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

[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.