The draft of Chapter II / Private Eyes [5] is now complete! I should add illustrations at some point, but there are none at this time.
My most recent feedback on the original essay was by email, more than a year ago, from Sam/itsnotaword/NW. I finally replied last week (what? a year is not an unreasonable turnaround time on a non-essential email in my world, srsly) and the address is dead. So I'll share the response with you here. She informed me that SVU and Xena share Liz Freidman as sometime producer -- good detective work.
I'm finishing up a dissertation chapter update of the Olivia project, and I did add some later events in the saga, including the infamous Baer quote and the speculation about Mariska. It's really interesting to hear that there might be a material (as opposed to just a stylistic) connection to Xena. Overall, I tried to highlight the potential commercial advantage of "subtext" in this version, particularly in the context of TV/internet convergence. The whole massive debate remains fascinating, but it all seems very long ago, now. I really do appreciate hearing from you about the essay, though! While I'm sure I didn't succeed in making it entirely accessible, it is very gratifying that fellow fans read it and got something out of it.
/ Works Cited
Ang, Ien. Living Room Wars: Rethinking Media Audiences for a Postmodern World. Routledge, 1995.
B, Angie. “SVU's Detective Benson Attracts Lesbian Fans.” AfterEllen.com May 2004. 25 Jun 2008 {http://www.afterellen.com/archive/ellen/TV/svu.html [6]}.
Bathrick, Serafina. “The Mary Tyler Moore Show: Women at Home and at Work.” MTM: 'Quality Television'. Ed. Jane Feuer et al. British Film Institute, 1985.
Beirne, Rebecca. “Introduction.” Televising Queer Women: A Reader. Ed. Rebecca Beirne. Palgrave Macmillan, 2007.
Brunsdon, Charlotte. “Identity in Feminist Television Criticism.” Feminist Television Criticism: A Reader. Ed. Charlotte Brunsdon, Julie D'Acci, & Lynn Spigel. Oxford University Press, 1997.
Busse, Kristina. “semi-public spaces and attention economy.” Ephemeral Traces 11 May 2007. 25 Jun 2008 {http://kbusse.wordpress.com/2007/05/11/semi-public-spaces-and-attention-economy/ [7]}.
Chonin, Neva. “With hot 'Law & Order' squad's focus on sex crime, suddenly everybody's watching the detectives.” San Francisco Chronicle 23 Mar 2005. 17 Jun 2008 {http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2005/03/23/DDGHTBSLLF1.DTL [8]}.
Coppa, Francesca. “A Brief History of Media Fandom.” Fan Fiction and Fan Communities in the Age of the Internet. Ed. Karen Hellekson & Kristina Busse. McFarland & Company, 2006.
Cuklanz, Lisa M. Rape on Prime Time: Television, Masculinity, and Sexual Violence. University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999.
Doty, Alexander. Making Things Perfectly Queer: Interpreting Mass Culture. University of Minnesota Press, 1993.
Feuer, Jane. “Narrative Form in American Network Television.” High Theory/Low Culture: Analyzing Popular Television and Film. Ed. Colin MacCabe. Palgrave Macmillan, 1986.
Fiske, John. “Moments of Television: Neither the Text nor the Audience.” Remote Control: Television, Audiences, and Cultural Power. Ed. Ellen Seiter et al. Routledge, 1991.
Hastie, Amelie. “The Epistemological Stakes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Television Criticism and Marketing Demands.” Undead TV: Essays on Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Ed. Elana Levine & Lisa Parks. Duke University Press, 2007.
Hellekson, Karen, and Kristina Busse. “Introduction: Work in Progress.” Fan Fiction and Fan Communities in the Age of the Internet. McFarland & Company, 2006.
Jenkins, Henry. “Star Trek Rerun, Reread, Rewritten: Fan Writing as Textual Poaching.” Television: The Critical View. Ed. Horace Newcomb. Oxford University Press, 1994.
Jones, Sara Gwenllian. “Starring Lucy Lawless?” Continuum: Journal of Media and Cultural Studies 14.1 (2000): 9-22.
---. “The Sex Lives of Cult Television Characters.” Screen 43.1 (2002): 79-90.
Joyrich, Lynne. “Epistemology of the Console.” Critical Inquiry 27.3 (2001): 439-467.
