So, as I'm sure you are aware, J.D. Salinger (most famous as author of The Catcher in the Rye) died today at the age of 91. I just wanted to do a very quick and very improvised blog about the novel he is most famous for.
The reason why I think The Catcher in the Rye is such an amazing novel (and I think it is - it's my favourite and I don't care how conventionally adolescent that makes me) is because it is an uncensored look at teenage emotion. Holden swears and thinks out sex, he lies for no reason and has more angst than you can shake a stick at. But he also craves some kind, any kind of connection and wishes that he could protect others from losing the innocence he feels he has already lost.
In order to illustrate why The Catcher in the Rye had such a profound affect on me, I am going to show a few quotes which, I feel, speak directly to what I find and have found being a teenager to be like.
'I'm the most terrific liar you ever saw in your life. It's awful. If I'm on my way to the store to buy a magazine, even, and somebody asks me where I'm going, I'm liable to say I'm going to the opera. It's terrible.'
So, something you may not know about me is I lie. A lot. Not big things - I don't have a secret husband or anything. But I have, on occasion, pretended to like things other people like because they're the people around or said I've read books I haven't amoung other small things. I think the thing about being a teenager is that lying is just quite easy - easier sometimes that admitting things that really no one cares about. I mean, who cares if I haven't seen the episode of Futurama you have? Because by admitting I haven't, that is one more connection we don't share, and no one likes to feel like the only one not in on the joke.
'What really knocks me out is a book, when you're all done reading it, you wished the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you could call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it.'
This has happened to me more times than I can count. I don't know if this is specifically about being young or just being human. I think the best art of any kind is art which you think you might have created with the same set of skills - music about love just like the love you know, books which say something, even really small, which is what you've been thinking alone for so long and so a connection is created between you and the person who wrote it: shared experience. The same things we have in common with our friends.
'When I really worry about something, I don't just fool around. I even have to go to the bathroom when I worry about something. Only, I don't go. I'm too worried to go. I don't want to interrupt my worrying to go.'
Now my friends will tell you, I'm a worrier. I worry about important stuff (exams, leaving home, general communication with normal people) and not important stuff (paying for things, ringing people's houses, offending car drivers when I take too long to cross the street). And all my worrying becomes like another person who follows me around and stops me doing anything. So it might be insignificant what I worry about but how I worry is not insignificant.
I could do this forever but I'm going to stop. Basically, this novel is my book which knocks me out. The first book I ever read which made me cry because it was saying exactly how I felt. A novel that consistently reminds me of how powerful and magically prose can be. A book which may not just be about adolesence but adulthood. And when I get there, I'll let you know.
J.D. Salinger: 1919-2010
'Don't ever tell anybody anything. If you do, you start missing everybody.'
Thursday 28 January 2010
Saturday 16 January 2010
Luke, Noah and Conventionality
There is NC-17/R rated language and content in this blog. You have been warned people!
So, as you probably know I am a huge fan of the Daytime Soap couple Luke and Noah (so much in fact I posted this vlog about them). In my usual perusing of the few places in which Nuke fans can openly talk about just how obsessed they are with Nuke, I stumbled upon this question in a forum and it made me wonder a few things. The question was:
'who do you think the boy is and who is the girl in their relationship?'
(They also did not use a capital letter, so I shall not, no matter how annoying it is)
This statement offends me on several levels. The first and most obvious being that it is a symptom of a bigger problem. So many people seem to have a compulsive need to put every relationship into the conventions of heterosexuality. Luke and Noah are two men - both of them. One is not the boy, one is not the girl. They are both MEN. They have sex like two men would have sex. They kiss (sometimes). They suck cock. They wank each other off. And, I assume, so many people must watch Luke and Noah and hate to imagine that. That is why the show put them off having sex for so long, in an abhorrent move to keep those on the edge of complaining from switching over. This need speaks of a problem I have with so many Nuke fans - yes, they are a classic, romantic soap couple but they are a gay couple. You can't pretend that's not true, or assume they are an exception to some bigoted rule. If you want the romance, you have to take the reality that they have sex. When you can do that, that is genuine acceptance of the characters into the soap.
From reading slash fiction from this couple (and others), and seeing both sides of the flower and vase argument, I think it is safe to say I am qualified to make some judgements over the characters. If we're asking, not to be more crude than I already have been, who tops and who bottoms then, again, are we not trying to fit them into categories? 'Noah had a tough military upbringing, doubt his conscience would let him take it up the ass' is a vast stereotype. As is 'Luke got hot Italian blood running through his veins, he does all the work!' (These are paraphrasing of things I have seen before, not direct quotes from anywhere else). There is nothing in the show to give any indication which way round their relations may have and continue to occur, but my own interpretation is that their relationship goes through stages, and I would expect their sexual lives to move in parallel with these emotions. The fact that anyone needs all the time to put them in boxes shows a complete disregard from the subtleties and nuances of genuine relationships. Luke and Noah strive for a partnership, and I am sure that that would extend into any bedroom activities.
What makes Luke and Noah's relationship so endearing to watch is the fluidity with which those labels apply until they don't apply at all. Sometimes Luke is protecting Noah, sometimes the other way round, sometimes Luke needs to be centred, sometimes Noah does. They both make stupid decisions, both stand up for the other, both have complicated history and childhoods. That is what makes interesting and believable characters in drama, and in taking this all on, it is obvious that they defy stereotype by being a genuine partnership. That is not to say there is not some sign of co-dependance but it works both ways. This is, in fact, my answer for why woman consume and create more gay content such as slash fiction and pornography, than men. Woman are attracted to a relationship without stereotypes, where dynamics are built based on personality types and not gender, where men understand their partners emotionally and sexually. There is nothing sexier than a man realises he is more than that.
