Korean Gay series gets global promotion and distribution in over a dozen languages through the power of the BL fandom.
Vicki alone has translated it into English and ten other languages, a movie which deals with the issue of Christian prejudice against Gays and conversion therapy among other things.
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A Global Blow Against Homophobia.
It becomes an international hit right away instead and will be watched by tens of millions.
What opportunities this might present to the Gay community will be discussed in the last section.
Non-English speaking movies do get translated after some time and they are then shown in art houses. This is not bad, these movies do get additional circulation. However, their audiences are not big.
However, this Gay drama series is perceived to be a BL drama series by the BL fandom who are eagerly awaiting it.
This is a Teen Vogue article, Oct. 15, 2024, titled, “Love in the Big City K-Drama: Where to Watch, Release Date, Cast, and Everything You Need to Know: BL enthusiasts, are we ready? The article discusses the book the series is based on, and the movie itself.
https://www.teenvogue.com/story/love-in-the-big-city-k-drama-everything-you-need-to-know
As a consequence it is being translated into many languages. It will be shown around the world and viewed on every continent.
Tens of millions of people will see how conversion therapy is bad and the harmfulness of Christian homophobia. They will learn about internalized homphobia.
To understand what BL is click on the following image.
The Korean series “Love in the Big City.”
It is eight episodes, about 50 minutes each. It deals with multiple aspects of Gay life. Among these aspects, attention is given to Christian homophobia, conversion therapy, and one character has internalized self-hatred due to Christian homophobia. Don’t confuse it with the movie that was made earlier.
Korean Gay life is much like Gay life everywhere, but in Korea, Christian homophobia is more intense than many place. The movie isn’t all about Christian homophobia.
From Wikipedia.
Love in the Big City (Korean: 대도시의 사랑법) is a 2024 South Koreanmelodrama coming-of-age slice of life television series based on the novel of the same name by Sang Young Park [ko], it depicts the journey of a gay man living with HIV as he navigates life and love in Seoul. The screenplay is written by Park, and co-directed by Hur Jin-ho, Hong Ji-young [ko], Son Tae-gyum and Kim Se-in. The series stars an ensemble cast including Nam Yoon-su, Lee Soo-kyung, Oh Hyun-kyung, Kwon Hyuk, Na Hyun-woo, Jin Ho-eun, and Kim Won-joong.
TVING is a Korean platform.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Love_in_the_Big_City_(TV_series)
https://mydramalist.com/758821-love-in-the-big-city
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt30143510/
It is based on the book, which is for sale at Amazon. From the description.
A funny, transporting, surprising, and poignant novel that was one of the highest-selling debuts of recent years in Korea, Love in the Big City tells the story of a young gay man searching for happiness in the lonely city of Seoul
Love in the Big City is the English-language debut of Sang Young Park, one of Korea’s most exciting young writers. A runaway bestseller, the novel hit the top five lists of all the major bookstores, went into twenty-six printings, and was praised for its unique literary voice and perspective. It is now poised to capture a worldwide readership.
Young is a cynical yet fun-loving Korean student who pinballs from home to class to the beds of recent Tinder matches.
https://www.amazon.com/Love-City-Sang-Young-Park/dp/0802160379
Write and producer Sang Young Park’s X account.
Bio page of the writer and producer Sang Young Park.
https://garrulous-mind-eba.notion.site/Sang-Young-Park-d8172117e51c48669eecd93c91dcdb57
Global Distribution
Wikipedia gives this information on its distribution.
It was released on TVING on October 21, 2024. It is also available for streaming on Viki in selected regions.
It was also made available to stream on Viki in 190 countries.[11]
The United States, most everywhere in the Western world is included in those 190 countries mentioned. You can watch it here.
https://www.viki.com/tv/40771c-love-in-the-big-city
So far it has been translated on Viki into English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, German, Italian, Polish, Danish, Hungarian, Greek, Finnish, Turkish and Japanese.
