Abstract
Although multimedia “media mix” franchises are commonly understood as being controlled by large corporations, the fans of these media properties make significant contributions to the mix, often expanding on the central themes of the source texts and queering them by rendering their subtexts explicit. This chapter focuses on amateur dōjinshi fan comics belonging to a genre often referred to as “BL” (boys’ love), which is notable for its focus on a romantic and often physical relationship between two male characters. The female gaze implicit in BL creates homoerotic interpretations of the relationships between central male protagonists in a way that creatively subverts the male gaze implicit in many popular mainstream narratives intended for a male audience.
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Notes
- 1.
Paul Jones, “Sherlock Is Most Watched BBC Drama Series for Over a Decade,” RadioTimes, January 22, 2014. https://www.radiotimes.com/news/2014-01-22/sherlock-is-most-watched-bbc-drama-series-for-over-a-decade/
- 2.
As mentioned above, the Sherlock fanbase is quite large and thus difficult to survey. The circumstantial evidence mentioned here includes not only essays and critiques from female-identified bloggers, such as those at Jezebel and the Mary Sue, but also fanworks considered to be generally (but not exclusively) female-oriented, specifically slash art and fanfiction. For example, the “Sherlock Holmes/John Watson” tag on the fanfiction hosting site Archive of Our Own has more than 89,000 works within the “Sherlock (TV)” fandom as of November 2018, making it one of the more popular relationships on the site.
- 3.
The first episode of Season 3 of Sherlock, “Many Happy Returns,” features a meeting of a Sherlock fan club in which one female member posits that Moriarty did not attempt to kill Sherlock; instead, he spirited him away for an intense one-on-one romantic encounter, an imagined scenario highly characteristic of slash fanfiction. As of this writing, the show has included spoken lines teasing various characters (most notably John Watson) about possible homoerotic interest. However, the production has not vindicated such potential with action or acknowledgment. This has led to many critics accusing the show of queerbaiting, in which queer representation is hinted at but never achieves canonical status. For a summary of this discussion in the wider context of television history, see Rose Bridges’s 2013 essay “How Do We Solve a Problem Like ‘Queerbaiting’?” on Autostraddle, June 26, 2013, https://www.autostraddle.com/how-do-we-solve-a-problem-like-queerbaiting-on-tvs-not-so-subtle-gay-subtext-182718/
- 4.
Philiana Ng, “‘Sherlock’ Boss on ‘Moving’ Holmes/Watson Reunion,” The Hollywood Reporter, January 1, 2014. https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/live-feed/sherlock-season-3-preview-steven-667990
- 5.
Laurie Penny, “Laurie Penny on Sherlock: The Adventure of the Overzealous Fanbase,” New Statesman America, January 12, 2014. https://www.newstatesman.com/culture/2014/01/sherlock-and-adventure-overzealous-fanbase
- 6.
Loren Estleman, “On the Significance of Boswells,” in Introduction to SherlockHolmes: The Complete Novels and Stories, by Arthur Conan Doyle (New York: Bantam, 1986), xii.
- 7.
Marc Steinberg, Anime’s Media Mix: Franchising Toys and Characters in Japan (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2012), 135.
- 8.
Ibid., 169.
- 9.
Interestingly enough, Kadokawa has applied its media mix strategy to the Sherlock television series, serializing a manga adaptation of several of the show’s more self-contained episodes in its monthly seinen magazine Young Ace, which also runs installments of a CLAMP manga titled Drug & Drop. Like Sherlock, Drug & Drop is a mystery series centered around the adventures of two attractive men with a close yet complicated relationship. By outwardly catering to a male demographic while subtly appealing to female BL fans, Young Ace is able to maintain a large readership as one of Kadokawa’s flagship manga publications.
- 10.
