#james welker

[lurkingteapot]

I've been going through my collection of old (pre-2016 for the most part) academic papers on BL and thought, hey, why not re-read some of them and sum them up so folks can see whether they want to check them out in full?

Today's offering:

Beautiful, Borrowed, and Bent: “Boys’ Love” as Girls’ Love in Shōjo Manga by James Welker, originally presented at the Third International Convention of Asia Scholars, August 19–22, 2003, Singapore, and published in Signs, Vol. 31, No. 3, New Feminist Theories of Visual Culture (Spring 2006), pp. 841-870, UChicago Press. [Jstor]

Welker starts off with a brief explanation of what the BL genre is, what terminology he uses ("BL" as an umbrella term that includes the earlier names of tanbi, shōnen ai, yaoi, and the long-form 'boys' love'):

“Boys’ love” manga emerged as a subgenre of shōjo manga (girls’ comics) around 1970 just as women artists were taking over the shōjo market.(*) It quickly became among the most popular shōjo manga genres, and its creators became some of the best-loved artists in the industry. (* First published in the monthly Bessatsu shōjo komikku in December 1970, Keiko Takemiya’s “In the Sunroom” (Sanrūmu nite [1970] 1976) was probably the first boys’ love narrative. See Aoyama 1988, 188.) - Welker 2006:841

He goes on to challenge the common perception of BL as a genre "by straight women for straight women":

[T]he genre is widely considered to offer a liberatory sphere within which presumably heteronormative readers can experiment with romance and sexuality through identification with the beautiful boy characters. […] Members of the Japanese lesbian community have, however, pointed to boys’ love and other gender-bending manga as strong influences on them in their formative years […] Clearly boys’ love manga can be viewed through a different lens from that which most critics and scholars have been using, and hence the full potential of boys’ love is largely overlooked: that of liberating readers not just from patriarchy but from gender dualism and heteronormativity. - Welker 2006:842-843

He introduces the texts he will analyse (Takemiya Keiko's Song of Wind and Trees 風と木の詩 kaze to ki no uta, 1976-1984 and Hagio Motō's Heart of Thomas トーマの心臓 tōma no shinzō, 1974), and concludes the essay's intro section as follows:

This reading will employ lesbian critical theory, visual theory, and reader responses to these and similar texts to show how 1970s boys’ love manga is not merely queer on its surface but how it opened up space for some readers to experiment with marginalized gender and sexual practices and played a role in identity formation. - Welker 2006:843

Welker goes into the questions of applicability of theories that weren't originally developed for this specific context – visual theories were largely developed through film analysis; European and North American models of gender and feminist theory, while also having informed academic discourse in Japan, in their origin operate on culturally specific assumptions and need to be applied with care.

He talks about the tradition of androgynous and cross-dressing heroines of early shōjo manga and their connection to the earliest BL manga, the dilemma of the "beautiful boy" characters' gender and sex and how to read these – are they boys? idealised self-images of girls drawn onto boys' bodies? neither male nor female? sexless altogether?, and the way Japanese readers in the 1970s, already culturally familiar with gender performance through kabuki or the all-female Takarazuka Revue and similar troupes, received the gender-bending nature of BL stories. He also comments on the role fan interaction via magazines, and the way readers were learning about queer life in Japan:

By the early to mid-1980s, the magazines’ readers were learning in real terms about the world of Shinjuku ni-chōme, Tokyo’s well-known gay district, described as a world full of “beautiful boys like those in the world of shōjo manga” (Aran 1983, 15), as well as various aspects of lesbian life in Japan (Gekkō 1985). In spite of the connections drawn on the pages of these magazines, the possibility that these narratives might be seen to actually depict homosexuality remains broadly denied. To allow that the narratives might truly be about homosexuality—between these girls-cum-beautiful boys—would be an apparently unthinkable invitation to read the narratives as lesbian. - Welker 2006:857

Welker briefly explores how the example texts of Song of Wind and Trees and Heart of Thomas "serve many of the functions lesbian critics and theorists have outlined as roles of lesbian texts" (Welker 2006:858), then goes on to analyse the flower imagery of roses and lilies that is very prevalent in both titles, the intertextuality of these stories with European and French literature (and how the readers were expected to catch on to this intertextuality). On the transgressive and queering nature of writing and reading BL, he says:

