Wednesday, November 20, 2013

Smoke From A Distant Fire

Last week there was yet another fan controversy that I'm glad I missed for the sake of my health because I would have popped a blood vessel. A photomanip appeared of Armitage standing next to Lee Pace from the recent Hobbit fan event and apparently someone was confused because wasn't Pace in London and how could this be? Uh, Photoshop obviously. Whether anyone was honestly confused by it is unclear to me but what was made very clear in discussions I have read is that it was solely the fault of those damned shippers again.

I'm not posing a question about what goes on in the minds of shippers or anyone else. I am saying that if you take more than a thousand words to say something that can be boiled down to five or ten you're bullshitting someone and rest assured it isn't me. You're not offended on anyone's behalf but your own because the thing that animates this discussion every single time it happens is your own fear that it might be true. Before you read anything else reread that last sentence and be absolutely certain what it says because if you lob some nonsense at me that I'm spreading a spurious rumour or gossiping about Armitage I will eat you for breakfast.

I don't give a fuck if he's gay and I don't give a fuck if he's not. This isn't about him ultimately. Most fandom fights aren't about him, they're about us and the ways we jockey for position and butt heads. But boy we need to be careful what we say because the internet is permanent and if he says something tomorrow that flies in the face of what we hope is true then we have egg on our faces, hence the bullshitting and the fencesitting and the crazymaking accusations of who's living in fantasy land or not. We all are, to some extent, insofar as we wonder how we might get along with him were we given the chance to sit down and have a cup of coffee with him. But the idea that he's as uptight as you are is as much a fiction as the idea of him having a kinky streak a mile wide because it's in YOUR head and it's a projection of your thought process. He isn't there at all because, like I said before, this isn't ultimately about him.

Someone who was not Morgan Freeman gets quoted a lot on Facebook and Twitter as saying, "Homophobia is not a phobia. You're not afraid. You are an asshole," and I wholeheartedly believe that to be true. I've held the hands of too many friends damaged by someone else's fear of who they are to believe otherwise. I don't know Richard Armitage anymore than you do but I do know you. Maybe it's time you face yourself.

44 comments:

  1. Well, nobody can accuse you of beating around the bush. :)

    I totally agree that these dust ups aren't about him, they're about us and our issues and fantasies. Couldn't have said it better.

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  2. In case my comment got swallowed -- I found the attempts to criticize this image on moral or philosophical grounds specious. Someone tried to use journalism as a reason to condemn it ("it shouldn't have been made because it didn't happen"), but it was unclear to me that was produced as news or that anyone thought it was news or thought it was real.

    To me, if you're going to criticize this, I don't see why any manip is okay. Why is it okay to put him next to any man or woman or for that matter a cat that he didn't ever actually stand next to? Why is Lee Pace different than Orlando Bloom (whom he did stand next to)? And if it is okay to put him next to a woman we know he didn't stand next to, but not a man, to me that smacks of homophobia. All kinds of manips involve representations that are untrue. I saw one once with his face shopped into the body of a woman with a wedding dress. I put him once in the body of Aaron Rodgers. I regularly see manips of him that are his head pasted on top of the body of a porn star in high arousal.

    I think people really need to answer the question of why Lee Pace in particular is a problem on abstract grounds that would also apply to all manips and to any other men. If they can't .... yeah. Then they have to ask themselves some hard questions.

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    1. You said swallow. Clearly you're naughty and should be deeply deeply ashamed. Wait, I said deep. Shit.

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  3. Jazzy, you are my hero! That's all. ;)

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  4. I think Lee Pace is especially threatening given the clothing sharing and actual possibility of a relationship. Regarding the clothing: especially since the one item is the coat that Rich took from Spooks and that is quite unique. One of the other items that is also the black shirt from comic-con, which does have an appropriate fade for one year out from the time Lee wore it.
    I really think some fans hold a hope deep down that some day a relationship with Richard could be possible. Well, as servetus said, they have some hard questions to ask themselves.

