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rmWhen I worked as a dominatrix, clients were only memorable for any of three possible reasons: particularly specific or unusual fetishes (i.e., the guy who insisted I wear a back-button blouse and gave me scripts to read about "red sunsets and red asses"); the financially and socially troublesome (i.e., men who tried to bargain for more time or less expense and/or were rude to me to achieve it); and people I genuinely liked.
While the other stories are, inevitably, a lot more amusing, today I want to talk about the people I liked, because when you're friendly and cordial and even social with someone who pays you a great deal of money for a service, that is an interesting thing, isn't it? It's certainly a tricky thing.
Relationships of this ilk used to be quite common and their frequency of existence well-acknowledged. And, while today they don't particularly pervade our world any less, we're so much more hesitant to call them as they are and so largely ill-informed about how to navigate them deftly.
Interactions of this nature litter my life in various ways. My former profession quite aside, it's worth noting that I also live on the other side of the equation. I spend a great deal of money with my tailor and, as you know from the photos, when she's about in town, we're also social. Is that socializing and fondness genuine? Of course. But is it also somewhat dictated by the mutual benefits of mutual enthusiasm because of the financial transaction that is central between us? Oh yes.
These transactional friendships and acquaintanceships exist in other parts of my life as well: the chocolate store owner who gives Patty and I free chocolates because she talks with him about the chocolate shop she worked at and I about my childhood in New York. He enjoys us and our love of what he does. He also enjoys our money, and we, the free samples.
Relationships of this type exist in all of our lives to varying degrees, and in the modern world where we know so little of patronage we often mistake them, to problematic end, for interactions without boundaries or for moments wherein we are the exception some sort of rule.
One of the places where I see it the most keenly -- and with the most personal discomfort -- is, of course, fandom. For those of you who don't necessarily play in the sandboxes in which I play, I will note that there was a con in the Torchwood fandom this past weekend that was a for-profit meet-the-celebrities con, which, for the purposes of this discussion, is something I need to make a point of differentiating from fan-run cons, that, in addition to celebrity guests, also have fan and/or academic programming.
Cons of the ilk that took place this weekend often cost a good deal of money to attend (usually much moreso than fan-run cons) and have levels of membership (uncommon at fan-run cons), wherein the more you pay, the more access you get to the celebrities in question.
I do not, for the record, find this gauche (which is what I think some people think I think). But I do find it personally something I can't quite bring myself to engage in (however occasionally tempting) because of where I exist on the fan-pro continuum and the degree to which I'm a little too hyper-aware of the politics of these things, but that is no one's problem or concern but my own.
I do, however, find myself in a frequent state of surprise over how much people just don't get things about the transactional friendships and acquaintances they have with the celebrity guests at these types of events.
Historically, patronage of the arts was used (and as we'll see, continues to be used) to convey and experience many things, which you can break down, more or less, into the three P's: pleasure, prestige and piety. And whether we're talking about Renaissance religious art or going to a media con like Torchwood, the three P's are consistent.
Pleasure speaks for itself simply ("it is fun to be here") and also not so simply ("I am enjoying participating in this fantasy").
Prestige works on a few levels ("I can afford to go to this event," "I can afford this status at this event," "This guest told me xyz," "That guest and I had drinks," "So-and-so complimented my dress").
Piety, of course, becomes about being a true believer ("I'm a real fan," "I go to everything so-and-so appears at," "I always defend this guest's actions").
Yet, even as historical patronage is enacted in these situations, the modern world is not equipped to acknowledge it for what it is, which is a transactional relationship. When you pay for that ticket to that event with the smart party with the celebrity guests or what have you, you are not paying for that celebrity to be your friend or to give you special access -- whether to themselves, their private sphere, or information about their work.
But you are, most certainly, paying for their company, their cordiality in a certain setting. And as happy as you are to experience this, that you will gladly fork over your money for their time (and their time is worth money, as much as the status, piety and pleasure you consciously or subconsciously are buying via participation is worth the fee you choose to pay), they are happy that you want to. It validates their art; it helps pay their bills; it elevates their own status. It is a symbiotic transactional relationship, that is not in any way based on lies, unless we start telling ourselves them.
Now, sometimes real and genuine friendships do come out of these transactional social moments: just as my tailor and I have drinks, just as an old client and I called to check in on each other after 9/11, just as the man who owns the chocolate store likes to discuss walnut buttercreams with Patty.
But my point in this isn't that the interactions of patronage can become "real," like some eventual Pinocchio of affection. Rather, my point is that they are real and sincere and pleasant and a perfectly reasonable investment for many people for a variety of different reasons.
But in lacking a good word for them in the modern world, we must not, I feel, use other words for them in intentionally misleading ways (as I feel many in fandom, and other situations in which these types of relationships exist, do), because it diminishes the loveliness of the tradition the patrons (and in the point of this post, fans) are paying into, as surely as it diminishes the high-wire art of the access and -- dare I say it (with a wink and a nod considering my own former profession) -- services, the creator provides.
Because people are social animals, it is in our nature to enact social ritual, and ritual, in particular, is a high-value thing. In transactional friendships and acquaintances the ritual is central, and to ignore it in favor of a story of organic interaction, not only gives lie to the nature of an event still personal for all its financial component, but also makes the very things paid for and so gently delivered -- pleasure, piety and position -- less intricate, less lovely, and less valuable for our insistence on turning our heads away from this ever so peculiar balancing act of mutual benefit and symbiotic need.
While the other stories are, inevitably, a lot more amusing, today I want to talk about the people I liked, because when you're friendly and cordial and even social with someone who pays you a great deal of money for a service, that is an interesting thing, isn't it? It's certainly a tricky thing.
Relationships of this ilk used to be quite common and their frequency of existence well-acknowledged. And, while today they don't particularly pervade our world any less, we're so much more hesitant to call them as they are and so largely ill-informed about how to navigate them deftly.
Interactions of this nature litter my life in various ways. My former profession quite aside, it's worth noting that I also live on the other side of the equation. I spend a great deal of money with my tailor and, as you know from the photos, when she's about in town, we're also social. Is that socializing and fondness genuine? Of course. But is it also somewhat dictated by the mutual benefits of mutual enthusiasm because of the financial transaction that is central between us? Oh yes.
These transactional friendships and acquaintanceships exist in other parts of my life as well: the chocolate store owner who gives Patty and I free chocolates because she talks with him about the chocolate shop she worked at and I about my childhood in New York. He enjoys us and our love of what he does. He also enjoys our money, and we, the free samples.
Relationships of this type exist in all of our lives to varying degrees, and in the modern world where we know so little of patronage we often mistake them, to problematic end, for interactions without boundaries or for moments wherein we are the exception some sort of rule.
One of the places where I see it the most keenly -- and with the most personal discomfort -- is, of course, fandom. For those of you who don't necessarily play in the sandboxes in which I play, I will note that there was a con in the Torchwood fandom this past weekend that was a for-profit meet-the-celebrities con, which, for the purposes of this discussion, is something I need to make a point of differentiating from fan-run cons, that, in addition to celebrity guests, also have fan and/or academic programming.
Cons of the ilk that took place this weekend often cost a good deal of money to attend (usually much moreso than fan-run cons) and have levels of membership (uncommon at fan-run cons), wherein the more you pay, the more access you get to the celebrities in question.
I do not, for the record, find this gauche (which is what I think some people think I think). But I do find it personally something I can't quite bring myself to engage in (however occasionally tempting) because of where I exist on the fan-pro continuum and the degree to which I'm a little too hyper-aware of the politics of these things, but that is no one's problem or concern but my own.
I do, however, find myself in a frequent state of surprise over how much people just don't get things about the transactional friendships and acquaintances they have with the celebrity guests at these types of events.
Historically, patronage of the arts was used (and as we'll see, continues to be used) to convey and experience many things, which you can break down, more or less, into the three P's: pleasure, prestige and piety. And whether we're talking about Renaissance religious art or going to a media con like Torchwood, the three P's are consistent.
Pleasure speaks for itself simply ("it is fun to be here") and also not so simply ("I am enjoying participating in this fantasy").
Prestige works on a few levels ("I can afford to go to this event," "I can afford this status at this event," "This guest told me xyz," "That guest and I had drinks," "So-and-so complimented my dress").
Piety, of course, becomes about being a true believer ("I'm a real fan," "I go to everything so-and-so appears at," "I always defend this guest's actions").
Yet, even as historical patronage is enacted in these situations, the modern world is not equipped to acknowledge it for what it is, which is a transactional relationship. When you pay for that ticket to that event with the smart party with the celebrity guests or what have you, you are not paying for that celebrity to be your friend or to give you special access -- whether to themselves, their private sphere, or information about their work.
But you are, most certainly, paying for their company, their cordiality in a certain setting. And as happy as you are to experience this, that you will gladly fork over your money for their time (and their time is worth money, as much as the status, piety and pleasure you consciously or subconsciously are buying via participation is worth the fee you choose to pay), they are happy that you want to. It validates their art; it helps pay their bills; it elevates their own status. It is a symbiotic transactional relationship, that is not in any way based on lies, unless we start telling ourselves them.
Now, sometimes real and genuine friendships do come out of these transactional social moments: just as my tailor and I have drinks, just as an old client and I called to check in on each other after 9/11, just as the man who owns the chocolate store likes to discuss walnut buttercreams with Patty.
But my point in this isn't that the interactions of patronage can become "real," like some eventual Pinocchio of affection. Rather, my point is that they are real and sincere and pleasant and a perfectly reasonable investment for many people for a variety of different reasons.
But in lacking a good word for them in the modern world, we must not, I feel, use other words for them in intentionally misleading ways (as I feel many in fandom, and other situations in which these types of relationships exist, do), because it diminishes the loveliness of the tradition the patrons (and in the point of this post, fans) are paying into, as surely as it diminishes the high-wire art of the access and -- dare I say it (with a wink and a nod considering my own former profession) -- services, the creator provides.
Because people are social animals, it is in our nature to enact social ritual, and ritual, in particular, is a high-value thing. In transactional friendships and acquaintances the ritual is central, and to ignore it in favor of a story of organic interaction, not only gives lie to the nature of an event still personal for all its financial component, but also makes the very things paid for and so gently delivered -- pleasure, piety and position -- less intricate, less lovely, and less valuable for our insistence on turning our heads away from this ever so peculiar balancing act of mutual benefit and symbiotic need.
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no subject
Date: 2009-06-09 02:58 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-06-09 03:07 pm (UTC)I agree on the illusion, I suppose I wonder about the words that go with the act, at what point does it become fraud (to continue the transactional theme)and therefore an unfair transaction.
But yes, more when you have time :)
no subject
Date: 2009-06-09 03:09 pm (UTC)The next one of these (it's the summer con season how we interact with celebrity theme) I think is going to be about the weird advantage the professions that care for the flesh give us in understanding these nuances. Doctors, whores and tailors. Really.
no subject
Date: 2009-06-09 10:29 pm (UTC)There's a Torchwood fic in there somewhere, I suspect...
no subject
Date: 2009-06-11 06:15 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-06-11 06:19 pm (UTC)I think one of the problems, both with RPS (which again, I don't think is inherently not okay and which I have written) and with these fan/celebrity interactions in general, is all disclaimers aside, people so want the stories, the performed intimacy, the critical speculation to be true, and they hide it poorly.
