Nancy Drew and Trixie Belden were products of their time. Nancy’s adventurous but chaste relationship with Ned Nickerson was completely befitting the 1930s in which she and her swain were created, and the adolescent flirtation between Trixie and Jim fit in perfectly with the cultural milieu of the 1940s of their time. But this is a new century, babe…
Same-gender relationships and GLBT characters are more accepted by our early 21st-Century society than they have been in previous decades, but still are capable of creating controversy. And they are even making their inroads in our GDIT neighborhood…
Perhaps the first GDIT girl-sleuth one could suspect was not entirely “straight” was, perhaps, Gogol’s Zenna Zardonic, but those who have closely followed the career of our hostess-with-the-mostest Deanna’s Watertown sleuths may have suspected that there was more between her famous lead characters Deanna Taylor and Tracey Brown than just friendship! Our fabulous hostess, in the culmination of her crackling tale Clue of the Gold Locket, then affirmed, with the most delicate and tasteful touch, that the friendship between her two lead characters has turned into a romance as well! I for one cannot imagine a same-gender romance introduced with more sensitivity and taste!
Snowden too has seen gay and bisexual characters appear in their ranks. In Ransom, Revelation, and Redemption, we discover that our troubled young genius Leslie Morgan is a bisexual young lady torn by her competing attractions to Jimmy Housely and Serenity Mabrey. Then, in Green-Eyed Monster, Leslie falls for the Snoops’ first openly gay main character, the quiet, compulsively organized musician Cora Peabody, only to nearly destroy herself over the self-loathing unleashed in the wake of the crisis of Secret of Camp Evergreen. By the time the Darius Allen Detective Club came into being with The Artemis Adventure, Leslie and Cora have become a much more settled couple, but Jimmy Housely still tugs at the edge of Leslie’s divided heart. And don’t forget that the first hint of a gay character in Snowden was the hint that Abbie Dwight’s first crush Dakota Finley liked boys more than girls…
One must wonder how same-gender romances and GLBT characters play in the world of girl-sleuth fiction. To me, it’s a question not unlike my previous musings about boyfriends and girl sleuths; where do they fit? In the case of Deanna Taylor and Tracey Brown, or Leslie Morgan and Cora Peabody, it’s a romance between sleuths; how does that play out? Might their relationships inconvenience or disrupt their sleuthing? Might the thought of a Tracey or Cora in peril adversely impact the way a Deanna Taylor or Leslie Morgan attacks a mystery? Or might the knowledge that their inamorata is in distress make them better detectives? Are GLBT characters in our fiction even relevant, or should we stay away from the issue generally?
The larger question, though, is one of audience. Is a reader brought up on Nancy’s chaste passion for Ned Nickerson or Trixie’s adolescent puppy-love for Jim Frayne prepared for tales in which new-age Nancys are romantically involved with Georges or Besses, or 21st-Century bisexual Trixies find themselves struggling with adolescent attractions to gay Honeys? Do such affairs of the heart have any place in girl-sleuth fiction, or are they at best distractions—at worst, ruinous and demoralizing? I suspect that this is a question of the individual reader; the fan who finds nothing unusual or unseemly about GLBT persons in real life will probably find nothing out-of-sorts about GLBT girl sleuths or other characters, while the reader who does not like or accept such things will be turned away from such tales and characters.
So what is the sentiment out there? GLBT issues are a controversial fact of real life, so I’m sure there are plenty of opinions out there about GLBT issues in the world of girl-sleuthing! Speak up!
I'm totally cool with it! If anything, your (Mistoffelees) handling of the issue was both tasteful and touching. And Deanna's relationship with Tracey was done masterfully as well.
ReplyDeleteAnd what I really liked was that in your stories, neither of you shied away from the idea that such a thing can be considered taboo in society. Deanna lightly touched upon it (her parents are the coolest, seriously!), but you really sank your teeth into it, Mister M. And I think it's good to realize that there are chaps out there who will make fun/discriminate our bisexual/homosexual characters, and that the struggle to live with this identity is made even harder because of those jerkfaces.
Anyway, that's just me.
- Orpheus
as long as it's character driven and not based on the idea that there "should" be a gay character in the story. Otherwise let all come!
ReplyDeleteWell said Mr. M. We are in the 21st century now and not living in the past.
ReplyDeleteI also agree with Mr. O but there is a larger point, I hold the characters to the same standards as a heterosexual couple, in other words maintain the pg-13 and not cross the line into more adult behaviors.
And Erikson is also correct, what goes into the story should be left up to the individual author's discretion and not pressured into anything they want to write or draw...
ReplyDeleteGay, straight, they're all silly little girls anyway. So long as the story is appropriate for the group, go ahead and write what you will.
ReplyDelete