Frilly shirt
Apr. 5th, 2003 05:08 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
malsperanzaAbout that frilly shirt. About the hero's sexual ambiguity. About the idea that hero torture is erotic--well, really: About the idea that the hero's sexual ambiguity makes him the more attractive and the more heroic. Still have not sorted this out, despite much backing and forthing with the professionals, all of whom seem surprisingly uneasy at the idea that the hero--every woman's dream--might also be every man's dream (gay or straight). And yet in their books they constantly put the hero in a frilly shirt, tie him to a post (or a yardarm or whatever), and whip the lace off him. Go figure.
Nonetheless, I am not at all clear what the connection is between the hero's androgyny and his ability to suffer heroically. Hero torture often takes a form that places the hero in a feminized role--bound, helpless, utterly in the hands of the (extremely virile) villain, and wearing the frilly shirt of sexual difference like a badge.
It must have to do with the hero's internal emptiness: as long as he is all things to all men and women, the perfect vessel of their desires (and therefore of the reader's desires), he is never his own man, he has not established his own identity, including his sexual identity. Hence the Quest (or in HP terms, hence the Seeking). So when the hero finds himself at the end, he is lost to the reader? Hm. And he finds himself by finding his true love? What if he doesn't? What if, for him, there is no one person, no choosing between male and female, gay and straight? Must he end his days an empty vessel? St. Paul would be pleased with the image, at any rate, but how very moralistic.
I keep claiming that there is a sharp distinction (fictively) between lurve and desire, though I am not at all sure X understands the difference, poor wretch. In the Seduction Theory of Literature, what matters is desire: the readers wants the hero, carnally. Whether or not the reader loves the hero is a separate question. But the game of enticing and withholding, offering and withdrawing, is a game of sex, not of love. Or maybe it's this: the reader desires the hero but loves the book.
Nonetheless, I am not at all clear what the connection is between the hero's androgyny and his ability to suffer heroically. Hero torture often takes a form that places the hero in a feminized role--bound, helpless, utterly in the hands of the (extremely virile) villain, and wearing the frilly shirt of sexual difference like a badge.
It must have to do with the hero's internal emptiness: as long as he is all things to all men and women, the perfect vessel of their desires (and therefore of the reader's desires), he is never his own man, he has not established his own identity, including his sexual identity. Hence the Quest (or in HP terms, hence the Seeking). So when the hero finds himself at the end, he is lost to the reader? Hm. And he finds himself by finding his true love? What if he doesn't? What if, for him, there is no one person, no choosing between male and female, gay and straight? Must he end his days an empty vessel? St. Paul would be pleased with the image, at any rate, but how very moralistic.
I keep claiming that there is a sharp distinction (fictively) between lurve and desire, though I am not at all sure X understands the difference, poor wretch. In the Seduction Theory of Literature, what matters is desire: the readers wants the hero, carnally. Whether or not the reader loves the hero is a separate question. But the game of enticing and withholding, offering and withdrawing, is a game of sex, not of love. Or maybe it's this: the reader desires the hero but loves the book.