[T]hrough acculturation to gender performance in Takarazuka and kabuki and by such cross-dressing manga icons as Sapphire and Oscar, as well as the deliberate ambiguity of the beautiful boy, the reader is encouraged to see not just a girl but herself within the world of boys’ love and, ultimately, is encouraged to explore homoerotic desire, either as a beautiful boy or as herself, either alone or with others, either as her fantasy or as her reality. […] Regardless of whether boys’ love manga were created merely to offer heterosexual readers a temporary respite from patriarchal restrictions on their desire, some readers found in identifying with the beautiful boy a way through the looking glass to a world outside the patriarchy. And regardless of whether he is read as a boy or a girl, the beautiful boy can be read as a lesbian. […] For readers whose experience of sexuality and gender contravenes heteronormativity, works like Song and Thomas offer narrative safe havens where they can experiment with identity, find affirmation, and develop the strength necessary to find others like themselves and a sense of belonging. - Welker 2006:865-866

I've been out of academia so long that I've lost any sense of what a good proportion of direct quotes to original text is, or whether it's even appropriate to quote as much as I did here. This is emphatically NOT an academic article in and of itself -- I'm posting on bloody tumblr. If anyone wants to add to this, I'll be thrilled.

One of the most commonly voiced criticisms of BL is that it's about, but not (or did not in significant part used to be) by or for gay men. This article does not address this point further—Welker does go into this in his more recent articles, iirc; if you've got beef with this aspect, @ him not me. I do however think it's worth noting that this 17-year-old article already recognises that the genre is queer, and has been since its inception.

[notmoreflippingelves]

Me walking up to the HBO Velma’s writer’s room:

[camyfilms]

DEAD POETS SOCIETY 1989

Boys, you must strive to find your own voice. Because the longer you wait to begin, the less likely you are to find it at all. Thoreau said, "Most men lead lives of quiet desperation." Don't be resigned to that. Break out!

[theyaoishelf]

We're back back back back back again! And this time with a guest! To celebrate pride, we're discussing BL scholarship with the fantastic Dr. James Welker! 

[erstwhile-punk-guerito]

[movie-titlecards]

Tom and Jerry: The Magic Ring (2001)

My rating: 3/10

Some might have considered the fact that, after padding the script using several metric tons of pure unadulterated tedium, they still couldn't quite make this thing an hour long, and come to the conclusion that this was a bad idea. Not so whoever made this movie, though, they persevered in the face of all common sense and reason, and now we get to suffer for their mistake.

[runawayballista]

i’ve only just started reading this but ooohhhh it’s good

[lurkingteapot]

It's here! I'm enjoying myself a lot and thought I'd share some bits and pieces, again, starting with the introduction.

Introduction: Boys Love (BL) Media and Its Asian Transfigurations by James Welker, in: Welker (editor), Queer Transfigurations. Boys Love Media in Asia. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2022. p. 1–16. [Jstor]

I took notes by hand while reading, tried to type them up as coherently as possible here.

BL is an umbrella term for all sorts of media (going by volume, the primary mode is still written – prose or manga) that depict male-male romantic and sexual relationships and are primarily marketed to young women. BL has had fans 'around the globe' since the 1980s, especially in East and Southeast Asia, though it really 'dramatically expanded in popularity in the current century'. (p. 1)

Asian BL fandoms do not exist in isolation from the rest of the world (p. 2)

queer as in a) gender/sexuality-related expressions that flout social norms, b) queering norms of (female) sexuality and c) creating breathing room for queer individuals (p. 2)

there's no clear line between BL and LGBTQ media (p. 2)

why 'transfiguration'? -> transit from one culture to another (p. 3)

BL: minor and often underground as a genre, still

4 overlapping attributes of BL and fandoms: 1) transnational + transcultural media phenomenon, 2) useful tool for unsettling gender and sexual norms, 3) cannot be separated from LGBTQ issues including politics, 4) BL is political (p. 4)

note on piracy of BL, its impact on Japanese producers, and how this is rarely discussed (*) (p-5)

1980s/1990s: BL makes it to Taiwan, Korea, China -> category blurring? (p. 5)

shipping as a part of BL fandom (p. 6)

legal issues in Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore (p. 7)

shipping/fan works were a part of BL culture from the 1970s onwards (cf. Welker 2015) (p. 7)

seme/uke dynamics + shifts? -> mutability of gender (p. 8)

way of alternatives to masc stereotypes for cishet men (fudanshi) (p. 8)

blurring of gay and straight? (p. 8/9)

taboos around BL in Japan arise because it's often sexual and women engage with it (p. 9)

elsewhere in Asia: BL often serves as 'first conscious contact' for middle-class Indian and Indonesian fans with homosexuality -> may prompt reconsideration of own preconceptions/ideas/religious doctrine. (p. 9)

"representational appropriation" of images of gay men (cf. Ishida 2007) (p. 10)

fans turning activist for queer rights in Taiwan (p. 10/11)

rosy image of Japan among gay male fans of BL in mainland China (p. 10)

BL as progressive force for good (p. 10)

impact of US lawmaking on international fan communities (p. 10)

fan wars in South Korea (odeokku vs hujoshi) ca 2016; -> more recently: SK version of yaoi ronsou? (p. 11)

BL queer in that it flouts and facilitates the flouting of sexual and gender norms, has been pushing cishet fans to think about queer rights and the social standing of queer folks, sometimes even pushed fans to activism (p. 12)

grouping chapters under national/regional headings potentially misleading -> borders not so clear in the lives of fans and the texts they engage with (p. 13)

(*) I would LOVE to read more about this personally, anyone got anything? point me!