Looking at the translation team, “Closets are for Clothes,” team members, I see that there are Rumanian translators. They are also recruiting translators for other languages. Some of the older series get translated into more than 20 languages.
This movie is going to be watched in Latin America and all of Sub-Sahara Africa, since the official languages there include English, French, Spanish, and Portuguese.
Someone will be translating it into Chinese, but I haven’t determined who that will be.
Nigerian BL Fan is promoting it in Africa. Though she is somewhat confused what it is about.
Homophobes attack the movie.
For young people, this just makes these homophobic Christians look bad.
From The Korea Times, Oct. 16, 2024, “'Love in the Big City' to rerelease trailer amid homophobic backlash.”
The production company behind the drama "Love in the Big City," which features LGBTQ+ characters, initially removed its trailer following protests from conservative groups, but has decided to make the trailer public again, an incident that highlights the ongoing power of "hate culture."
… It was produced with support from the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism and the Korea Creative Content Agency under their program to support the specialized content production of streaming services.
The trailer, which was released on YouTube and portal sites on Oct. 7, included scenes of the male protagonist interacting romantically with his male partner, including a kiss.
However, after receiving complaints from anti-LGBTQ+ groups accusing the show of "glorifying and promoting homosexuality," the production company took the trailer down Saturday.
Park Sang-young, the original author of the novel and the drama's scriptwriter, expressed his frustration on social media, saying, “Due to a flood of complaints directed at certain government departments, we were forced to remove the official trailer. The hateful behavior is something I can never get used to, no matter how often I encounter it.”
https://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/art/2024/10/398_384323.html
From the Teen Vogue article.
Is there a trailer for Love in the Big City
TVING released the official trailer for Love in the Big City ahead of the show's premiere in late October. However, following homophobic complaints from conservative organizations in South Korea, the trailer has since been taken down from the streamer's official accounts. That said, the trailer is also still up on Park Sangyoung's Instagram account and you can also watch a subtitled version on Viki. [Boldface added.}
Park denounced the removal of the trailers on his Instagram, asking fans to support the show when it premieres and lamenting not been able to properly promote it like it deserves in the leadup to its release.
It was released all at once so that pressure couldn’t be applied to block it. There have been protests against it by what are called conservative groups, but they are basically Christian groups. Christian groups violently attack Pride events in Korea.
One of the things that really upset the Christians is that this series was cast with an actor who is really big in the Korean film industry. Nam Yoon-su who plays the central protagonist Go Young. A lot of fans will be drawn to watch this series knowing he is cast in the lead role. It also sets a precedent for other major actors to consider staring in LGBT dramas.
Nam Yoon-su (Korean: 남윤수; born July 14, 1997)[2][unreliable source?] is a South Korean actor and model. He has appeared in Netflix's original drama series Extracurricular (2020), tvN's Birthcare Center (2020), JTBC's Beyond Evil (2021), KBS's The King's Affection (2021) and Love In The Big City (2024) as the main character of the series.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nam_Yoon-su
Instagram trailers.
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https://uk.news.yahoo.com/love-in-the-big-city-k-drama-controversy-161204680.html
Harnessing this specific movie and BL to fight homophobia.
It might be asked, given how successful this movie has been, what might be done to make it more powerful as a blow against homophobia.
They probably could use a translator into Arabic. It hasn’t been translated into every language. If the Gay community knew about this phenomenon of BL, they could also see where it could be helped with translation.
Even though Teen Vogue is reporting on BL, there are likely persons that still don’t know of it, and sharing links on your social media would help.
This is a global cultural force and an opportunity for Gays to fight homophobia.
We need to take this cultural phenomenon seriously and we need to see what we can do to harness it to fight homophobia and assist it in fighting homophobia.
The Gay community also needs to have a broader awareness of what is happening.
We shouldn’t depend on these things to happen without us.
We are missing an important opportunity to strike powerful blows against homophobia.