---. Re-Viewing Reception: Television, Gender, and Postmodern Culture. Indiana University Press, 1996.
Lentz, Kirsten Marthe. “Quality versus Relevance: Feminism, Race, and the Politics of the Sign in 1970s Television.” Camera Obscura 15.43 (2000): 45-93.
Lothian, Alexis, Kristina Busse, and Robin Anne Reid. “'Yearning Void and Infinite Potential': Online Slash Fandom as Queer Female Space .” English Language Notes 42.5 (2007): 103-111.
Projansky, Sarah. Watching Rape: Film and Television in Postfeminist Culture. NYU Press, 2001.
Rabinovitz, Lauren. “Ms.-Representation: The Politics of Feminist Sitcoms.” Television, History, and American Culture: Feminist Critical Essays. Ed. Lauren Rabinovitz & Mary Beth Haralovich. Duke University Press, 1999.
Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky. Epistemology of the Closet. University of California Press, 1990.
Spigel, Lynn. “The Suburban Home Companion: Television and the Neighborhood Ideal in Post-War America.” Feminist Television Criticism: A Reader. Ed. Charlotte Brunsdon, Julie D'Acci, & Lynn Spigel. Oxford University Press, 1997.
Streeter, Thomas, and Wendy Wahl. “Audience Theory and Feminism: Property, Gender, and the Television Audience.” Camera Obscura 33/34 (1994): 243-261.
Torres, Sasha. “Television/Feminism: HeartBeat and Prime Time Lesbianism.” The Lesbian and Gay Studies Reader. Ed. Henry Abelove, David M. Halperin, & Michele Aina Barale. Routledge, 1993.
Weber, Samuel. Mass Mediauras: Form, Technics, Media. Stanford University Press, 1996.
II/4/Z End Matter [1]
Submitted by julie [2] on June 26, 2008 - 21:06. .diss-zero [3] | cyborganize [4]II/4/. My Girlfriend Olivia [9]
Submitted by julie [10] on June 26, 2008 - 20:54. .diss-zero [11] | cyborganize [12]After previewing selections from the original version of this chapter while it was a work in progress, Sally Forth jokingly told me that she "Can't wait to get to the 'Olivia is really gay' part" (personal correspondence [email], 26 June 2004). Needless to say, there is no such part: my analysis has not solved any of the enigmas of the closet, whether on the axis straight/gay, TV/internet, or its other intertwined polarities. The price to be paid for such complexity is a refusal of the sort of politics of representation that Sally Forth rousingly renders:
My traitorous restraint in refusing this opportunity to return a verdict in their favor does little to settle the critic/fan conundrum, either. As my own rejoinder to those who insist on enforcing Olivia's heterosexuality, my work here is conceived as engaging rather than merely commenting on this expansive and interactive battleground. Posted online since mid-2004 as a node in the diffuse matrix of Olivia fandom, this article too has permeable boundaries, and is open to wanton intersections and to continual reconfiguration. Thus if, in one sense, I've created a colossal tease for those who may wish to prove conclusively that Olivia is a lesbian, in another, this ardent critique has been the supreme erotic encounter between Olivia (my fellow detective) and I, in defiance of the frontier dividing the real world from the one on the (TV or computer) screen -- and what could be more substantial evidence that Olivia swings my way than that? Nonetheless, it remains unclear how Olivia can be my girlfriend within an academic project, or how such a project can satisfy fandom's desires. Part of the puzzle is differentiating serious work from salacious leisure, a margin that late capitalism renders ever more coy. The explicit incorporation of fan labor into the media industry undermines the distinction between professional and amateur production, which debunks the fantasy that consumers inhabit an entirely separate sphere from producers. Following a contrasting strategic imaginary, it can be in the promotional interest of creators to present themselves as familiar with (and to) fandom. Meanwhile, as consumer engagement is increasingly valued, the importance of desire as an interface between media commodities and their reception, as a form of productivity in itself, comes to the fore. The industrial escalation of television's identity crisis makes it imperative to consider the confluences between outside and inside, public and private, reality and fiction that lend the libidinal economies of slash and its closets their powerful vitality.