… this took entirely too long and I REALLY need to work on my handwriting, but I hope this might've been interesting to some. If you read this book (or anything else from the realm of BL scholarship), feel free to hmu, I'm an amateur but I love to talk this sort of stuff!

[storybursts]

The Christmas Special Day 23: A Scooby-Doo! Christmas (2004)

The Christmas Special Day 23: A Scooby-Doo! Christmas (2004)

Director: Scott Jeralds Writer: Jonathan Collier & James Krieg Cast: Mindy Cohn, Grey DeLisle, Casey Kasem, Kathy Kinney, Frank Welker Plot: A group of kids find an enormous snowman in the woods. When they try to take its nose, it comes to life, removes its head, and hurls it at them, making them run away in a panic. Nearby, the gang in the Mystery Machine is on their way to Mill’s Corner to…

[gayrosen]

Florals by James Welker

I am so fortunate to have great friends, but can you imagine receiving beautiful floral photos each week as my great friend James encounters them on his and Ricky’s travels! Here are some photos as sent to me in 2023 and earlier this year! New Rochelle is great!

[abs0luteb4stard]

✨️WATCHING✨️

[jesuis-melodrama]

My Favourite Reasons For Why the Great War Started

1. Revolutionary Justice in an Unequal Caste-System Society.

I adore the IDW comics, it's the second Transformers media I consumed after the franchised Michael Bay films, and let me tell you – I was not expecting all these heavy explorations into bot psyche, romance, societal injustice, and redemption. Really, it seriously surprised me, I never expected to see actual canonical romance in the Transformers universe, it always struck me as the type of medium to focus on action first.

So – thank you, James Roberts and Alex Milne.

There's so many characters and arcs I could talk about – Cyclonus and Tailgate and Whirl; Chromedome and Rewind; poor poor Shockwave; whatever's going on with Prowl; Starscream, Bumblebee, and Windblade attempting to scrape Cybertron back together; that one time Rodimus and Megatron's charisma was so awe-inspiring, it made personality parasites explode – but I want to focus on how the Great War began in IDW.

It's the first media to suggest Megatron not as a power-hungry tyrant, but formerly as a member of Cybertron's suppressed working class forced to labour due to the alt-mode he was born with. Sick of and unwilling to accept the subjugation imposed upon him and fellow mechs like him, Megatron rises from miner to gladiator who eventually becomes powerful enough to seize power as a revolutionary and then ascends to the image of the all-mighty Lord Megatron that is synonymous with his name.

Optimus, on the other hand, had somewhat humble beginnings as a strict but fair and righteous police captain named Orion Pax struggling to provide justice in a society deeply embedded with corruption.

Although both Megatron and Optimus sought to revolutionise Cybertron into a world where all bots are equal and uninhibited from potential and free will by their alt-modes, they had very different ideologies and motivations on how and why to reach this goal. Megatron, especially, loses his way and path eventually, and continued his slaughter not for the means to an end, but because he began to crave the "pleasure" from the act.

Optimus didn't escape unscathed from tragic ramifications either: the mantle of leadership as the war dragged on for thousands of millennia weighed heavily upon him, so much that his later psyche in the comics could be described as suicidal.

But whatever that infects these two old bots in the future, young Megatron and Optimus were, in some strange way, allies, out of mutual respect and acknowledgement of the other if nothing else.

The war was initiated and continued by them, because they both believed in a better Cybertron, and millions of years later, thousands of atrocities after, unspeakable acts of war crimes, the Great War ended with both of them remembering what they were fighting for in the first place.

IDW's concept that Megatron was a gladiator turned revolutionary and Orion Pax became Optimus Prime who was inspired by Megatron's words made its way to the Transformers: Prime animated series, allowing this universe's rendition of the two titans to be voiced by Peter Cullen and Frank Welker, the legends themselves.

2. Lord Prime and Lord High Protector

Whatever contentions (of the many) that may be had with Michael Bay's re-imagining of this iconic franchise; you've gotta admit: the designs were cool.

Bay gave us Megatron's ram-head helmet, the astonishing CGI transformations, and the adorable Bumblebee design that has since become a classic of the character.

And according to Chris McFeely's video on the Great War, apparently, Bay's Transformers is the first Transformers media to introduce the idea that Megatron and Optimus had personal pre-war relations, some intimate form of brotherhood and camaraderie, while other adaptations at this point only alluded to their connection as rival leaders who rose to power at roughly the same time.

