to stick Tab A into Slot B and go UNF UNF UNF as we do it. We are not fighting off cholera, bandits, police repression, censorship, we are not concentrating solely on finding food, shelter, clothing, our missing loved ones, etc. When something is for porn, you know that that thing is about the most decadent of the cultural elaborations since the Kwakiutl were tossing shit off the side of a cliff as a potlatch. In fact, the internet could be considered the willful destruction OF a civilisation, since so few of society's mores actually apply to it.
Why, then, in our pursuit of porn, do we not consider class when we're writing porn? I am not asking this because I get off on fucking Marxist-Leninist theory, or because I want everyone to have pity on the working man (ha! see what I did thar?), I'm asking because it is a reasonable fucking question.
I think that the assignation of bandom-villain status is classist. Here's why.
The three most common villains I've run across, where there is some other information to suggest that, you know, that might possibly be the tiniest bit of a misclassification, are Bert, Gabe, and William. Bert's the skeevy weird dude who - put your tinhats on with me - broke up with Gerard, Gabe's got creepy eyes and an intense personality and seemingly takes nothing seriously, and William is occasionally overly friendly with dudes, so he's obviously a slut.
These are the gimmes of bandom, and I am up to here with them.
Let's take 'em one at a time, shall we. We shall, because I fucking say so.
Bert: Okay, seriously, I kind of want to give him cookies and a hug, but he'd totally get lost in my cleavage. Bear in mind, this is one of the biggest assholes in MCR-centric fandom. He and Gerard were REAL close on Warped 2005 - REAL CLOSE. His mom, I think it was, gave him a picture of the two of them. BEFFIES 4EVA, at the very least. He is little, he is dirty, he is an ex addict, he is possibly slightly crazy in ways out of the norm for bands, who tend to be more than a little off level as it is. His girlfriend died of an overdose while pregnant with their child, his parents threw him out when he was a teenager for not adhering to their faith (Mormonism, BE SURPRISED) and he panhandled and lived at, I think, Quinn's house when he wasn't being homeless as fuck. He is possibly semi-openly bi; I seem to recall this, at any rate, but it's Bert, so who knows. He's pretty fearless about - well, about everything, but about stuff like labelling based on sexual orientation he makes all of FBR look like the shyest straight boys to ever walk the earth. He loves puppies, and his friends, and small children, and he tends not to do the very Scandinavian NO TOUCHY thing. Obviously, Bert is a skeevy dude who broke Gee's heart and deserves to hang, because his other pastime is curbstomping puppies.
Gabe: Conflicted dude. Don't believe me? Go read the lyrics to Being From Jersey Means Never Having To Say You're Sorry and come back. Done that? Good. Gabe wrote that song, so far as anyone knows, and this is a theory that flies to me, as a goodbye to the Jersey hardcore scene when he started Cobra Starship - and the scene, like it or not, is not really a place to float major, groundbreaking work. This song, for example, would not fly in the scene. He takes EVERYTHING waaaay too seriously (almost as seriously as William, actually) but is better at pretending like it's all bullshit, life's a game, and he's throwing the party at the end of the world. He started a band to change the world, for fuck's sake, and he's not shy about saying that - but unlike MCR, who also started a band to change the world and are deadly earnest about it, he hides it by saying that he had a vision of a cobra, who told him that humanity was fucked, and in the time left to us Gabe had to start a band to teach emo kids not to be such pussies and hipsters not to take themselves so seriously. He's not in this to save your life - except he totally is, he's just not saying it the same way. Obviously, Gabe is a creepy rapist because he wrote a song called "It's Warmer In The Basement" and also "The Church Of Hot Addiction".
William: This dude is a hider. Seriously. Don't believe me? Watch TAITV - there are very few shots of William where he's not acting like he's completely and totally aware of the camera even though he's TRYING not to be. He has no ability at ALL to forget that there's a camera in the room, and he comes off super earnest when he talks to the camera. He's a smart dude - 4.0 all the way through high school - and he's eloquent (sometimes I wish he would stop, actually, because it makes me a little bit nuts). But he is, from all I can see, simultaneously a nice guy - no one has ever said he was a fucking dick and they're not shy about saying that about Mike Carden, his bandmate - and a very shy one. So when he opens up physically, it's with pretty much three people: Gabe, Travis McCoy, and Nick Scimeca, who is not in a band. He's not even particularly touchy-feely with his band - unlike with MCR, or Panic, or FOB, some members of whom cannot get through a very short interview without touching. William also left home as a high school senior to live with Mike Carden and play music because his family disagreed so intensely with his choice of music as a profession that they wanted him to stop. He was working part time at the Gap, playing music part time, and going to school full time - and still making straight As and, for all I know, still playing on the baseball team. Obviously, William is a slut and never has had a problem in his life that couldn't be resolved by, basically, being white and pretty.
Now that I've proved I can regurgitate sufficient portions of the work other people have done, there is a point to this. The backgrounds and the crimes have been listed. Bert: skeevy because he broke Gee's heart. Gabe: creepy rapist because he's got weird eyes (I am never making this up). William: slut because he's shy and takes comfort from three very specific people.
Let's toss a monkeywrench in there.