In order to be free, we must be seen... For this reason, the struggle to become visible has been part of every civil rights movement in this country. Conservatives are constantly fighting against the realistic portrayal of gays and lesbians in the media. By making us invisible, they can define us, control us, and stop us from fully participating in this culture... It is why the closet is so destructive.While this call can be deployed strategically, the threshold of hidden/visible is itself caught up in the closet's structural logic. As the case of Olivia Benson demonstrates, seeing a lesbian on television is far from a simple procedure, and what looks like a "realistic portrayal" is contingent on localized viewing strategies. Because visuality seems to promise transparency, I have elided it, here, in favor of the density of textual hermeneutics. In the epistemological labyrinth of subtext (the diegetic zone of connotation), extratext (the program's outside, so far as it is delineable), paratext (its official framing materials), metatext (its nebula of ancillary knowledge), and intertext (its promiscuous network of connections), I root some of the irrepressible fertility of the closet. If the "private eyes" of my title are watching, they do so in ways that cross the borders of both privacy and seeing, performing detective work that illuminates a tangled ecology of meaning, power, and desire. The closet is their terrain, and despite its oppressive fickleness I'd venture that it generates as well as conceals truths, opens as well as closes doors. This is perhaps little consolation, though, to the bitter fans who called for Olivia to come out, struggling with TPTB over ownership of her image.
My traitorous restraint in refusing this opportunity to return a verdict in their favor does little to settle the critic/fan conundrum, either. As my own rejoinder to those who insist on enforcing Olivia's heterosexuality, my work here is conceived as engaging rather than merely commenting on this expansive and interactive battleground. Posted online since mid-2004 as a node in the diffuse matrix of Olivia fandom, this article too has permeable boundaries, and is open to wanton intersections and to continual reconfiguration. Thus if, in one sense, I've created a colossal tease for those who may wish to prove conclusively that Olivia is a lesbian, in another, this ardent critique has been the supreme erotic encounter between Olivia (my fellow detective) and I, in defiance of the frontier dividing the real world from the one on the (TV or computer) screen -- and what could be more substantial evidence that Olivia swings my way than that? Nonetheless, it remains unclear how Olivia can be my girlfriend within an academic project, or how such a project can satisfy fandom's desires. Part of the puzzle is differentiating serious work from salacious leisure, a margin that late capitalism renders ever more coy. The explicit incorporation of fan labor into the media industry undermines the distinction between professional and amateur production, which debunks the fantasy that consumers inhabit an entirely separate sphere from producers. Following a contrasting strategic imaginary, it can be in the promotional interest of creators to present themselves as familiar with (and to) fandom. Meanwhile, as consumer engagement is increasingly valued, the importance of desire as an interface between media commodities and their reception, as a form of productivity in itself, comes to the fore. The industrial escalation of television's identity crisis makes it imperative to consider the confluences between outside and inside, public and private, reality and fiction that lend the libidinal economies of slash and its closets their powerful vitality.
II/. Private Eyes [13]
Submitted by julie [14] on June 24, 2008 - 17:30. .diss-zero [15] | cyborganize [16]Let me introduce you to Olivia Benson: a dedicated yet personally tormented detective who investigates sex crimes in New York City, sporting a deadly weapon, a leather jacket, and a short haircut. She's hopelessly in love with assistant district attorney Alexandra Cabot, who prosecutes her cases -- they're each others' domestic partners, occasional lovers, or secret crushes, depending on who is telling the story. That is, these individuals are fictional characters on Law & Order: Special Victims Unit (SVU), and the question of whether Olivia could be Alex's (or anyone's) girlfriend is a particularly contested one across online SVU fandom: some fans are determined to claim her as gay, while others insist that she's straight. While there is clearly intense investment on both sides in definitively verifying the answer, there is at the same time significant confusion about the proper source of the necessary evidence: text, subtext, or metatext. In this chapter, I chronicle the inquests of three detectives with parallel mandates to uncover the truths of desire: the TV character, who is hot on the trail of New York City's sex offenders; the SVU fan, who watches the show vigilantly for clues to who is in Olivia's heart and in her bed; and the television scholar, who is fascinated by these epistemological conundrums, driven to investigate how we might know things about television, about audiences, and about sexuality. I maintain that the projects of these three detectives are intertwined in multivalent networks that link knowledge, desire, and spectatorship across diverse registers. Within this intertextual architecture, the question of whether Olivia is "really" a lesbian is inextricable from broader ambiguities that infuse the conflicted relations between texts and audiences, academics and fans, gender and consumption, hermeneutics and erotics.
