BL for Gays. Realities without homophobia. Some aspects you might like.
Weaponizing BL to fight homophobia.
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Introduction
This essay is an element to be used in weaponizing BL to fight homophobia. By helping this genera we help ourselves.
Also, it is medium where we can imagine life without homophobia and perhaps increase our expectations from society.
There are aspects of BLs which make them a refreshing alternative to Gay dramas in the West. You might not want to make it a regular thing to watch them, but occasionally they are a good and different alternative.
These are the reasons you might enjoy a few.
[1] They aren’t Homophobic Trauma Dramas.
Often they are just stories where the characters just happen to be Gay.
Generally there aren’t Gay bashings. No agonizing episodes of self-acceptance of being Gay. No dreadful homophobic persecution. No raging Christians. No raging Christian parents. The general society they exist in isn’t composed of raging homophobes. The Korean BLs are somewhat an exception to this.
Sometimes you need a break from the reality of the homophobic world. BL will provide that.
They are dramas that take place in a world without prejudice against Gays. The usual villian is the ex-girl friend who is jealous and becomes psychotic. I remind people it is straight women writing this for straight women.
I am not saying that there shouldn’t be drama telling the stories of Americans living in homophobic America. It is just by the time I started watching BL, I was 68 and I have seen dozens of plays and movies like this.
I don’t need to see one more. I need to see a Gay movie that is fun. I need to see dramas which exist in a world which isn’t homophobic like America or not homophobic at all. Where the story is about two men, but a romance like romances in general. Where the theme of homophobia is not dominating.
I want to see dramas where a man is into another man, but the story is about something other than dealing with homophobia.
This drama exist in a reality where homophobia isn’t part of the drama at all.
https://www.viki.com/tv/36410c-history-3-trapped
[2] A great many are high school and college romances in a non-homophobic setting where it is just another romance.
I graduated from high school in 1970 and from college in 1974. In those days, being Gay was an extremely guarded secret. I was afraid of being drunk since I might say something that would out myself. I didn’t connect with another Gay person until a couple years out of college.
I never dated or had a romance or even meet a Gay person for friendship during high school or college.
When I was in college there was one last meeting of the newly formed student organization before I was to graduate from college and I resolved to go to it. I stood in the park in the dark at night across from the place where the Gay student meeting was supposed to take place. I stood in the park across the street for the entire meeting, and then watched the people exit and leave. Then I left to go home also. I just couldn’t bring myself to cross the street.
So I didn’t date in college, I didn’t have a romance, or have a Gay friend.
So in watching the BLs I can see a life that was never possible for me, and is not possible for most Gays in the English-speaking world.
On Viki it is episodes 5 to 8.
https://www.viki.com/tv/36096c-history-2
On YouTube.
[3] Supernatural dramas don’t exist in the Christian cosmology.
Supernatural dramas don’t involve Gothic costumes and lots of wearing black. They don’t exist in a polarized universe of good vs. evil. There can be demons and bad spirits, but they don’t exist in a Biblical universe.
The dramas will often involve much more color not in darkness or gloomy environments.
Persons get reincarnated. People get into romances with ghosts.
A vampire drama will not have a priest or crosses or any Christian thing.
This drama involves a romance between a ghost and a person who visits his grave sides. It is a bright sunny graveyard with shrines to the dead that is rather pleasant. Nothing is Gothic.
Warning, GMMMTV dramas are high in sugar.
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLAej3-wF5w6hthI9qD5mA_AoOCOV0srzM
In this Strongberry product the ghost and Gay person end up fucking alot. It seems to be Taoist.
[4] No Christians and Christian homophobia. No debates over the Bible and homosexuality.
Thailand is 1% Christian, Taiwan 5% Christian, Japan is 1.5%, Vietnam 7,1%, China is 1.5%.
Korea has 35.3% Christians which are often strongly homophobic. However, what BL series that are produced there often don’t have homophobic Christianity within them.
Philippines is 89% Christian. They do deal with religious subjects sometimes. Filipino BL production is limited. Even with the prevalence of Christianity, many BL productions there are done as if religious prejudice isn’t an issue.
The populations of these societies with the exception of Korea and Philippines couldn’t care less about what the different factions of Christians might think the Bible has to say about homosexuality. In these nations Christianity is a tiny alien religion which has a history of being hostile to the culture of these nations and in some cases associated with colonial powers. It these societies Christianity is often seen as a cult itself.
When religion is presented in the dramas it is Taoism or Buddhism or the indigenous religions. There might be shamans and other figures. They aren’t homophobic religious themes or events or persons.
So homophobia isn’t a theme, with maybe one or two exceptions, in BL dramas.
These dramas don’t exist within or contesting a homophobic environment and theology.
The following drama is a light parfait dessert in a universe where homophobia doesn’t exist.
Viki generally has better translations and subtitles. The link is to the Viki website, but they also have it on YouTube.
https://www.viki.com/tv/36971c-because-of-you-2020
Full playlist.
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLlH-Fr3fGKJBUiaFnOSBXzs_zuC8THUF4
[4] Different cultural forms:
They are of the Eastern and Southeastern Asia. So a lot of well-worn dramatic clichés of the West aren’t present, even though you will see that there are well worn clichés in East Asian and Southeast Asian dramas. This makes them novel, new, and intriguing.
Summary.
Watching BLs is like being in an alternative universe where homophobia largely doesn’t exist. It is about dramas where being Gay and fighting homophobia isn’t the central theme or even a peripheral theme.
So in watching, you escape our American reality where Evangelicals rant and rave and war ceaselessly against us, into a world where men who love men are dealing with the usual dramatic themes: adventures, supernatural, action dramas, romances, other types of struggles and other typical drama themes.
Once in a while this might be a welcome break.
Thanks for the multiple updates. there's always things here I don't find anywhere else ✨