poking at the gay-for-you trope
4 Mar 2010 12:57 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kaigouNow that the (biggest part of the) MSM-M/M-gay-what-have-you fiasco is resting for the moment, here's hoping it's okay to venture out of the woodshed with some of the notions that were in my head long before that flare-up flared all over the internets. (Fortunately for me, I suppose, RL's intrusion kept me out of it all.) Anyway, as usual I'm coming at it sideways, but unusually not with the time for writing a massive amount, so this'll be shorter, I expect. (Yes, I do hear cheering, but still, remember that my "short" is another poster's "omg goes on and on".)
I've been considering the whole gay-for-you (GFY) trope, since I keep stumbling across it; one author even explicitly has a series that's doing nothing but pivoting on different versions of the trope. (And by explicit I mean, that's the name of the series: "Gay For You" -- talk about truth in advertising.)
The plot of a GFY story, or a GFY sub-plot, follows a pretty basic curve. The foci characters are stock: one of the protagonists will be staunchly heterosexual, and we'll call him Straight Guy (SG); usually he's either got a string of women, or he's coming off a major relationship with a woman (ie divorced or widowed). The love interest (who may in fact be the POV character) is either gay but, as far as the SG is concerned, firmly not interested in SG -- or, if the second character also states he likes women, eventually the story does reveal that, well, all along he's actually been gay and piningfor the fjords for his best friend.
Early in the story (if not at the very start), something changes this dynamic -- most often it's a bet, a dare, a prank, or done for cash (ie modeling to pay rent, working as escort). Whether the SG is 'playing gay' for laughs, or because he's so hard-up that he'll do anything for money, the crucial detail never missed is the light-hearted aspect. I don't mean as in cheery, per se, so much as the notion that the (homosexual) actions don't "matter" in some way, that they "mean nothing" -- it's just a joke, it's just for kicks, it's just to pay the rent, etc. Naturally, it ends up having (romantic or emotional) meaning and in the end, former SG becomes enamoured of his friend and they end up in confirmed and explicitly-outlined relationship.
Some variations on the theme: if the love interest is out to the SG as gay, we get angst while the SG struggles to convince the love interest that it's no longer "just a joke". If the love interest claims to be straight, the SG's angst is from thinking he's "become gay" while his friend is not, boy loses boy, and then we get the 'reveal' of the love interest admitting that yes, he's always been gay. Either way, there's undoubtedly going to be angst in there, but it's almost always on an immediately-personal level -- that is, the SG doesn't go through the entire movement of "coming out" to a community at large, so much as revolve around the weight of "coming out" on a one-to-one level, with the love interest.
With or without the embellishments, the story will either state, or imply, that the SG's sole motivation in gay love/romance is rooted in his friendship with the love interest. That is, that if it had been "anyone else", the SG would never have considered (depending on the story's justification) being with men, either via bisexuality or always-liked-men-but-was-just-fooling-himself.
Before I get into what's been intriguing me about GFY, let me first clarify a few examples of where I really, really, really loathe it, because you know they exist, or I wouldn't be me.
I read a story last summer that stuck with me, not because it was good, but because it was quite possibly one of the most egregious examples, ever, of everything I hate about this trope. We have two ostensibly het male characters who are set up to 'act' gay as part of their jobs; we're to assume they don't dig their heels in because a) they really want their career-stars to keep rising, and b) it's not like it "means anything". Of course, now that the cat's out of the bag, the two characters find themselves continuing to explore the attraction, even away from the work environment. So far it's a standard GFY storyline -- except that in this case, the characters continued to adamantly insist that they were both straight.
Look, you're naked. In a bed. With someone of the same sex. You're getting each other off. HELLO. What part of "attracted to same sex" is NOT making sense to you?
Who knows what happened in the story, because I couldn't make it farther than the fifth or sixth iteration of "but just so you know, I'm not gay". It's true, you can have protesting too much, but what makes the overly-protesting detail work in a story is that it's noticed -- that is, the power of the detail rests in it being a neon sign to another character. Without an in-story recognition of the protestations, the dynamic (the one who speaks it too strongly, and the observer who realizes), becomes the author speaking too strongly and the reader dryly noting it's a bit overboard. In other words, when the characters never develop the self-awareness to see that they (or the other) is acting like a self-denying twit, the reader is the only one in the observer role, and this "protest too much" criticism then gets levied at the characters, the story, and even the author him/herself.
Moving along: basically, I get annoyed and disgusted with authors who use the GFY trope to signal that a character continues to be 'straight' and has only 'deviated' from the norm for this one, single, exception. That, though, isn't as common in original/pro fic, because authors aren't quite as invested in a character being 'het'; well, nowhere near as much as in fandom where the character may have a history of het relationships, or have explicitly self-identified as straight in canon, or be part of a popular het OTP -- in slash fandom, then, the protestations are for the sake of an audience that's previously categorized the SG as, well, Straight Guy. In that case, the [fandom] author is saying that Straight Guy remains 'straight', and he's only gay for this one person, so he's really still straight, because he wouldn't be like this with anyone else -- thus satisfying possible/actual canonical requirements while still managing the gay angle.