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    1. And you said hard. Dammit, chicks, can't we have a serious discussion without bringing all that...stuff into it? Seriously, I obviously agree with you.

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    2. I think of the questions is what will do if their fantasies take a hit. Look at the kerfuffle by some over the latest interview. There was talk of "loss" of esteem. That was just politics. Could they face bad news about RA's sexuality? It doesn't seem so, and that's sad.

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    3. yeah, I don't think it's about even the tiniest belief that they could have a relationship with Armitage. I think it's about "what does that say about me, if I have an irredeemable crush on someone who turns out not to be who I thought they were?" I agree with judiang, to me both of the reactions are about the same thing. This is why it's possible to say one is not homophobic in real life but also to insist so vociferously that one should not ship Armitage + Pace "because it's not real."

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    4. Some issues of pride being hurt? Of misjudging someone they thought they knew so well?

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    5. What does about me if I fall in love with someone who can, structurally, never fall back in love with me? I would argue it's not the same as falling in love with someone who doesn't love me, which is crushing, but can be understood as an instance of non-reciprocation (I loved him, he didn't love me back). I think that is different from this situation, in which the conclusion has to be (I loved him, he *couldn't* love me back). The latter makes me look more foolish.

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    6. Also because people make so much fun of fangirls -- sorry, Pesky sat down next to me. It makes you look doubly ridiculous in the eyes of the condemning.

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    7. All of you have made good points. I think the doublespeak has to stop.

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  5. Jazzy ... *high five*
    Especially the 'phobia' quote ...

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  6. I believe a standing ovation is in order, Jazz! *gets up from chair and applauds* :)

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  7. Thank you for this great post!!!
    I love it.
    And it is good to know that I am not the only blogger who swears somtimes ;)

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    1. Thank you for commenting and you'll find I swear more than sometimes. :) Mommy does indeed have a potty mouth.

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  8. I agree with you. I don't care if he's gay or not. It's his private life, he can do want he want ad I will atill see his movies/series. ;-)

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    1. What's actually going on in his private life is his business. What I'm objecting to here is that somehow the notion that he might be something other than what a particular fan wants him to be is slanderous. Slander and libel are terms that have a particular legal meaning and they're actionable which is why I made sure to use qualifiers like "if" and "might." I know where the line on that falls. If you (general you) want to sue me for slander you better make sure you read carefully because I have an equal right to countersue you for libel by implying that I would deliberately say something untrue about you in a public setting. That is then injurous to my reputation as an honest person and someone writing a piece in good faith. Everyone who ever tangled with my academic adviser from college, a widely published author and journalist, found that out. Thank you for commenting, it's always good to hear from you. :)

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  9. Interesting about this discussion in general (and it parallels a classroom moment I had yesterday where I literally had to stop a discussion by physically moving between the students) -- no matter how directed the focus of the question one puts (yours was very focused, mine tried to be very focused), people end up answering another question. "What does this anger about this ship really mean" or "what does my fascination with this ship mean for me" is a different question than "is the ship okay" or "is the ship real" or "how do I feel about the ship" but people would much rather discuss the other questions. I'm finding that on my post, too.

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    1. There's nothing wrong with questions leading to more questions as long as everybody is thinking rather than reacting. Note that I did NOT say "thinking like me." What is the real difference, though, between another fan picturing him on a windswept bluff in a greatcoat and me picturing him on a pogo stick singing "Roll On Columbia" with a pickle shoved up his left nostril? Apart from my brain being a sillier place than yours? Thoughts in my head, online or on paper are not animating spells and he is not a voodoo doll.

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    2. And honestly, if the question under discussion (in my case anyway) is, what does this ship mean to me or why do I like it, if it means nothing to you or you don't like it, why would you need to say anything more than that? Or then express true hostility to the ship, but totally avoid the question about you? I'm always telling my students, answer the question I actually ask. Sometimes blogging bears disturbing resemblances to classrooms.