The other, equally alarming, point about this question is that is suggests that heterosexual relationships should have a dominant male and submissive female. Surely we are past the point of assuming the dynamics of relationships have or should be that way. I think to build a relationship upon roles based on gender stereotypes are intrinsically flawed, for there will always be situations in which, naturally, the roles would reverse. It is this kind of understanding of relationships that forces strong women to subdue themselves and men to hide their emotions, even when in long-term relationships. It is entirely negative for society, in the 21st Century, to still pander to inaccurate generalisations for all genders and sexuality's.
Overall, this question and the additional issues it raises plagues this subculture. Mpreg FanFiction stems from the same place - straight couples procreate, I must have this couple procreate. That is not to say there is not good mpreg fiction out there that does more than this with the sub-genre but it is where it comes from that worries me. I would like to think most people who watch Luke and Noah are more intelligent than this, and I am sure they are. If not, it's their loss. Because by trying to understand Nuke by conditions they do not fit, you miss what makes then a great couple in the first place.
I have written this in relation to Luke and Noah but the same can be said for many other gay couples on television such as McDean, Chrolli, DeRo etc.
So, as you probably know I am a huge fan of the Daytime Soap couple Luke and Noah (so much in fact I posted this vlog about them). In my usual perusing of the few places in which Nuke fans can openly talk about just how obsessed they are with Nuke, I stumbled upon this question in a forum and it made me wonder a few things. The question was:
'who do you think the boy is and who is the girl in their relationship?'
(They also did not use a capital letter, so I shall not, no matter how annoying it is)
This statement offends me on several levels. The first and most obvious being that it is a symptom of a bigger problem. So many people seem to have a compulsive need to put every relationship into the conventions of heterosexuality. Luke and Noah are two men - both of them. One is not the boy, one is not the girl. They are both MEN. They have sex like two men would have sex. They kiss (sometimes). They suck cock. They wank each other off. And, I assume, so many people must watch Luke and Noah and hate to imagine that. That is why the show put them off having sex for so long, in an abhorrent move to keep those on the edge of complaining from switching over. This need speaks of a problem I have with so many Nuke fans - yes, they are a classic, romantic soap couple but they are a gay couple. You can't pretend that's not true, or assume they are an exception to some bigoted rule. If you want the romance, you have to take the reality that they have sex. When you can do that, that is genuine acceptance of the characters into the soap.
From reading slash fiction from this couple (and others), and seeing both sides of the flower and vase argument, I think it is safe to say I am qualified to make some judgements over the characters. If we're asking, not to be more crude than I already have been, who tops and who bottoms then, again, are we not trying to fit them into categories? 'Noah had a tough military upbringing, doubt his conscience would let him take it up the ass' is a vast stereotype. As is 'Luke got hot Italian blood running through his veins, he does all the work!' (These are paraphrasing of things I have seen before, not direct quotes from anywhere else). There is nothing in the show to give any indication which way round their relations may have and continue to occur, but my own interpretation is that their relationship goes through stages, and I would expect their sexual lives to move in parallel with these emotions. The fact that anyone needs all the time to put them in boxes shows a complete disregard from the subtleties and nuances of genuine relationships. Luke and Noah strive for a partnership, and I am sure that that would extend into any bedroom activities.
What makes Luke and Noah's relationship so endearing to watch is the fluidity with which those labels apply until they don't apply at all. Sometimes Luke is protecting Noah, sometimes the other way round, sometimes Luke needs to be centred, sometimes Noah does. They both make stupid decisions, both stand up for the other, both have complicated history and childhoods. That is what makes interesting and believable characters in drama, and in taking this all on, it is obvious that they defy stereotype by being a genuine partnership. That is not to say there is not some sign of co-dependance but it works both ways. This is, in fact, my answer for why woman consume and create more gay content such as slash fiction and pornography, than men. Woman are attracted to a relationship without stereotypes, where dynamics are built based on personality types and not gender, where men understand their partners emotionally and sexually. There is nothing sexier than a man realises he is more than that.
The other, equally alarming, point about this question is that is suggests that heterosexual relationships should have a dominant male and submissive female. Surely we are past the point of assuming the dynamics of relationships have or should be that way. I think to build a relationship upon roles based on gender stereotypes are intrinsically flawed, for there will always be situations in which, naturally, the roles would reverse. It is this kind of understanding of relationships that forces strong women to subdue themselves and men to hide their emotions, even when in long-term relationships. It is entirely negative for society, in the 21st Century, to still pander to inaccurate generalisations for all genders and sexuality's.
Overall, this question and the additional issues it raises plagues this subculture. Mpreg FanFiction stems from the same place - straight couples procreate, I must have this couple procreate. That is not to say there is not good mpreg fiction out there that does more than this with the sub-genre but it is where it comes from that worries me. I would like to think most people who watch Luke and Noah are more intelligent than this, and I am sure they are. If not, it's their loss. Because by trying to understand Nuke by conditions they do not fit, you miss what makes then a great couple in the first place.
I have written this in relation to Luke and Noah but the same can be said for many other gay couples on television such as McDean, Chrolli, DeRo etc.
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