Crucifix entwisted with Roses:Culture Study on BL Audience
Date Issued
2007
Date
2007
Author(s)
Chang, Yin-Huei
DOI
zh-TW
Abstract
The research starts with review of literatures on BL (Boy’s Love) in girls’ manga in Taiwan. It is found that BL, as a unique genre, does not feature description of homosexual relationships. In addition, it is attempted to find shared characteristics in BL audience through in-depth Interview, results ff which are demonstrated in form of history, which is mainly composed of BL reading experiences, gender consciousness, and life experience. Since existing literatures do not included enough discussions on gender consciousness of the audience, four research questions concerning BL audience are raised in the research:
1. Gender identity and sexuality
2. Life experiences and gender consciousness
3. Source of satisfaction in reading BL
4. and recreating of BL reading meaningfulness.
In past researches, it is inferred that there are only heterosexual female BL audience, and no male ones. However, it is found in this research that female BL audience in Taiwan are not all heterosexual. Instead, there are also bisexual ones. furthermore, there are indeed male BL audience in Taiwan, either bisexual or homosexual. It is clear that female BL audience are against femininity in their gender. With description of life experience and gender consciousness, these female audience are demonstrated as challenging gender stereotype and heterosexuality structure. They refuse to be defined as weak, dependent losers, and are tired of being criticized on their look.
Female BL audience love BL stories not only because they can see unconventional male characters, but also because they could avoid being gazed as in heterosexual stories. The most important thing is, BL enables the audience to imagine a “world of fairness”, in which two persons interact with each other without anyone of them being socially, professionally or economically superior or inferior to the other. This utopian situation is missing in present pop heterosexual stories. As for male audience, they do not prefer typical gay stories, which are too bitter for them. Thus, unrealistically romantic atmosphere in BL serves as an escape from reality. Surprisingly, male audience view highly of romance, and romantic scenes seem to be more appealing to them than sexy ones. Knowing that BL is mainly created by females and thus based on female imaginations, they are aware that what they read is unrealistic, but do not find it intriguing.
Heterosexual or bisexual, female BL audience tend to accept that there are more than two genders existing, and learn to sympathize with gays and lesbians. Reading BL for fun, they also try to interact with gays in real life. Thus, we can say that they do have “queer moments” when reading BL. BL has implanted in these audience seeds of gender rebellion, which have not yet budded. However, dominant values still attempt to confine unconventional audience of BL, with some BL community prohibiting certain types of topics posted on the Internet.
Subjects
BL
性別意識
生命史
女性氣質
抵抗
gender consciousness
Life history
femininity
resistance
Type
other
File(s)![Thumbnail Image]()
Loading...
Name
ntu-96-R92342002-1.pdf
Size
23.53 KB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum
(MD5):c8b7f5c6cfc21422526d54655f4d3cbf