My own romance with Olivia Benson began with a chance conversation at my local coffeeshop that catalyzed an addiction to USA's nightly SVU reruns. Because of my preexisting fluency in subtextual viewing protocols, the availability of the Olivia/Alex dyad transformed SVU, for me, into a compelling nexus of speculation, imagination, and desire. Olivia and Alex are indeed a power couple of female slash fandom, one among a scattered pantheon of classic OTPs: One True Pairing that certain media seem to invite us to recognize by portraying a profound (if not explicitly romantic) relationship between two characters (an archetype that, in the world of femslash, does not much predate Xena: Warrior Princess). My personal engagement with their saga depends on the contingencies that shape television viewership -- daily routines, a fortuitous meeting, and the topographies of social networks and lesbian subcultures (both on- and offline) -- demonstrating how interpretations of (and libidinal encounters with) SVU the program are entangled with internet fandom and with everyday life. Television criticism often leans toward one or the other side of the border separating diegetic content from audience reception, examining one territory in relative isolation. Here, I attempt to plot the intersections between screen text and fan text, taking them as mutually constitutive. This process incorporates the disintegration of a number of linked binaries, since the indeterminacy of inside/outside or gay/straight impinges on the stability of private/public, fiction/reality, fan/critic, leisure/work, and other oppositions. Crucial among them is the rapidly dissolving frontier between television and the internet, which brings the interdependence of TV producers and consumers ever more out into the open.
The subtext of my argument is the notion that television is itself in the closet about its digital tendencies, largely as a defense mechanism for preserving broadcast's profit models and margins. Like the question so often posed about Olivia -- "is she or isn't she?" -- the question "is it or isn't it TV?" has high stakes in hierarchical economies of power, and is addressed with a parallel coyness. Moreover, these taxonomic teases are interlaced as well as analogous: as slash fandom becomes increasingly visible and pervasive, under conditions of increasingly competitive and diffuse distribution and attention, its cultivation (or at least negotiation) takes on increasing importance as an industrial strategy. Convergence, in other words, is queer, in content as well as in form. In this milieu, my analysis consists not of cracking the case of Olivia Benson where the aforementioned detectives remain stymied, but rather of mapping the specifically televisual limits that circumscribe their inquiries, especially at the hazardous junctions of epistemological endeavors, erotic investments, and capitalist economics. I can offer no incontrovertible proof that Olivia is a lesbian, no stable hierarchy of meaning among text, subtext, and metatext: any evidence that might be tendered is always already ensnared in the vortex of the closet, wherein the secret truths of (homo)sexuality are simultaneously exposed and effaced in relentless fluctuations between binary poles. What I present here is the more nuanced claim that Olivia is the fulcrum of an apparatus of lesbian desire that operates at the volatile interchanges permeating these geographies, including those that constitute television as a mass medium. Given television's interpenetration with its social context, with online paratexts, with the competencies and orientations of its viewers, the desires and procedures of my three detectives (the character, the fan, and the critic) mirror and structure each other in their pursuit of a verdict. I maintain that it is ultimately in such irresolvable enigmas that the most fruitful prospects for knowledge, passion, and profit lie.
My own romance with Olivia Benson began with a chance conversation at my local coffeeshop that catalyzed an addiction to USA's nightly SVU reruns. Because of my preexisting fluency in subtextual viewing protocols, the availability of the Olivia/Alex dyad transformed SVU, for me, into a compelling nexus of speculation, imagination, and desire. Olivia and Alex are indeed a power couple of female slash fandom, one among a scattered pantheon of classic OTPs: One True Pairing that certain media seem to invite us to recognize by portraying a profound (if not explicitly romantic) relationship between two characters (an archetype that, in the world of femslash, does not much predate Xena: Warrior Princess). My personal engagement with their saga depends on the contingencies that shape television viewership -- daily routines, a fortuitous meeting, and the topographies of social networks and lesbian subcultures (both on- and offline) -- demonstrating how interpretations of (and libidinal encounters with) SVU the program are entangled with internet fandom and with everyday life. Television criticism often leans toward one or the other side of the border separating diegetic content from audience reception, examining one territory in relative isolation. Here, I attempt to plot the intersections between screen text and fan text, taking them as mutually constitutive. This process incorporates the disintegration of a number of linked binaries, since the indeterminacy of inside/outside or gay/straight impinges on the stability of private/public, fiction/reality, fan/critic, leisure/work, and other oppositions. Crucial among them is the rapidly dissolving frontier between television and the internet, which brings the interdependence of TV producers and consumers ever more out into the open.
The subtext of my argument is the notion that television is itself in the closet about its digital tendencies, largely as a defense mechanism for preserving broadcast's profit models and margins. Like the question so often posed about Olivia -- "is she or isn't she?" -- the question "is it or isn't it TV?" has high stakes in hierarchical economies of power, and is addressed with a parallel coyness. Moreover, these taxonomic teases are interlaced as well as analogous: as slash fandom becomes increasingly visible and pervasive, under conditions of increasingly competitive and diffuse distribution and attention, its cultivation (or at least negotiation) takes on increasing importance as an industrial strategy. Convergence, in other words, is queer, in content as well as in form. In this milieu, my analysis consists not of cracking the case of Olivia Benson where the aforementioned detectives remain stymied, but rather of mapping the specifically televisual limits that circumscribe their inquiries, especially at the hazardous junctions of epistemological endeavors, erotic investments, and capitalist economics. I can offer no incontrovertible proof that Olivia is a lesbian, no stable hierarchy of meaning among text, subtext, and metatext: any evidence that might be tendered is always already ensnared in the vortex of the closet, wherein the secret truths of (homo)sexuality are simultaneously exposed and effaced in relentless fluctuations between binary poles. What I present here is the more nuanced claim that Olivia is the fulcrum of an apparatus of lesbian desire that operates at the volatile interchanges permeating these geographies, including those that constitute television as a mass medium. Given television's interpenetration with its social context, with online paratexts, with the competencies and orientations of its viewers, the desires and procedures of my three detectives (the character, the fan, and the critic) mirror and structure each other in their pursuit of a verdict. I maintain that it is ultimately in such irresolvable enigmas that the most fruitful prospects for knowledge, passion, and profit lie.
II/3/C Reality/Fiction [17]
Submitted by julie [18] on June 23, 2008 - 23:54. .diss-zero [19] | cyborganize [20]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/ [21]});
- 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 [22]}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 [23]}, 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 [24]}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.
II/3/B Straight/Gay [25]
Submitted by julie [26] on June 15, 2008 - 12:06. .diss-zero [27] | cyborganize [28]As in the instance of the Olivia/Alex Shipper's Manifesto, it is online fandom's technological substrate that capacitates particular registers in the open casefile on Olivia Benson's sexuality. Although SVU fans of various orientations display an intense investment in definitively determining the truth, there is significant confusion about where to locate legitimate evidence. The hermeneutic uncertainties of fan discourse parallel those vexing scholarly discourse (to the extent that these domains are distinct), revolving around the axes between television's inside and outside, knowledges private and public, and media producers and consumers. Given the indeterminacy of the borders of both heterosexuality and textuality, there is little hope of closing the case once and for all, but the inquests and debates can illuminate the prolific operations of the closet. While social networking interfaces tend to gather like-minded fans to discuss a loose cloud of topics, more linear message boards may invite heterogeneous fans to discuss a clearly defined topic, and as such are a platform where such debates almost inevitably erupt.