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  10. I think it matters, because this question is so fraught. To me, anyway. I figured I wasn't going to be able to discuss the fantasy level of it without some bleedover, but if you spend your whole time debating a question you didn't ask and the answer to which you don't care about, IMO, you've wasted your time. (That's my opinion for me. I hate derailed discussions because I try to ask relatively narrow questions.) Honestly, I'm getting tired of the original question because I never hear any new argumentation, just the (IMO overly) emotional rehash of old ones.

    To answer your question, IMO none. Every manip is "not true" in the sense that the critics of manips mean about Armitage standing next to Pace ("it didn't happen in reality, they didn't stand next to each other in the lobby of that theatre, Pace was in London, etc."). I think some manips signal more fully that they are not accurate representations of reality -- they are poor quality or so hugely improbable as to be incredible or funny or whatever. But that's about our interpretation of them, not about the construction of the manips themselves.

    In essence, it's not the manip's fault (or the author of the manip's fault) if someone sees a manip and draws a false conclusion from it. The false conclusion is the responsibility of the observer. And the fear over the possibility of the false conclusion belongs entirely to the fan who expresses the fear.

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  11. I think a large part of that tension comes from who's doing it at that moment. We've both seen people who look at a kind of fan art, are repulsed by it, try it, do it themselves and then suddenly it's okay to do. Or, as happened here, someone objected on the basis that it looked too good. I think there's a word for that one and that word is jealousy.

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  12. If the maker of the photomanip wasn't trying to fool anyone, they would have put a "Created by -blank-" as a watermark on the photo itself. A teeny "edited by" tag on a tumblr page means nothing and is easily lost. (How many people even look at those tags?) If you crop a picture it is "edited by." And why would anyone make such a picture in the first place if they were not trying to foster the idea of the ship in a public way?

    Also the "homophobia" blanket accusation isn't fair. Not everyone who protests the gleeful invasion of Armitage's privacy and autonomous humanity is homophobic. I don't know wether he is gay or not. He might be gay, he might be bi. I don't know. What I do know is that it is none of my damn business. It's none of our damn business. If someone wants to schlick to the idea that RA and LP are getting it on, whatever, but don't accuse people who respect his very clear personal boundaries as being "homophobic." Some people may be protesting disucssing that ship because they have a problem with gay people, but some are respecting his personal space like we would any human being.

    RPF treats real people like toys, it forces someone's desires on another person, most often (as shown by some recent blog posts) to jack off. Some people find that kind of extreme objectification ("dehumanization" when someone claims that the subject's basic human autonomous validity does not exist and their RPF is "realistic") repugnant, no matter what type of sex is involved.

    ~KiplingKat

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    1. The manip itself is not the issue here for me. It was tagged in Tumblr clearly by the person who posted it originally and in terms that abided by Tumblr's terms of service and and were within the bounds of their fandom culture. Anyone who was genuinely confused by it can look up where everybody was when and that should clear up the issue of RA was in NYC, Pace was in London, it was physically impossible that it was real and if they were still confused then I don't know what to tell you. During the SOPA/PIPA protests last year The Onion used a photo manip of Oprah Winfrey riding a dolphin as an illustration of what types of things would be surpressed if it was approved. Winfrey may be famous but she's still a private citizen, should they have not used that image? How about a Bill Gates meme? Warren Buffet? Do the rules change if they're more famous than RA?

      On the issue of RA's personal life, I agree with you that it's nobody's business but his and I've clearly stated that. What I'm talking about is a section of the fandom that feels that any idea that he might be gay is in itself offensive, apart from reasons of privacy. They'll speculate about other things but homosexuality, oooh, we can't go there. I know full well that you, KiplingKat, are not a homophobe and my post was not directed at you. It was directed at people who will speculate wildly about other things he may or not be but will jump on this issue because the idea that he might be gay violates their fantasy version of him.

