#paranormal reomance

[absolutebl]

Why I Don’t Love Body Swap

I really am not a fan of body swap (or spirit possession), and before you ask, yes I include Big in this. I find it tests the actors’ a little too much, and there are very very few actors who are aware enough of their own bodies to carry the performance requirements off - generally you need to come from dance or physical comedy. (I talk about this kind of acting ability with regards to Saint.) 

I should preface this by saying, Vice Versa has only recently started, and I am enjoying it very much. This is not a criticism of it, I’m just using it as a jumping off point to talk about the body swap trope used in film - BL in particular.

Here are some of the ones I know of that use body swap as a narrative device. 

2017 HIStory: My Hero (Taiwan) 6/10 

Girl dies and her consciousness transfers into in the body of the boy who (maybe) had a crush on her boyfriend. She has a week to make her old boyfriend fall in love with her new body. On Viki.

First we should address the fact that if it’s a girl trapped in a boy’s body, it’s a girl and therefore her having a relationship with a man calls into question if this is BL at all. It IS queer, but is it gay? Grey area, as we often stray into with these narratives. This show, and Great Men Academy are particularly impacted by this quandary. 

ANALYSIS: I don’t have much to say about this one, I’ve only watched it a few times. I didn’t respond well to the actor playing the lead at all out the gate and I don’t think he handled being “inhabited by the spirit of a girl” very well. He never made me believe that was the case. Possession is a bit more loosey goosey than plain only body swap, a case could be argued how much of her consciousness would be in her sense memory of body movement, but still... eh, I never believed it. I know, fantastical premise, but as a watcher, the actor still needs to make me believe the innate truth of what i am watching. And Jiang Yun Lin just didn’t, maybe because it was his debut? 

2018 PickRome's Our Skyy episode (from Puppy Honey) (Thai) 5/10

Boyfriends accidentally body swap into each other. There’s some nice play on the height difference, This OffGun vehicle is cute and the first time we really got to see them playing affectionate boyfriends. Also the first time Off did soft on screen for us. Important to the cannon of their ship, but not my favorite. 

ANALYSIS: Sorry to the OffGun obsessives out there but this was one for the physical comedians out there. I talk about thsi with older actors playing younger characters but you HAVE to move differently. Teens, for example, are way loser in their spine and around their body posture and movement (often because of growth spurts, they clumsy af). Teens are all elbows and angles, and slouching. I don’t mind older actors playing younger, because I’d rather not see minors having to kiss etc... but rarely does the actor get thsi right. Off and Gun didn’t do this right either. They got the personality switch okay, and the aspects of scripted comedy done well too. But both these actors have very specific ways of walking and moving, and we are all very familiar with both. And frankly they shoudl be with each other’s quirks too but the time this show rolled around. But Off is ALWAYS Off and Gun is ALWAYS Gun, I never believed for one second they had switch bodies - even if Off was being unnaturally cuddly, smiley, and sweet. 

2022 Cupid's Last Wish (Thai) 6/10 

Brother and sister swap bodies. The sister remains in a coma (inside her bother’s body) which the brother, inside his sister’s body, has to go on a quest to rectify the situation. Win is such an incredibly unlikeable character I really struggled with this show, no skin off Mix’s acting, but holy fucking irredeemable tsundere. The final ep tried (and for some it may have been successful) but even EarthMix’s chemistry (which has improved since Thousand Stars) didn’t save it.  On YouTube.

ANALYSIS: Mix and Jan actually did better than I was expecting in this swap. But I think it was mostly Jan. Mix is a decent actor, don’t get me wrong, and he was handed a very difficult part to play (I found his character highly unlikable). But Jan was pulling a lot more weight to make them look like they were actually in each others body then he was. Now Mix is relatively new to acting, and he’s the lead, while Jan is experiences and a secondary couple, so the weight should be in this direction. Also there’s a real challenge when the body swap is male/female, not only skeletal structures but the way flesh is distributed on bone (external sex characteristics). We are all profoundly effected by puberty and self-consciousness about different parts of the body, which means that most women and the men move differently. Especially in the context of this narrative where neither character is intended to be trans or body dysmorphic. Jan was a bit better, she made her movements bigger, widened her stance, pulled back and stacked her spine differently (men tend to slouch snd support from the lower back - stomach, women from the upper one - boobs). But she still didn’t exactly move like Mix. And Mix never looked like he was trapped in a girls body. (Smaller feet, stance and stride change, pelvic position, even how you stand in a relaxed position, it should be slightly different for him to convey being trapped in a small, slighter body, with different flesh distribution.) 