These connotations stem from the fanzines distributed at science fiction and fantasy conventions during the closing decades of the twentieth century. Such fanzines could vary greatly in quality. A typical example might be composed of mimeographed or photocopied pages stapled together and filled with margin-to-margin handwritten or typewritten text and low-resolution images, although a select number of fanzines were expertly formatted and beautifully published. As Japanese dōjinshi have become more widely accessible in North America and Europe, however, the fanzines sold in the Artist Alley sections of the main exhibition areas of fan conventions have gradually come to reflect the high print quality and stylistic conventions of dōjinshi.
- 11.
Fan-yi Lam, “Comic Market: How the World’s Biggest Amateur Comic Fair Shaped Japanese Dōjinshi Culture.” Mechademia 5: Fanthropologies (2010): 232–248.
- 12.
Sharon Kinsella, Adult Manga: Culture and Power in Contemporary Japanese Society (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2000).
- 13.
Ōtsuka, “World and Variation.”
- 14.
These channels include personal webpages and accounts on sites such as Pixiv and Twitter. Fan artists operating online often do not provide contact information, although they may advertise their appearance at fan events. It is possible for the work of extraordinarily popular artists to be highlighted in publications such as Quarterly Pixiv (a magazine distributed by the manga publisher Enterbrain), but publication opportunities stemming from online activity are exceptions. Himaruya Hidekazu’s historical gag manga Hetalia: Axis Powers (Akushisu Pawāzu Hetaria, 2006–2013), which was hosted on its author’s personal webpage, is one such exception.
- 15.
Mark McLelland and James Welker, “An Introduction to ‘Boys’ Love’ in Japan,” in Boys’ Love Manga and Beyond: History, Culture, and Community in Japan, ed. Mark McLelland, Kazumi Nagaike, Katsuhiko Suganuma, and James Welker (Jackson, Mississippi: University of Mississippi Press, 2015).
- 16.
Henry Jenkins makes a similar argument in the context of American media in his monograph Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide (New York: NYU Press, 2008). However, as practices concerning fair use and copyright violations related to popular entertainment media are different in Japan, a separate but related examination of how fan production increasingly drives the creation of popular culture is necessary in a Japanese context.
- 17.
Tomoko Aoyama, “Male Homosexuality as Treated by Japanese Women Writers,” in The Japanese Trajectory: Modernization and Beyond, ed. Gavan McCormack and Yoshio Sugimoto (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 188.
- 18.
Ibid., 194.
- 19.
Sharalyn Orbaugh, “Girls Reading Harry Potter, Girls Writing Desire: Amateur Manga and Shōjo Reading Practices,” in Girl Reading Girl in Japan, edited by Tomoko Aoyama and Barbara Hartley (New York: Routledge, 2010), 176.
- 20.
Ibid.
- 21.
In his 2007 blog post “Transmedia Storytelling 101,” Henry Jenkins has also emphasized the appeal of filling in the textual gaps of popular entertainment media, and he argues that media producers are increasingly structuring stories in such a way as to emphasize these gaps in order to create properties that are able to sustain a large and dedicated fanbase. Confessions of an Aca-Fan, March 22, 2007. http://henryjenkins.org/2007/03/transmedia_storytelling_101.html
- 22.
It should be noted that men are not the sole producers and consumers of pornographic dansei-mukedōjinshi, as women are often members of the circles who sell such dōjinshi at fan events. Self-identified female otaku, such as the lesbian manga essayist Takeuchi Sachiko, readily admit to enjoying dōjinshi catering to a male erotic gaze.
- 23.
In his monograph Writing the Love of Boys: Origins of Bishōnen Culture in Modernist Japanese Literature (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2011), poet and literary scholar Jeffrey Angles discusses these homosocial bonds as they appear in the modernist fiction of writers such as Edogawa Ranpo and Murayama Kaita. In his conclusion, Angles demonstrates how contemporary dōjinshi artists have translated the homosociality and covert homoeroticism of twentieth-century literature into open and explicit relationships.
- 24.
As discussed in the previous chapter, the character Sakura in xxxHolic’s companion manga, Tsubasa: Reservoir Chronicle (2003–2009), serves a similar purpose in that she acts as an object through which the male characters can indirectly form bonds with one another. Later in the manga, as a morally ambiguous character against which the male protagonists can define their own character development.
- 25.
Eve Sedgwick, Between Men: English Literature and Male Homosocial Desire (New York: Columbia University Press, 1985), 1.
- 26.
Several male and female characters in the CLAMP universe are canonically gay (in the sense of being in easily discernible romantic relationships with members of the same sex or being clearly romantically interested in members of the same sex), but these characters generally appear in CLAMP’s shōjo and josei manga.
- 27.
See also Sheenagh Pugh’s chapter “Male Sorting” in her monograph The Democratic Genre: Fan Fiction in a Literary Context (Bridgend, Wales: Seren, 2005).
- 28.
One such forum is the community Fandom Secrets (http://fandomsecrets.dreamwidth.org/, formerly http://fandomsecrets.livejournal.com/), on which members of multiple fandoms post anonymous observations and opinions. Each secret has its own chain of comments, wherein the issue at hand is discussed by both anonymous and named users. Sexuality, especially as it is expressed in fan art and fanfiction, is a common topic on the forum. This forum passed its peak of popularity during the early 2010s, but conversations about BL and slash are still commonly found in fannish communities on Tumblr and Reddit.
- 29.
The word tsundere is a portmanteau of tsun-tsun, which expresses disgust, and dere-dere, which expresses adoration. The tsundere character type is borrowed from moe fandoms, whose constituents are generally assumed to be male. The relationship between male and female fandom cultures in Japan is complicated and requires further study, but BL and moe fan cultures are fully aware of each other and borrow character tropes and narrative patterns from each other even as they poke fun at these tropes and patterns.
- 30.
It should be noted, however, that not all shōjo and BL manga covers, and indeed not all shōjo and BL manga, feature a romantically intertwined couple. Although romance is a major thematic focus of both genres, many titles focus on friendship, competition, drama, or artistic esthetic. Others are more focused on the conventions of narrative genres such as fantasy, mystery, and science fiction.
- 31.
Again, although this comparison is useful, it is important to remember that correlation does not equal causation. Shōjo manga and BL manga are in fact marketed to two separate demographics, with BL being a subcategory of the larger demographic genre of josei manga, which is targeted toward women of college age or older. Like its male demographic equivalent, seinen manga, josei manga encompasses a broad range of subgenres, from mother-in-law horror stories to workplace dramas to science fiction to abstract artistic pieces. This breadth of genre makes comparing BL manga to other josei manga difficult.
- 32.
This trend is partially a result of the effort of publishers to brand manga magazines and tankōbon publishing labels through similar art styles and familiar narrative conventions. Although there will naturally be a diversity of styles and stories represented by the different artists managed by a publisher, the editors assigned to these artists contribute greatly to the finished product. Nevertheless, artists (especially high-profile artists like CLAMP), still have a great deal of creative freedom.
- 33.
An insightful blog post critically discussing these tropes in relation to the anime series Sekai-ichi hatsukoi (2011, World’s Greatest First Love) is “World’s Worst First Love” on the fan blog GAR GAR Stegosaurus, which critiques the show’s “creepy sexual harassment factor” and “the truly disgusting way in which we are supposed to regard this sexual harassment,” May 1, 2001. https://gargarstegosaurus.wordpress.com/2011/05/01/worlds-worst-first-love/
- 34.
For an academic treatment of one such debate, see Keith Vincent’s article “A Japanese Electra and Her Queer Progeny” Mechademia 2: Networks of Desire (2007): 64–79.
- 35.
The expression fujoshi, which might be translated as “rotten girl” or “fan trash,” is a pun on fujoshi, a somewhat antiquated word for “wife” that is pronounced the same but written with different Chinese characters.
- 36.
Sugiura, Otaku joshi kenkyū, 42.
