October 21, 2006
futuresex / lovesounds
"Slash fiction" takes its name from the slash in "K/S": a subcategory of Star Trek fan fiction given over to desublimating the deep love between Kirk and Spock. The slash, that is to say, might be imagined as the blade that cuts out the mediating stuff separating the pair in the televised version; at the same time, it's the third term which separates the K and S, even as it opens the path to a lil consummation. As a linguistic mark, it takes the place of what keeps them apart while allowing them to come together — it's the slash between men. As a sign-function, it's almost helplessly suggestive of the more humanly-charged role of the woman in Eve Kosofsky Sedgewick's famous analysis of triangulation:
[Between Men] attempted to demonstrate the immanence of men’s same-sex bonds, and their prohibitive structuration, to male-female bonds in nineteenth-century English literature…[The book] focused on the oppressive effects on women and men of a cultural system in which male-male desire became widely intelligible primarily by being routed through triangular desire involving a woman.— (Epistemology 15).
Surely this structural relation must have been on someone's mind in titling the current Justin Timberlake album. The two worlds of the title themselves don't do much but remind us that, though Justin sings and dances like a somewhat mechanical King of Pop, he'd rather be a Prince. But the slash tells a different story: the story of K/S, and of Sedgewick. The album itself, both in its sonic intertwinings and lyrics, is almost entirely about the great love between Justin Timberlake and Tim Mosely, who basically sing, rap and murmur romantic, sensual phrases to each other for about an hour, climaxing mid-album with the slinky, beautiful "What Goes Around...."
The album, that is to say, is J/T porn. Of course, per the analysis, this erotic drama must be disguised by the presence of a woman — so literally a figure rather than a person, or even a character, that she is named, in song after song, "Girl." She exists not at all, except as a convenience so Justin and Timbaland can rub up on each other in the sweetest and most lubricious ways; it's actually quite romantic, and probably better queer disco than Alcazar, Infernal, or Gnarls Barkley.
Posted by jane at October 21, 2006 07:50 AM | TrackBack