polcaontitanic

[polcaontitanic]

I will never be over the kind of queer representation we get in BL, especially Thai BL, because not only do you get, even in a single show, a vast spectrum of mlm characters from bi-awakening jocks and stoners to soft boys and nerds to full-on femme-boys and kathoey folx...

YOU ALSO GET to see how each single character is allowed to act in a broad range of queer performance styles instead of being relegated to stock character traits like a camping queen or the sad repressed cowboy. So you have Tinn in My School President acting serious when he's doing his presidential duties but assertively flirtatious when he's trying to win over Gun and then being hilariously giddy or pouty when he's on the phone in his bedroom. Or you have Pat in Bad Buddy bro-ing out, acting cutesy with his partner, or in deep introspection on the verge of tears. And those are just two especially outstanding examples in a genre full of so many others!

All this means you also get a broader range of actor types that includes actors who present much more clearly as gay (whether they identify openly as such or it's just how they happen to appear), which is such an amazing thing to see for my little gay theater-kid heart. Like Oe-aew in I Promise You the Moon, I was told and repeated the fact to myself that there was very little space in the performance industry for actors whose queerness was too obvious, and that space was made only for the most flamboyant among us (and even then it was only the rare instance that they were more than a comedic side character). But seeing an actor like Gun--who, without naming his sexuality, visually presents like a femme twink and is clearly comfortable with exploring feminine and queer expression in his personal life--have a field where he gets to play such a vast range of rolls and not have it questioned is remarkable. And there are actors who have more subtle tells to a sensitive eye that then now have a place at the table where there used to be no chair at all. And creating an environment for those actors who present as queer means that those traits and gestures can be invested into the characters' queerness in a way that has previously been specifically avoided in a well-meant but homophobic attempt to disrupt gay stereotypes. (And I'd even reach to say it gives straight actors better opportunities to develop gay qualities in their characters.)

I'm so grateful to see a world where the variety of queerness for men can exist because it seemed so impossible not that long ago. I can recognize failures and flaws in this industry but there is no media to my knowledge that comes anywhere close to the kind of gay representation happening in the Asian BL world (especially if you include the reality shows in there!). And while that world is technically a fantasy world, it's built in a real professional industry by real people including a lot of queer-folks, and those fantasies they're crafting within that business are propositions for audiences to bring to fruition in their daily lives.

[polcaontitanic]

Is she on to something? lol