One notable thread, on the officially sponsored yet largely anarchic SVU board at USA Network's web site (the program airs on USA in syndication), can serve as an example of the vehemence and complexity of the testimonies mobilized in attepmts to prove that Olivia is gay or straight {http://web.archive.org/web/20040720081022/http://63.240.52.141/ubb/usa/html/ubb/Forum24/HTML/000155.html [29] (the usanetwork.com forums have since undergone a redesign, and content prior to 2005 is no longer available; unfortunately the second page of this discussion is not archived)}. It begins with a cautious, open-ended query by mariskafans: "So, would anyone be too terribly offended if Olivia started dating a girl?" Tellingly, the question is immediately transmuted into a dispute over Olivia's probable sexual orientation. Some fans consider only the most explicit textual citations admissible as evidence, and say so quite emphatically:
Far from the message board debate in both degree and kind, one fan under the pseudonym Sally Forth composed an elaborate riposte to these sorts of scornful reactions to the proposition that Olivia isn't quite straight{http://web.archive.org/web/20060423012451/http://www.sallyforth.info/ [30]}. Her exhaustive, expansive, and often excessive "rave," rendered as a rudimentary static web page, is an idiosyncratic and remarkable document of vernacular theory, detailing her observations and arguments concerning Olivia's intimacies with lesbian desire through both textual analysis and broader political critique. Covering everything from obscure inside jokes to the moral, legal, and conceptual battles over social issues like gay visibility and same-sex marriage, Sally's content and links manifest her engagement with fan and media networks even in the absence of technical interactivity. Confirming that "On every SVU-related message board I've seen, the issue of Olivia's sexual preference comes up at some point," she gripes that "Any time I posted that Olivia might be gay or bi, well, let me say, I got my ass kicked. 'You're crazy. That scene / look / action / appearance could mean anything. Olivia Benson is not gay. Get over it!'" Sally, like some of the posters quoted above, is not optimistic about the prospect of Olivia coming out within the constraints of commercial television, writing, "IMHO, TPTB will keep Olivia as she is. No boyfriend. No girlfriend. That is the only way to avoid alienating any fans." But she nonetheless champions the integrity of spectatorial practices, asserting that "The whole point behind subtext is that people can enjoy the show however they wish, without having someone tell them that they're wrong or reading things into the show that aren't there." Her claims are not based solely on a revaluation of fan readings, however: she supports this call for interpretive pluralism with a humorous but meticulously impartial account of the textual "evidence" on both sides of the question "is she or isn't she?" (making the case that those who consider the inquest over at the first glimpse of an onscreen boyfriend just aren't looking hard enough). That is, though she self-identifies as a lesbian fan, for Sally too the figure of Olivia's lesbianism is a shifting jumble of diegetic references and absences, audience competencies and investments, industrial conditions, and political context that is not easily stabilized (and at the same time not easily dismissed). Both ephemeral online discussions and Sally's more concerted manifesto are artifacts of fans' struggle with the complexity and contradictions of the project of representing or locating lesbian desire in the televisual landscape -- its frustrations and its inexhaustibly generative potential.
One notable thread, on the officially sponsored yet largely anarchic SVU board at USA Network's web site (the program airs on USA in syndication), can serve as an example of the vehemence and complexity of the testimonies mobilized in attepmts to prove that Olivia is gay or straight {http://web.archive.org/web/20040720081022/http://63.240.52.141/ubb/usa/html/ubb/Forum24/HTML/000155.html [29] (the usanetwork.com forums have since undergone a redesign, and content prior to 2005 is no longer available; unfortunately the second page of this discussion is not archived)}. It begins with a cautious, open-ended query by mariskafans: "So, would anyone be too terribly offended if Olivia started dating a girl?" Tellingly, the question is immediately transmuted into a dispute over Olivia's probable sexual orientation. Some fans consider only the most explicit textual citations admissible as evidence, and say so quite emphatically:
dtobe2008Others respond to this literalism by pointing out the inherently partial picture of Olivia's desires that the screen text offers, alongside the possibility of a less rigidly binary sexuality:
She is DEFINITELY straight. There have been many episodes where she's had a date with a man and you've seen a few.
teresa985
The fact that she's dated men before on the show, and no women, leads me to believe that she's straight. Unless she flat out says: "I'm dating a woman" or something of that nature, I'm not going to believe she's a lesbian.
BeksterThis tactic is then countered with references to extratextual gossip (the avowed heterosexuality of Mariska Hargitay, who portrays Olivia) and TV industry logics (the imperative to appeal to a mass audience and remain within the program's formal constraints):
We don't know that she's straight -- she's mentioned a significant other, what, once? She could definitely be bisexual, which would be great, she's gorgeous!