Bay took it a step further; Megatron isn't simply an opportunistic warlord making a grab for power, he was once a legitimate ruler holding an equal throne besides Optimus.

That's right, Bay crafted the title of Lord High Protector, a Cybertronian ruler of high status with authority over military affairs, ruling in tandem with the Lord Prime, Optimus, who was in charge of more civilian and spiritual duties.

It's interesting, this idea, because it implies far more depth to Optimus and Megatron's history, they must have been ruling together for quite some time before Megatron fastened his greedy claws on the All Spark.

I, for one, am curious in a series that explores how they ruled Cybertron together and how exactly this fracture came to be.

3. Megatron Dunks on a Dock Worker for the Fun of It

The classics of the classics, the first Transformers show to place the universe on the map: the archetypal G1 cartoon series that featured wacky shenanigans such as battling dinosaurs on a remote island or Soundwave and his Cassettes dancing with teenagers at a local gymnasium party.

G1 followed a very traditional hero-vs-villain formula, inspired by the Cold War tension at the time of airing and writing; there was no personal connections or noble aspirations for an equal society – Megatron was simply a campy, formidable scoundrel who yearned for power and Optimus Prime was the honourable, paternal everyday hero who rose to be the leader of the force resisting him and his army (at this point, Prime wasn't even a title, it was just Optimus' last name!).

Optimus Prime still had a previous form of Orion Pax, a dock worker rather than a police officer or an archivist, and Megatron was once an admired figure of Orion's, whose parasocial adoration was disintegrated when Megatron blew up Orion's workplace, critically injuring him and girlfriend, Ariel (soon to be Elita-1), and de-activating best friend, Dion. From the ashes of destruction, reconstructed by Alpha Trion, Orion became the battle-masked, audial-finned, red and blue paragon of justice that shouldered the burden of command in the war against Megatron and his evil Deceptions.

[theyaoishelf]

The Yaoi Shelf- June Schedule

Happy Pride! We're so excited to be back in studio! Here is our schedule for June!

This month we welcome the esteemed Dr. James Welker to the show to discuss BL scholarship!

[katrinahood]

Do you have any voice claims for your favorite CC characters? If so, what are they (if you're comfortable)?

I do have some voice claims for some CC characters! Here are some of them!

James Savage: Glenn Howerton

Amy Young: Melissa Fumero

Yann Toussaint: Terry Crews

Hannah Choi: Kym Hoi

Daniel Lambert: Marc Alaimo

Karen Knight: Kate Mulgrew

Jezebel Lopez, Gloria Hayes: Kimberly Brooks

Jack Archer: Andy Samberg

Carmen Martinez: Stephanie Beatriz

Isaac Bontemps, Ray Parker: Andre Braugher

Diego del Lobo: Jon Curry

Thaddeus Mulroney: Frank Welker

Martin Meunier: Corrine Kempa

Catherine Kelly: Shohreh Aghdashloo

Sirius Atwood: Marc Evan Jackson

Uriah Haddonfield: Hugh Laurie

[vital-information]

"What is unique to the Thai situation is that the khu-wai [boy-couples from yaoi] in fantasy and on screen have literally materialized. Actual gay couples embody BL aesthetics. The khu-rak-gay (gay-couple of two young femme males), and, to a lesser extent, the khu-gay (gay-couple of two masculine men) realize the idealized romance of khu-jin-gay (imagined gay-couple) for young women. The khu-rak-gay signifies both a gay-couple-in-love with each other as well as a gay-couple-that-is-loved by others, a distinction often conflated by BL consumers. The worldings of BL have increasingly penetrated mainstream media and gay lifeworlds. Cute boys exist in real life, are shaped by, and actively shape their portrayals, simultaneously emulating and resisting common tropes of BL and gay genres. Couples are made into idols via khu-wai, a Thai reworking of BL [and Korean] fan practices. Strikingly, these newly celebritized gay couples reverse the prior practice of using idols to create imagined couples. Rather, real gay couples are turned into stars. Recent Thai developments and trands in BL fandom index increasing acceptance of public homoeroticism and influence in the re-mediation of cultural flows that make locally palpable the tastes of modern, cosmopolitan 'Asia.'"

Kang-Nguyen Byung'chu Dredge, "Faen of Gay Faen: Realizing Boys Love in Thailand betwixt Imagination and Existence" in Queer Transfigurations: Boys Love Media in Asia, ed. James Welker, 2022

[citruscon]

This week's #ThrowbackThursday is dedicated to BL academia! Check out "BL Studies: Academic Perspectives & Your Questions'" presented by James Welker-as well as all of our other 2023 videos-here: