Abstract
The rise of Boys’ Love (BL) TV series in Thailand over the past decade has sparked critical attention from both academics and journalists alike. Rather than rehashing the trajectory of this development, we analyze Thai popular culture as a contested sexual and political space in which BL performs a paradoxical function within Thailand’s contemporary crisis dominated by a royalist military junta with a penchant for pinkwashing. Through adopting and reappropriating Korean and Japanese BL aesthetics, we argue that BL culture in Thailand recasts such East Asian idolization with its own characteristics, yielding the dual effect of simultaneously bolstering yet challenging Thai discourses on both homosexuality and monarchized military politics.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 1039-1043 |
| Number of pages | 5 |
| Journal | Feminist Media Studies |
| Volume | 21 |
| Issue number | 6 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - 2021 |
Bibliographical note
Publisher Copyright:© 2021 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.
Keywords
- Boys’ love
- Hallyu
- Thailand
- conjunctural analysis
- cultural politics
- queer Asia
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Gender Studies
- Communication
- Visual Arts and Performing Arts