But in original fiction...
I started thinking about it: when, if ever, do we profess attraction to someone but with the caveat that they're the only one we'll ever feel (or do) this with? What if the GFY trope is actually an analogue, if we ignore the copious numbers of badly-written fic using it, and just look at the bare bones of the trope?
[ onto part one ]
I've been considering the whole gay-for-you (GFY) trope, since I keep stumbling across it; one author even explicitly has a series that's doing nothing but pivoting on different versions of the trope. (And by explicit I mean, that's the name of the series: "Gay For You" -- talk about truth in advertising.)
The plot of a GFY story, or a GFY sub-plot, follows a pretty basic curve. The foci characters are stock: one of the protagonists will be staunchly heterosexual, and we'll call him Straight Guy (SG); usually he's either got a string of women, or he's coming off a major relationship with a woman (ie divorced or widowed). The love interest (who may in fact be the POV character) is either gay but, as far as the SG is concerned, firmly not interested in SG -- or, if the second character also states he likes women, eventually the story does reveal that, well, all along he's actually been gay and pining
Early in the story (if not at the very start), something changes this dynamic -- most often it's a bet, a dare, a prank, or done for cash (ie modeling to pay rent, working as escort). Whether the SG is 'playing gay' for laughs, or because he's so hard-up that he'll do anything for money, the crucial detail never missed is the light-hearted aspect. I don't mean as in cheery, per se, so much as the notion that the (homosexual) actions don't "matter" in some way, that they "mean nothing" -- it's just a joke, it's just for kicks, it's just to pay the rent, etc. Naturally, it ends up having (romantic or emotional) meaning and in the end, former SG becomes enamoured of his friend and they end up in confirmed and explicitly-outlined relationship.
Some variations on the theme: if the love interest is out to the SG as gay, we get angst while the SG struggles to convince the love interest that it's no longer "just a joke". If the love interest claims to be straight, the SG's angst is from thinking he's "become gay" while his friend is not, boy loses boy, and then we get the 'reveal' of the love interest admitting that yes, he's always been gay. Either way, there's undoubtedly going to be angst in there, but it's almost always on an immediately-personal level -- that is, the SG doesn't go through the entire movement of "coming out" to a community at large, so much as revolve around the weight of "coming out" on a one-to-one level, with the love interest.
With or without the embellishments, the story will either state, or imply, that the SG's sole motivation in gay love/romance is rooted in his friendship with the love interest. That is, that if it had been "anyone else", the SG would never have considered (depending on the story's justification) being with men, either via bisexuality or always-liked-men-but-was-just-fooling-himself.
Before I get into what's been intriguing me about GFY, let me first clarify a few examples of where I really, really, really loathe it, because you know they exist, or I wouldn't be me.
I read a story last summer that stuck with me, not because it was good, but because it was quite possibly one of the most egregious examples, ever, of everything I hate about this trope. We have two ostensibly het male characters who are set up to 'act' gay as part of their jobs; we're to assume they don't dig their heels in because a) they really want their career-stars to keep rising, and b) it's not like it "means anything". Of course, now that the cat's out of the bag, the two characters find themselves continuing to explore the attraction, even away from the work environment. So far it's a standard GFY storyline -- except that in this case, the characters continued to adamantly insist that they were both straight.
Look, you're naked. In a bed. With someone of the same sex. You're getting each other off. HELLO. What part of "attracted to same sex" is NOT making sense to you?
Who knows what happened in the story, because I couldn't make it farther than the fifth or sixth iteration of "but just so you know, I'm not gay". It's true, you can have protesting too much, but what makes the overly-protesting detail work in a story is that it's noticed -- that is, the power of the detail rests in it being a neon sign to another character. Without an in-story recognition of the protestations, the dynamic (the one who speaks it too strongly, and the observer who realizes), becomes the author speaking too strongly and the reader dryly noting it's a bit overboard. In other words, when the characters never develop the self-awareness to see that they (or the other) is acting like a self-denying twit, the reader is the only one in the observer role, and this "protest too much" criticism then gets levied at the characters, the story, and even the author him/herself.
Moving along: basically, I get annoyed and disgusted with authors who use the GFY trope to signal that a character continues to be 'straight' and has only 'deviated' from the norm for this one, single, exception. That, though, isn't as common in original/pro fic, because authors aren't quite as invested in a character being 'het'; well, nowhere near as much as in fandom where the character may have a history of het relationships, or have explicitly self-identified as straight in canon, or be part of a popular het OTP -- in slash fandom, then, the protestations are for the sake of an audience that's previously categorized the SG as, well, Straight Guy. In that case, the [fandom] author is saying that Straight Guy remains 'straight', and he's only gay for this one person, so he's really still straight, because he wouldn't be like this with anyone else -- thus satisfying possible/actual canonical requirements while still managing the gay angle.
But in original fiction...
I started thinking about it: when, if ever, do we profess attraction to someone but with the caveat that they're the only one we'll ever feel (or do) this with? What if the GFY trope is actually an analogue, if we ignore the copious numbers of badly-written fic using it, and just look at the bare bones of the trope?
[ onto part one ]