Kloie
And... just because a girl's slept with men doesn't necessarily mean she's straight. lol
svu junkieA later poster objects on political grounds, lamenting the casualties of the closet's gendered double-binds:
They will never make Olivia gay 'cause her heterosexuality has already been established. If she decided to 'jump the fence' then they would have to focus on her personal life and we all know they would NEVER do this!! Heck... the show's been on 5 years and we've seen the interior of Olivia's apt. ...what...maybe once??
SVUFreak107
OMG YOU GUYS ARE CRAZY!!! Mariska/Olivia is not gay no matter what it will just screw up her image in real life and no one will like her. It will take people away from teh show not to it!!!
SVUAddictMeanwhile, what is perhaps the most fascinating response overtly describes the influence of fan production on Olivia's hypothesized sexual orientation:
I find it very frustrating when females who are strong and assertive immediately get labeled lesbians. Yes, Olivia is tough and independent, but she's also straight and I've grown tired -- in my own life and in Hollywood -- of seeing powerful women labeled as gay. To me, at least, it undermines the potential of straight women to possess these characteristics.
Munchz HunchIn this viewer's hierarchy, fan fiction has substantial authority in the investigation of Olivia's sexuality because it is written by those with particular expertise in reading television's signals. However, diegetic verification trumps these fan interpretations, providing a stable resolution to the mystery (at least if one conveniently overlooks the option of bisexuality, as noted above). When priority is given to clues located inside the television text, the implication is that, if some are arriving at the wrong verdict, their viewing strategies must be perverse or deluded. Spank puts this dismissal most succinctly: "This is ridiculous... You lot look for things that aren't there."
as far as olivia and being gay goes, the only reason i ever thought she WAS gay was because of all the fan fics about her BEING gay! that was what made me question her sexuality... people write fan fics from what they got off the show, and i havent seen every episode, not even CLOSE, so i was wondering after reading those fics if they [Olivia and Alex, etc.] truly WERE gay couples on the show. but that was put to rest after seeing her with cassidy ["Closure"] and with that reporter dude ["The Third Guy"]... so i have had my suspicions, but they were all eventually cleared up.
Far from the message board debate in both degree and kind, one fan under the pseudonym Sally Forth composed an elaborate riposte to these sorts of scornful reactions to the proposition that Olivia isn't quite straight{http://web.archive.org/web/20060423012451/http://www.sallyforth.info/ [30]}. Her exhaustive, expansive, and often excessive "rave," rendered as a rudimentary static web page, is an idiosyncratic and remarkable document of vernacular theory, detailing her observations and arguments concerning Olivia's intimacies with lesbian desire through both textual analysis and broader political critique. Covering everything from obscure inside jokes to the moral, legal, and conceptual battles over social issues like gay visibility and same-sex marriage, Sally's content and links manifest her engagement with fan and media networks even in the absence of technical interactivity. Confirming that "On every SVU-related message board I've seen, the issue of Olivia's sexual preference comes up at some point," she gripes that "Any time I posted that Olivia might be gay or bi, well, let me say, I got my ass kicked. 'You're crazy. That scene / look / action / appearance could mean anything. Olivia Benson is not gay. Get over it!'" Sally, like some of the posters quoted above, is not optimistic about the prospect of Olivia coming out within the constraints of commercial television, writing, "IMHO, TPTB will keep Olivia as she is. No boyfriend. No girlfriend. That is the only way to avoid alienating any fans." But she nonetheless champions the integrity of spectatorial practices, asserting that "The whole point behind subtext is that people can enjoy the show however they wish, without having someone tell them that they're wrong or reading things into the show that aren't there." Her claims are not based solely on a revaluation of fan readings, however: she supports this call for interpretive pluralism with a humorous but meticulously impartial account of the textual "evidence" on both sides of the question "is she or isn't she?" (making the case that those who consider the inquest over at the first glimpse of an onscreen boyfriend just aren't looking hard enough). That is, though she self-identifies as a lesbian fan, for Sally too the figure of Olivia's lesbianism is a shifting jumble of diegetic references and absences, audience competencies and investments, industrial conditions, and political context that is not easily stabilized (and at the same time not easily dismissed). Both ephemeral online discussions and Sally's more concerted manifesto are artifacts of fans' struggle with the complexity and contradictions of the project of representing or locating lesbian desire in the televisual landscape -- its frustrations and its inexhaustibly generative potential.
[38]