and in the end it's love

[schmerica]

I don't know if you all know this already or what, but Hard Core Logo is really fucked up.

Hee.

This movie always makes me want fic, and then I remember that I actually find the vast majority of HCL fiction to be completely unsatisfying, even from writers I really like.

This movie also raises an interesting philosophical question, of course, with unreliable narrators and canon (namely, how should it be taken?), given the context of the central homoerotic moment in the film and how it's presented, and then how it's generally completely unquestioned by fandom. (Wow, that sentence sounds much more pretentious when I'm trying to present it in a spoilerfree way.) ETA: There may be spoilers in the comments, of course.

Comments

[svilleficrecs.livejournal.com]

But it makes me want to Netflix it.

[pearl-o.livejournal.com]

Do it! It's a pretty good movie, even if I don't love it that much, and CKR is the hottest thing EVER in it.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_divya_/]

This movie also raises an interesting philosophical question, of course, with unreliable narrators and canon (namely, how should it be taken?), given the context of the central homoerotic moment in the film and how it's presented, and then how it's generally completely unquestioned by fandom.

o.O I was talking about this very thing in chat tonight. I can see three or four different ways that the information can be plausibly interpreted, and I understand that people will settle on one version or another in order to be able to write fic about it, but wow. I so want to just know what really happened. ::dies of HCL frustration::

[pearl-o.livejournal.com]

*grins* If it helps, I don't think any of THEM know what really happened for any of it.

[engenda.livejournal.com]

It's certainly worth pondering. And is fun to do so. Just to rattle it around in your head.

[pearl-o.livejournal.com]

This is true.

[engenda.livejournal.com]

Honestly, depending on the time of day, I'll get a different answer. Which is fun...and frustrating.

[damned-colonial.livejournal.com]

If the bit you're referring to is what John says to Mary the Fan (as other commenters seem to be guessing), then I rather like how katallison dealt with it in Xeriscape or whatever it's called.

[pearl-o.livejournal.com]

*grins* Kat is, as always, the glowing exception to every rule.

[zulu]

There are so many different levels of viewpoints...I mean, there's what really happened, and then there's what the band members *say* happened, and then what they *mean* when they say that's what happened, and then there's what Bruce shows happened, and after that whole goat-chainsawing thing, his narrative reliability is less than any of theirs, and he's the fucking documentarian.

I was about to say I'd never feel up to writing HCL fic, then I remembered that, oops, I already have. However, I'll refine that by saying that I will never feel up to writing something that could be taken as "truth" about what happened or how the guys really feel. Because the truth is buried and besides, I don't think *any* of them *want* to know or acknowledge whatever that truth might be...so.

Gaaahhh, now I want to watch it again.

[pearl-o.livejournal.com]

*nod* it's really just incredibly complex, which I suppose is part of the point.

[sockich.livejournal.com]

Uh, hi. I was just wondering if you could please spoil me? Because I won't be able to see this movie for about a month or so and I really really really don't want to wait all that time to see the end. So if you could spoil me (just email me to sockich@email.si) I'd love you something awful. *is hopeful*

[sage]

Wow. I'm totally having analytical thoughts (about the movie and fandom both), but it's impossible to express these thoughts without spoilers. I am thwarted! *g*

[pearl-o.livejournal.com]

Oh, I don't mind spoilers in the comments; I just didn't want them in the post itself. Knock yourself out!

[sage]

Ok, here's the part I wrote last night before all these fabulous people started being all brilliant and stuff:

It is interesting and I spent one night skimming back and forth throught the dvd looking for each scene in which we SEE Joe and Billy touching--especially non-violent touching. There's a lot. In the van, in the interviews, in the diners, walking together, talking in the shadows of that club, talking to Victoria, how they are together at Bucky Haight's house before, during, and after the acid trip.

The on-stage touching is different because it feels fueled by the music in a different way than the rest of it, even though the entire film reads as players-conscious-of-their-audience.

But yeah, the question is what we see in the rest of it. They're clearly intimate, but they've also known each other for twenty years and are closer than brothers, so of course they're intimate. But are/were they fucking? We can't trust John's claim, although as well as Mary knew all of them, it's telling that she chooses to. (Just because she's homophobic doesn't mean she doesn't have unexplained but totally valid reasons to trust John.)

It's pretty clear that Joe's acting like a besotted suitor. Billy's rejection doesn't scan as a rejection of the band and a chance to make it big doing what he loves. It reads as a rejection of Joe, and he responds like a desperate and depressed jilted lover.

...

So now in light of the comments above I'm thinking about the various HCL fic I've read and how the stuff I've enjoyed most was mostly set when Joe and Billy were quite a lot younger and usually strung out on something. I'm also thinking about how much of the fic feminizes Billy in ways that don't feel right to me. He's sexy and quiet and has his own agenda...and he's positioned as the object of Joe's desire/gaze/roving hands/mouth. I would like to see more fic about Billy's personal agenda and more that gives him a sense of his own volition. Joe affects everyone who gets near him, but if Billy's spent most of his life in a binary orbit with Joe, then he ought to have enough mass to counter Joe's effect. Ok, that leads to an interesting question. Joe goes supernova. How does Billy survive it? Or does he. I get so annoyed with Billy being shown as irrecoverably shattered by this. I mean, we know he at least goes on to have a custody battle over his daughter. You don't go into that lightly...

