The fluctuating topology of television's text and metatext, denotation and connotation, canon and fanon is a conceptual challenge to sexuality as an epistemological project, but it also intrudes quite concretely at the points of contact between the territories of production and consumption on either side of the screen. I have already noted television's formal and historical inclination, as a medium which endeavors to be coextensive with everyday life, to unfocus comfortable demarcations of all sorts; Jane Feuer writes that "Television as an ideological apparatus strives to break down any barriers between the fictional diegesis, the advertising diegesis, and the diegesis of the viewing family, finding it advantageous to assume all three are one and the same" (105). The commercial advantage of this blurring of fiction and reality, always manifested in the flow between programs and commercials and between programs and behind-the-scenes gossip and personalities, becomes increasingly conspicuous as the internet renders the perspectives of fans and media professionals increasingly accessible to each other. The San Francisco Chronicle infamously reported that "[SVU executive producer Neal] Baer admits tweaking fans with veiled references to Sapphic love. 'We read the fan sites. We know that people are into the Alex-Olivia thing. All the codes are in there'" (Chonin), a confession that is less interesting as an outright legitimization of "subtext" than as a junction in the ongoing course of Olivia-centric negotiations across shifting valences of textual meaning and power. The fourth wall was even more dramatically breached when, after her tremendous investment in analyzing Olivia, Sally Forth contacted portraying actress Mariska Hargitay to share her commentary: Hargitay responded directly, and allowed Sally to post a synopsis of their phone interview on her web page. Such close encounters between the organs of fan production and the organs of media production are a corollary of the industry's intensifying attention to modes and sites of fannish engagement.
Among Hargitay's "candid and sincere" answers: "She greatly appreciates all the mail she receives, including the letters from gay viewers who relate to Olivia Benson... It saddens her to think she has hurt anyone's feelings... The fact that Olivia is seen as ambiguous is interesting because her character clearly engages the viewers' imagination" (Forth #answers). Her apologia alludes to the background of the 2004 conversation: a comment Hargitay made on Late Night with Conan O'Brien in April 2003 that turned out to be a PR blunder (one that addressing the fandom via Sally Forth might rectify). During the Conan interview, Hargitay expressed what some took to be homophobic discomfort with aspersions cast on her own heterosexuality by lesbian readings of Olivia. The phenomenon to which she there reacted -- a certain slippage between Olivia's character persona and Mariska's star persona -- relies on a multifaceted intersection of real and fictional worlds:
If, in its early days, slash was sometimes condemned as "character rape," for fans of "butch" Olivia her feminization was the true violence, and their vehement expressions of rage and betrayal were commensurate with such an atrocity. In a "rant" on the subject, one LiveJournaler captures the intractable, intolerable position that results:
Among Hargitay's "candid and sincere" answers: "She greatly appreciates all the mail she receives, including the letters from gay viewers who relate to Olivia Benson... It saddens her to think she has hurt anyone's feelings... The fact that Olivia is seen as ambiguous is interesting because her character clearly engages the viewers' imagination" (Forth #answers). Her apologia alludes to the background of the 2004 conversation: a comment Hargitay made on Late Night with Conan O'Brien in April 2003 that turned out to be a PR blunder (one that addressing the fandom via Sally Forth might rectify). During the Conan interview, Hargitay expressed what some took to be homophobic discomfort with aspersions cast on her own heterosexuality by lesbian readings of Olivia. The phenomenon to which she there reacted -- a certain slippage between Olivia's character persona and Mariska's star persona -- relies on a multifaceted intersection of real and fictional worlds:
- SVU's positioning as a drama that engages social issues "ripped from the headlines" with sensationalized realism (no doubt one reason why many rape victims contact Hargitay, which led her to include extensive sexual assault resources and information on her personal web page {http://mariska.com/resources/});
- particular parallels between Mariska's and Olivia's personal lives (until the point, not long before this appearance, when the former began publicly dating a male actor, who she later married and had a child with while continuing her role on SVU): both were single workaholics whose careers seemingly kept them too busy for a relationship;
- persistent rumors that Hargitay is herself in the closet, which are perhaps especially compelling to fans seeking "real" evidence about Olivia's orientation;
- SVU's aforementioned detective training program: if we accept the procedural's premise that the truth must be precisely what is not visible at first glance, following Olivia's trail routinely leads to probing for the real person behind her.
If, in its early days, slash was sometimes condemned as "character rape," for fans of "butch" Olivia her feminization was the true violence, and their vehement expressions of rage and betrayal were commensurate with such an atrocity. In a "rant" on the subject, one LiveJournaler captures the intractable, intolerable position that results:
I really feel that the consumption of fandom has changed my opinions. Because, while reading these MH [Mariska Hargitay] articles, seeing the pictures, I get the picture of a woman who's trying to reclaim ownership of her character from the fans who see the character as gay. There is no separation between actor and character... And it pisses me off because Olivia Benson is NOT the property of Mariska Hargitay. Once those little images leave the cathode ray clutter, it becomes the property of the audience. (trancer21) {http://trancer21.livejournal.com/8081.html?format=light}In other words, the entanglement of "actor and character" is itself inextricable from the entanglement of "cathode ray" and audience that generates interpretive concords about Olivia and Mariska's text and paratext, and these epistemological snarls are in turn ensnared in the economics of the industry. For Olivia is certainly not "the property of the audience" proportionally to her status as property within the apparatus of corporate ownership, buttressed by the legal mechanism of copyright and the system of mass distribution and financing. However, the devices of ownership are still unable to contain her in these bounds, and in keeping with the futility of binary enclosure, the siege of Olivia onscreen stimulated an efflorescence of "snark" (sarcastic criticism) online. Following the conjecture that elements of Mariska Hargitay's persona were forcibly grafted onto Olivia Benson, much of it lampooned the resulting monstrous mutant: Oliska Hargenson. As far as I can tell, this portmanteau was coined as the punch-line of the parodic fanfic "It Ain't Her" by newbie_2u {http://community.livejournal.com/ob_fangrrl/217186.html}, which features Detectives Munch and Tutuola investigating Olivia's apparent disappearance. It is an example of a smattering of "meta" stories treating this theme, and others often refigure the extratextual battle fans framed in terms of Olivia vs. Mariska as an angst-ridden erotic drama of Olivia/Mariska. One rendition reverses the familiar hierarchy, portraying Olivia as the stronger and realer double, and Mariska as the television viewer who falls prey to her charms:
She grew Olivia out, strand by re-touched strand. She tried to stop herself from disappearing, as she felt the camera draw her inside it... But she still felt herself fading. Watching Olivia, failing to see herself, falling helplessly in love with her possessor... Mariska was afraid to sleep. She was afraid that she wanted Olivia to find her. Afraid of her dreams that bled into reality. (giantessmess) {http://community.livejournal.com/ob_fangrrl/197094.html}Here, it is Olivia who "possesses" Mariska, in both spectral and propertied senses, infiltrating "reality" with uncanny spectacle. It is not incidental that the memetic conspiracy in which these artifacts participate was largely located in a LiveJournal community: this and comparable distributed, interactive web networks haunt television like fanon Olivia haunts Mariska, perturbing the economies of corporate possession. In this context, paranoia on both sides about Mariska and Olivia commingling seems well-founded: today, TV's existence depends on its interpenetration with fan fictions.