Brendon: I don't like Panic, not one tiny bit. I will never like Panic. There is literally nothing they could do to get me to be a fan of theirs. As such, I am a lot fuzzier on the timeline of events here, but you can't be in scene fandom and not pick up a few things, so I'm gonna go the fuck ahead and hope that I have gotten this right. Brendon was also kicked out of his house for being not-sufficiently-Mormon and wanting to play music instead of going on mission. Brendon also worked part time and went to school. Brendon and his parents have, evidently, reconciled since it became obvious that playing music was the right decision, though everything I've seen suggests that relationship is a touch bit strained (I also expect it to fly apart if Spencer does any more ground-laying work for Brendon to come out as bi or gay.) Personally, if it were me, they could crawl on fucking broken glass to grovel at my feet and I'd not have shit to do with them, but that's me.
Brendon, however, does not get a bad rap in fandom. Brendon's a spaz, he's a musical prodigy, he looks hot in girl jeans (he has, I think, actually SAID that he HAS to wear girl jeans because of his butt, which is, uh, womanly at best) and he's VERY pretty, if you're into that sort of thing. I will never not want to slap Brendon in the face with a haddock, so I won't judge you, but I also won't judge whether he's hot. I don't even care if he is. But he is not a rapist, a slut, or a generally-all-purpose bad guy; in fact, when Brendon is characterised as a slut, the times I've seen, it's entirely more positive than it is when it's William being labeled.
Normally, I would throw my hands up in the air and stomp off and say "FINE, FUCK YOU ALL, BE WRONG IF YOU WANT," because there is nothing I can do about it if someone is wrong on the internet, short of stalking them, caging them, and gradually brainwashing them into believing MY point of view, which is obviously correct. (Yours is wrong.) But! Two more MASSIVE points to introduce, in case you've lived through the wall of text so far!
The Gimme: A writing "technique" wherein nothing needs to be explained, it merely needs to be accepted.
Social class: Remember what I said above about the internet and its users? Yeah. We're all privileged, and presumably, in the sectors of fandom I've interacted with, we all have someone in our family who loves us without reservation and supports us. Few, if ANY, of us, have dealt with the things that Bert and William and Brendon have. Few of us have seemingly felt so strongly that we would be mocked for doing something that we felt was necessary that we had to hide why we were doing it, like Gabe.
Your social class informs your vision of the world. If you don't think that's true, let me rent you a $500/month apartment in South Park for a few weeks and we'll see how you function, living in Seattle's version of fairly extreme, ethnically-based poverty. I don't think that's gonna go well.
I think - and this is where I sound deadly earnest, PLEASE SHOOT ME - that because of social class there is very little credence given to Bert, Gabe, and William's situations. I think that they are very abstract at best to most writers, and completely alien at worst - so it's easy to demonise later actions rather than placing them truly into context. So WHAT if Bert and Gerard broke up? Isn't it possible that Gerard, whose life more closely mirrors the middle-class ideal, could have been the one to say "No, this isn't working"? The pretty one is not always dumped by the skeevy one, people! Isn't it POSSIBLE that Gabe isn't actually a creepy rapist, despite his eyes? That he actually DOES want to save your life and maybe his own as well, with his music, and that he DEFINITELY wants to see a fucking change in the world? Isn't it possible that William is so overwhelmed by the stardom that he also courts that he takes refuge in comfort with a very small group of people, yet is not, actually, fucking all of them, much less anyone else whose path he crosses?
Brendon didn't make a choice, true. But it's a lot easier to accept what's happened to him, and to empathise with it, because he did not go on to become a fucking junkie. Bandom is an amazingly virginal place, and I don't mean that physically; for all I know, everyone in bandom goes to an orgy every night of the week. But in terms of extrapolating from what is known to what could be, there is an AMAZING sympathy gap, and that gap happens the moment that someone exhibits behaviour that is difficult to reconcile. What would you like Bert to have done, while living on the streets? SHOULD Gabe never have formed Cobra? If William had a choice in the matter now, do you think he might choose to be a baseball player instead of a musician?
No. You think - you have decided, through your lens of privilege and comfort, that hard choices equal easy answers, and the answer for those three people is that they are demons, sometimes very, very fucking dangerous ones. But you have not faced the same choice. You can't extrapolate what YOU think should have happened into what IS because you don't know what happened, what the motives were - all you know is that Bert is not nearly as pretty as Gerard, and that Gabe can't take a reasonable picture to save his life and that William likes to very, very openly grab Travis or Gabe whenever they are performing together - and three quarters of the time, "grab" is the wrong fucking verb. The actions you judge are not placed into the context of where they came from; I think that's because, for much of bandom, where they came from is literally unthinkable, unsympathisable, and not understandable.
You have, through lack of empathy, turned these peoples' very real lives and choices into a fucking gimme.
Take off your fucking glasses the next time you decide who your villain is. Don't go with a fucking stock character just because you don't understand how they came to be where they are, and who they are. Find someone who's really a fucking villain and use them instead.
Don't let your privilege inform your work. Don't let your privilege keep you from trying to see and understand what might really be going on, rather than whatever the hell construct fandom is fucking playing with today.