Anyway...hmm. I'm having all kinds of thoughts now. And craving good fic. *g*

[pearl-o.livejournal.com]

(Just because she's homophobic doesn't mean she doesn't have unexplained but totally valid reasons to trust John.)</I. That's totally true, of cours,e but it's interesting how that story is directly followed up -- the next line of John's is him asking her her name, emphasizing his losing it.

[katallison.livejournal.com]

Without going all spoileriffic, I can say that one thing I've always loved about the film is that it is *all about* unreliable narration -- starting with its very framing device (the "documentary"), and continuing through the dual mindfucks of Joe's whole pretext for the benefit concert and the tour, and Billy's "I'm in" while always keeping his exit ticket in his back pocket. Each significant character tells a story at some point, the story of how things went down, what really happened, but as we see the levels of duplicity and dysfunction each of them enacts on camera, we're left wondering if we can trust anything any of them says. Ultimately the only thing we *can* trust is what the camera shows us, and of course everything it's recording is *performance* -- not just on stage/in concert, but also (by virtue of the framing device) everything that's said offstage as well, and on two simultaneous levels; the "band members" using the "documentary" for their own various ends, and the actors performing a movie. It's like this complicated glamour-spell that keeps getting more and more befuddling, until the final scene, the one entirely authentic and entirely fictional bit that breaks the whole frame. It's just an amazing film.

[pearl-o.livejournal.com]

Oh, this is a very brilliant point, and one I haven't really thought about before -- I admire your brain so much, Kat! And of course, the other part of the framing device isn't just that it's performance, but that we don't know how much stuff there is beyond what we see -- Bruce is choosing what story he actually wants to tell, the actual movie behind all that footage, and wow, you can do anything with editing, so that's just another level of distance.

[grey853.livejournal.com]

HARD CORE LOGO is one of my favorite films on so many levels. The acting, the narrative, the dialogue, the characters, they all reel the viewer in until the shocking ending, which I would normally hate, but realized it's the only thing that fit this film and the characters. What makes it an even more powerful ending is that originally, that wasn't what was written. It was Hugh Dillon who convinced them that it was the only way to go and still stick with the integrity of the character. Joe lost everything. Period.

I've lost count of the number of times I've watched the movie and each time I watch, I see something I didn't notice the time before, a look, a twitch, something that adds to the multilevel power punch it delivers.

As for the fanfiction, I can't think of any that really delivers what I want with Joe/Billy. I have read a crossover with DS, please don't ask the title, where Billy meets up with Fraser and Fraser realizes through his relationship with Billy that he loves Ray. And there was a lovely crossover with TALES OF THE CITY where Billy meets up with the PG character and they have a relationship. That was also good.

I've yet to read a long, well-developed story with Joe/Billy, and there's probably a good reason for that, one being it'd have to be a story told before the movie. Backstories are much harder to do sometimes.

[brooklinegirl.livejournal.com]

well, Kat just said every smart thing that there is to say. God, I love her.

But, see, I think the question isn't just do-we-or-don't-we believe John's lithium-deprived ramblings. The Joe and Billy dynamic is such that even if they didn't ever fuck, it's not because Joe didn't want to. Their history is fraught no matter what; their relationship is fucked up, and whether or not that one specific incident took place, it doesn't change the fact that Joe loves - in his own particular, fucked-up way - Billy, and Billy - well, who the fuck knows what drives Billy? I think he loves that Joe loves him - I think he likes the power it gives him. I think Billy holds back almost everything. Like Kat said, what we see on film (got, the META - I mean the documentary-in-the-movie) is only what he chooses to show us.

But, regardless of that, there is something there between Joe and Billy that goes way beyond buddies. You don't even need that scene with John saying it right out - I think it is a conclusion that could easily be drawn in its own right. It didn't have to be pointed out as That One Time - it just is there, that Joe wants Billy, as much of Billy as he can get. You can push the slash aside (if you try really hard), but even then, it's there, that deep-seated need in Joe to be close to Billy. He'd take whatever opportunity he could.

Okay. now I want to try writing this again. The more I think about it, the less of a handle I have on Billy's character. Joe is easy; Billy's the one you never really see, I think.

[pearl-o.livejournal.com]

*licks you* You're so smart and pretty.

[umbo.livejournal.com]

Lots of interesting discussion here, all making me think about the fact that I haven't watched the film in a long time. I also think it's interesting that interpretations of Joe are a lot easier to have or justify or whatever, but to me Billy's the more interesting character, partially because he is in some ways a cipher--you can go more directions with him, I think. But I also think it's interesting how some people do find him easier to access/write about, and others find Joe easier to access/write about, and how much of that is projection of our own beliefs/background/worldview and how much really is in the movie. Because I know I'm certainly guilty of it with Billy, and I suspect others have with Joe.

Not sure how much that makes sense, as I'm kind of babbling before getting ready for class, but there you have it.

[myriad69.livejournal.com]

A friend of mine teaches media culture at the University of Calgary, and HCL is one of her favourite films to teach. In fact, I borrowed her copy when I finally got to see it a few weeks ago. Afterwards I said to her "so, the homoerotic content isn't really subtext, is it?" "Nope, it's complete and total text." she replied. And that's exactly how she teaches it.