References
Angles, Jeffrey. 2011. Writing the Love of Boys: Origins of Bishōnen Culture in Modernist Japanese Literature. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Aoyama, Tomoko. 1988. Male Homosexuality as Treated by Japanese Women Writers. In The Japanese Trajectory: Modernization and Beyond, ed. Gavan McCormack and Yoshio Sugimoto, 186–204. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Bridges, Rose. 2013. How Do We Solve a Problem Like ‘Queerbaiting’?: On TV’s Not-So-Subtle Gay Subtext. Autostraddle, June 26. https://www.autostraddle.com/how-do-we-solve-a-problem-like-queerbaiting-on-tvs-not-so-subtle-gay-subtext-182718/
Estleman, Loren D. 1986. On the Significance of Boswells. In Introduction to Sherlock Holmes: The Complete Novels and Stories, ed. Arthur Conan Doyle, vii–xvi. New York: Bantam.
Jenkins, Henry. 2007. Transmedia Storytelling 101. Confessions of an Aca-Fan, March 22. http://henryjenkins.org/2007/03/transmedia_storytelling_101.html
———. 2008. Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide. New York: New York University Press.
Jones, Paul. 2014. Sherlock Is Most Watched BBC Drama Series for Over a Decade. RadioTimes, January 22. https://www.radiotimes.com/news/2014-01-22/sherlock-is-most-watched-bbc-drama-series-for-over-a-decade/
Kinsella, Sharon. 2000. Adult Manga: Culture and Power in Contemporary Japanese Society. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press.
Lam, Fan-Yi. 2010. Comic Market: How the World’s Biggest Amateur Comic Fair Shaped Japanese Dōjinshi Culture. Mechademia 5: Fanthropologies: 232–248.
McLelland, Mark, and James Welker. 2015. An Introduction to ‘Boys Love’ in Japan. In Boys Love Manga and Beyond: History, Culture, and Community in Japan, ed. Mark McLelland, Kazumi Nagaike, Katsuhiko Suganuma, and James Welker, 3–20. Jackson: University of Mississippi Press.
Ng, Philiana. 2014. ‘Sherlock’ Boss on ‘Moving’ Holmes/Watson Reunion and ‘Funnier’ Season 3 (Q&A). The Hollywood Reporter, January 1. https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/live-feed/sherlock-season-3-preview-steven-667990
Orbaugh, Sharalyn. 2010. Girls Reading Harry Potter, Girls Writing Desire: Amateur Manga and Shōjo Reading Practices. In Girl Reading Girl in Japan, ed. Tomoko Aoyama and Barbara Hartley, 174–186. New York: Routledge.
Ōtsuka, Eiji. 2010. World and Variation: The Reproduction and Consumption of Narrative. Trans. Marc Steinberg. Mechademia 5: Fanthropologies: 99–116.
Penny, Laurie. 2014. Laurie Penny on Sherlock: The Adventure of the Overzealous Fanbase. New Statesman America, January 12. https://www.newstatesman.com/culture/2014/01/sherlock-and-adventure-overzealous-fanbase
Pugh, Sheenagh. 2005. The Democratic Genre: Fan Fiction in a Literary Context. Bridgend: Seren.
Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky. 1985. Between Men: English Literature and Male Homosocial Desire. New York: Columbia University Press.
Steinberg, Marc. 2012. Anime’s Media Mix: Franchising Toys and Characters in Japan. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Sugiura, Yumiko. 2006. Otaku Joshi Kenkyū: Fujoshi Shisō Taikei. Tōkyō: Hara Shobō.
Vincent, Keith. 2007. A Japanese Electra and Her Queer Progeny. Mechademia 2: Networks of Desire: 64–79.
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Hemmann, K. (2020). Queering the Media Mix: The Female Gaze in Japanese Fancomics. In: Manga Cultures and the Female Gaze. East Asian Popular Culture. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-18095-9_4
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