Am I nitpicking? Sure, it’s what I do. 

2019 Great Men Academy (Thai) 6/10 

Love has a crush on popular Vier who goes to an all boys challenge school. She meets a unicorn and wishes to get close to him. Love wakes up to find herself changed into a guy so she can attend the same school. Difficult to get hold of. 

ANALYSIS: This one is a body swap where it’s a girl whose body is turned into a man’s, so there is no “other character” to compare too. That makes it I think a lot easier on the actor because he gets to interpret what she becomes physically because of the transformation (and we don’t have something to compare it to constantly and visually). I actually think James did a pretty darn good job (he’s an experienced actor). This is one of my favorite body swap executions. That said, I always think there would be a period of adjustment, a physical adaptation to the awkwardness of inhabiting someone else’s skin even if it’s yours transformed - in terms of clumsiness, spacial awareness, which James managed to touch on with this show but should have been pushed into a bit more for humor if nothing else. But this is really difficult to do. 

2022 Vice Versa (Thai) - still airing at time for writing, unrated 

This one showcases boys body swapping into other boys bodies, but played by all four actors back & forth on screen with each other. On YouTube. 

ANALYSIS: Please don’t get me wrong, I really love Ohm & Nanon. But, none of these actors physically move, vocally speak (cadence, tone) like their counterparts. And as the secondaries in this show, it is on Ohm and Nanon to do the hard work in this matter, to attempt to match to their respective lead actor. In the end, I just do not believe that any of them have swapped bodies. When you see Nanon, he doesn’t hold himself the way to Jimmy does. He doesn’t have Jimmy’s arrogance and pride, or that sort of svelte beauty of physicality. Jimmy is elegant about his movements, precise and smooth. He inhabits space with care. Nanon does not. With Ohm and Sea, it’s more that their voice cadence and tone are so completely different. 

So in scenes where we swap back-and-forth between the two playing the same part, I feel a profound disconnect. There’s just no way that is the same person, and the actors are not being directed to make it feel that way (or they’re not sophisticated or workshopped? enough to execute smoothly). It’s a little disappointing and, frankly, it makes me just a tiny bit annoyed whenever Nanon or Ohm is on screen, because it’s so much “oh THERE’S Nanon!” not the role he’s playing. 

It might have been a different story if they had been, heh he, swapped: Jimmy|Ohm versus Sea|Nanon. Because physically those match-ups move a little more like each other naturally. Jimmy is such an elegant and almost aggressive way of holding himself with that perfect posture, and Nanon just doesn't, he’s slouchy. Ohm is a bodybuilder and moves like an athlete, while Jimmy is more floaty like a dancer, but at least that’s a little bit closer to each other in the arena of body awareness. 

Frankly, I’m looking forward to it being more just JimmySea, and less OhmNanon on the same screen, and not just because... Jimmy, but because I’m finding this aspect so very jarring. And I do think a smart director will move towards just the dominant couple in this matter. 

A good example: What is the best examples of this kind of thing for me, weirdly, is actually Men in Black.

If you’ve ever seen this movie, Vincent D'Onofrio who plays the bug character is a truly remarkable physical comedian. It’s him inside his own body, but the entire time you NEVER forget that an alien creature is inside that body. That creature is not used to bipedal motion, to the smaller size, to talking with that voice box, and we know this ALL THE TIME. Yes he has makeup and CGI helping him, but that man can move his body.

Of course this isn’t the same as a body swap or a body move from one biological sex body to another, but D'Onofrio highlights how important it is to show with the way you inhabit space, hold your head, walk (stride, foot position), stiffen your spine, even breathing is different and when you switch bodies it manifests primarily in the physical.

Before you ask, Saint is the best BL actor I know at physicality performance, but I don’t know who he should swap with... 

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