no subject
Date: 2009-06-12 06:35 am (UTC)Speaking of the FPS fantasy of being asked by the pros to take over, maybe one of the problems with Torchsong, fans and boundaries is that RTD is the ultimate fanboy turned pro, so the whole of the New Who area has that slightly weird sense that the borders are softer there than anywhere else, and maybe that spills over into fannish interactions with the actors. Or perhaps it's just an inherent difference in the British fan scene. With everything being so much smaller and closer together and - perhaps - from a sense of proprietorship about the BBC, since it's publically funded I get a distinct sense that there always have been additional areas of overlap between fans and pros which haven't exactly helped in terms of keeping boundaries clear. For example, the great slash wars of a particular BBC cult show of the 1970s were, I gathered, largely provoked by the fact that at a time when one of the leading BNFs was dating one of the cast her fannish friends were haivng a good deal of social interaction with the cast members, and one of those fans gave an assurance to one of the leading actors that she would never permit slash to be written or published in the fandom, an assurance which she quite clearly had no authority either to give or to enforce, but which led to all sorts of trouble later on.
no subject
Date: 2009-06-12 06:45 am (UTC)Anyway, it's a lot more than RTD as fanboy, I think, since many, many of the current DW/TW/SJA writers (and I include tie-in novels and the like here) were at a given point fanfic writers (several have told me this personally, none of them particularly make a secret of it, I assume this isn't news to anyone) and many of the actors grew up loving the show like mad.
Sadly though, I wish this was why the boundaries fall down, but I don't think it is. I think a big part of the problem is we have a show with queer characters, an openly queer leading actor, a supporting cast that is totally chill about the whole thing (to the point of, if I'm being uncharitable, acting like straight girls in bars who make-out to get the attention of boys) and they're all happy to be all fan-service central about the slash. Meanwhile, there's a whole bunch of fan people who are apparently only capable of perceiving queer men as fantasies they themselves control as opposed to real people (actors) or even portrayals of people (characters) they most certainly don't control.
What turns anyone on is always going to have some elements of fetishization, and that's fine, but I really feel like fandom would behave with less utter lunacy if they understood that gay people exist without their wanking to it. And while fandom is certainly not universally like this, I do think there are large swathes whose only gay friends are the ones they see on their TV screen. And I think we all suffer for it.
no subject
Date: 2009-06-29 05:41 am (UTC)As someone who reads and writes RPS, I don't have any desire for the people to actually be as I write them. I know those people exist, and you aren't saying it's everyone; it is perhaps my own projection, but I don't get that feeling from the fic I read either. Even the fans who squee often about the interactions of the celebs at conventions and such, I don't get the sense they earnestly believe their slash goggles are the truth.
Just as in FPS, I look at a work of fiction, recognize that the author's intent is not at all the direction I'm going and go there anyone cause it's fun to play with the toys, for RPS, I recognize that the people's lives aren't anything like I write them. Does that make sense? The boundaries are squishier and the faux pas worse with real people, but I think the same gleeful readiness to look at small pieces of evidence and ignore the true explanation (or "true" in fiction as I debate that fiction has an essential truth—a discussion for another day) in favor of a more entertaining interpretation is at play in both RPS and FPS.
I honestly can't think of anything worse than my RPS pairing actually getting together. I don't think I could write it then.
(Oh, and there's a whole other tangent in here about Supernatural fandom, and how Misha Collins, by actually knowing Jensen and Jared and still semi-jokingly talking about them hooking up, and talking about how he reads slash, makes everything in SPN RPS fandom that much ookier…)
no subject
Date: 2009-06-12 02:01 pm (UTC)YES, a thousand times over. I think one of the reasons I rarely read and have only once written RPS (a drabble under lock at that!) is that line where 'persona' ends and 'person' begins, and anything that feels intrusive or too 'Oh, I wish this was real' destroys my enjoyment.
no subject
Date: 2009-06-29 05:47 am (UTC)Prime example is Bruce Campbell. People ask him the most outrageous things, but it's with the understanding that this cantankerous, fan insulting bastard is his stage persona. We won't genuinely make him uncomfortable, and his insults of fannish obsession are actually backhanded compliments, given his willingness to do anything for his fans.
Contrast that to a Sean Astin, whose every interaction is earnest and heartfelt. I'd much rather see Bruce Campbell.
I heard an interview on NPR a while ago, done by the agent of Bruce Campbell's book, about him navigating this tricky relationship, where he is both fan and colleague. And when he breaks through the persona to Bruce Campbell the person it is just as awkward as you would expect.