The Pleasure of Identification

( embedded video )

Some people on my flist have been passing around the Prince Caspian trailer and talking about the Narnia books in general. The topics are old chestnuts--discomfort with the Christian allegory, issues with the (lack of) purity of the adaptation--but it's been making me think about how much I enjoyed a movie I haven't really even thought about for about a year. How I still have the "Anna Popplewell is a Vampire Slayer" Will/Anna RPF fic started but unfinished on the harddrive of my desktop.

Also, I've been re-reading this post by cesperanza, on (among other things) identification and over-identification in fanfic, and especially chan fic:

My point is just that I think things are more complicated than theyseem when it comes to representation and identification. [. . .] I think that the whole process of writingfiction--giving a character interiority, backstory, emotional depth andpoint of view--is pretty much the opposite of objectificaton,however much we ooh and ahh over boys: it's personifying,characterizing, three-dimensionalizing, complicating.

Lots of good discussion in the comments, too.

In all, it's reminded me of my complication relationship with Susan Pevensie. You see, Anna was sixteen when the first movie came out, which is a bit young for me. But this didn't stop me from recognizing her as exactly the type of girl I would have been attracted to when I was, say, eighteen (William Mosley's age when the movie came out).

So Peter/Susan and Will/Anna ping me powerfully: I didn't kiss a young woman for the first time until I was 21, so reading and writing these pairings is (was? I haven't even thought about them in ages) in many ways an attempt to rewrite my own childhood, to put in the romance which was sorely lacking. (And keep in mind the way many of us in fandom, myself most certainly included, use sex as a metaphor for emotional intimacy!) So the fact is that I become incredibly invested in a pairing between two characters I don't even find myself, as the almost-twenty-four-years-old Alixtii O'Krul, particularly attractive; I nonetheless derive intense pleasure from imagining them in a romantic/sexual relationship. They're hot together--and I'm not even sure what I mean by that, but it's the terminology fandom has given to me to express myself.

Some of you might remember me trying to turn to the notion of "fictional desire."

So, in conclusion . . . when I was on YouTube looking for the Prince Caspian trailer, I looked for vid recs. Under the cut is the only one I found that I can rec with only one caveat (that it's black and white for no reason I can see).

( vid rec )

I really don't want to write my paper.

Gakked from musesfool, wisdomeagle, and likeadeuce.

Band Name: Platina (Disambuigation)
Album Title: Budapest Short Face Tumbler

1. "Núna" (This is really actually a song.)
2. "Probability Matching"
3. "1958 Portuguese Grand Prix"
4. "Jarrett Brown"
5. "HMS L24"
6. "WLQM-FM" (Reminds me of Chapin's song "WOLD.")
7. "Yoff"
8. "Vidhurashwatha"
9. "Overmountain Victory National Historic Trail"
10. "Peter Lamont (Historian)"
11. "The Best of Youth"
12. "Stefan Golaszewski"
13. "Peter Reichel"
14. "Who's Who (UK)"
15. "Swimming at the 1992 Summer Olympics - Men's 200 metre butterfly"

[insert memetics pun here]

Comment here and ask me ANYTHING about any fandom I'm involved in/have been involved in. Controversial or innocent, silly or serious, ask and you'll get my honest opinion on the subject [to the best of myknowledge/ability]. General fandom questions are also allowed, but nothing about actual people IN fandom, please.

I'm not quite sure what that last phrase is supposed to mean. I think it means I won't answer questions about people on my flist, like Elizabeth or Samantha or Ari or Grace? I'm not sure why people would be asking me such questions in the first place, though.