      We can go round and round about types of fan art but again that is NOT the point of this post. Another point that I didn't make in the body of the post is that he has plenty of gay fans -- should they not have a place in the fandom? Again, that was not directed at you, KiplingKat, but meant as a general question. I think interaction with all comers is a healthy thing and I welcome whoever wants to comment or debate as long as we can be reasonable about it. The argument that saying he's gay is in itself slanderous is only true if you believe that being gay is wrong to begin with.

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    2. Sorry. We recently had someone come on the IMDb board making the same accusation. "You don't want to talk about it because you are homophobes!" after a drawn out attempt by someone to wrench the board into talking about his personal life. I was a bit tetchy on the subject and jumped down your throat. Apologies.

      The difference between the picture in the Onion and the one circulating around tumblr is which one is a casual passer by, someone who does not track the movements of these two men, going to think could be real?

      I've told you the story about the Fark Photosphop that ended up in Popular Mechanics right?

      http://urbanlegends.about.com/library/bl_rand_home_computer.htm

      (I was on Fark when that went down. The OP was dubbed God of the Internet in perpetuity, and Popular Mechnics lost a LOT of cred.)

      It had been passed around so much, the provenance had been lost and the editors at PM took it at face value. We do have to watch out for that stuff.

      ~ KiplingKat

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    3. Sorry, I misrememebred. It wasn't PM that had published it, but (usually reliable) news outlet who saw it the photomanip and took it for fact that PM had published it.

      ~ KiplingKat

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    4. While it's hilarious that someone got taken there the question I have is whose responsibility that is? The prankster for pulling the prank or the (usually reliable) news source for not checking the veracity? Every once in a while some smarty pants kid does a science project that involves warning the public about the dangers of dihydrogen oxide. While it scares the crap out of me that I live in a society that adults can't recognize the chemical structure of water the onus there is on the adults and not the student.

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  13. BTW - "I am saying that if you take more than a thousand words to say something that can be boiled down to five or ten you're bullshitting someone..."

    *significant look at the opposite side*

    Yes. Yes they are.

    ~ KiplingKat

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    1. I was not talking about the wordcount itself of any given post or the tendency of anyone to run at the mouth. I do that, you do that, lots of people do that and if you have a point that you're building to that's fine. What I'm talking about is the longwinded diatribes about how it's slanderous to even suggest that he might be gay/straight/bi/a nose picker for no other clear reason than it's being personally offensive to the writer. The writer can't actually say that openly for whatever reason so they hide it behind a bunch of other issues that have nothing to do with that point.

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  14. Well, that particular reply wasn't directed at you. (Sorry that I did not make that clear.) Excessive verbage is also used to obstruficate truths on the other side of the issue as well.

    ~ KiplingKat

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    1. Little words for my tiny moron brain.

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    2. Feel free not to take out your problems with me on Jazz.

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    3. I'm drawing a boundary right here with you two. You have significant personal issues with each other and we all know it and have heard about it ad nauseum for years. Do not make this personal, either of you, or I will put both of you on moderation and the only comments that will make it through are ones relevant to the topic. I do not want to stifle debate on this issue or I wouldn't have brought it up in the first place. I am asking from both of you the forebearance that I am currently employing. Got it?

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    4. I was simply pointing out that the suspcion of "more than a thousand words to say something that can be boiled down to five or ten you're bullshitting someone" is an excellent standard of judgement that should be applied to *all* parties.

      ~ KiplingKat

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    5. Dude. I am serious as a heart attack here. If any one of us has a busy brain writing it all down is not the issue at hand. The issue is those who can't just say what they think so they take a thousand words to NOT say it and expect the rest of us to not just get what they're not saying but abide by what they just didn't say. You speak your mind clearly and loudly and while I don't agree with you I respect that. I cannot respect the opinion of someone who can't even articulate it and I'm not abiding by it either.

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  15. D'accord. Just didn't want you to take flak that was rightfully mine.

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    1. BTW- It's "The river must have taken it." As in "Masuku's body was dragged downstream, I don't know where."

      ~ KiplingKat

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Thanks for commenting!