Not done yet, apparently

[rivkat]

Thoughts inspired by cryptoxin's post, among others: No doubt where you stand on Recent LJ Events depends in part on where you sit. Here's where I sit: I don't consider myself a member of HP fandom, but my primary fandom for the last few years has been Smallville.

Here are some pictures of people the narrative told us were 15:

That's the poster advertising the show, plastered everywhere in public in mid-2001. Then there's the episode "Nicodemus":



So we're supposed to desire them -- bluntly, we're supposed to fantasize about fucking them -- but we're not supposted to say that. And we're not supposed to share our fantasies, because that would be sick. Contradictory and hypocritical are words you could use about mainstream depictions of adolescent sexuality -- which is not to accuse anyone in this debate, but to point out that the American social context is, at best, confusing. And to say that I'm basically with coffeeandink; one of the things I want from fandom as a community of women is the ability to say, "hey, that emperor [or in this case, kid] isn't wearing any clothes!"

NYU law professor Amy Adler wrote a very interesting piece, The Perverse Law of Child Pornography, available here, arguing that our cultural and legal discourses about child porn contribute to the further sexualization of children. I recommend it to those interested in the theoretical side of all this.

Comments

[bagheera-san.livejournal.com]

So we're supposed to desire them -- bluntly, we're supposed to fantasize about fucking them -- but we're not supposted to say that.
*claps*

For me, the moral issue of underage fictional porn often has very little to do with the age of the characters involved, and far more with a)how they are depicted (in terms of sexual maturity) by the source b)how the author deals with their age and maturity and c) the power dynamic between the characters.
That said, Smallville's a pretty difficult thing when it comes to all three points. The main issue is obviously Clark/Lex, and while they will eventually be pretty perfectly matched in terms of power as archenemies, they certainly aren't in S1. If an author wants to depict Lex as corrupting/seducing/abusing his position as older friend/mentor, then that's fairly easy to do. However, that has very little to do with age. Lana is of age in S5/6 and she and Lex still aren't equals in terms of power or experience.

In an case, Smallville depicts teenagers extremely preoccupied with romance and sexuality from day one. HP, on the other hand, has only been doing so for the last couple of books, and then still fairly harmlessly (nothing like Clark and Desiree).

[rivkat.livejournal.com]

Early SV fic was often either explicitly concerned with the age of consent (or the then-in-effect ban on homosexual conduct in Kansas) or aged the characters up a bit. Specific stories, and I think SV fandom more generally, engaged with the question of whether it's legitimate for a 21-year-old to fuck a 15-year-old -- I remember one story in particular where Lex had already gotten in trouble for sexual conduct with a minor. Fandom, while certainly oversexualizing and using the "everyone's gay!" fantasy with a vengeance, was also more honest about teen sexuality than the official texts.