Controversial dramas

 kabocha:

it's been an official theme since 2016

Now that you mention the year, wasn't it actually Addicted that started all this Masculinity push? It was released in 2016 and was so popular that they pulled it off screen before it finished airing. Moreover, allegedly, the actors have been forbidden to  be seen together ever again on screen!

Kudos to people who produced The Untamed which was a full blown BL under surface. Nothing was obvious at first glance but underneath, the fire was burning brightly for anyone looking for it. 

I think this censorship is actually making writers and producers more creative and original. They are getting so good at getting a message across the censorship barrier! And sometimes that is more dangerous (for regimes!)....

 autumn iris:

BL is for Boys Love. Any romantic love story between two males I considered as BL.

Reading romantic love into 180 Degree Longitude is watching with BL goggles, however broadly or narrowly you define it. That's not 'raw', it's imposing an expectation.

 autumn iris:

Which part of that that's not BL?

The utter lack of time in which romantic feelings might develop for a start. Wang is trying to become closer to his deceased father, like a psychological mirroring, and latches onto a man in a photograph. It's not romantic, it's not love, it's not even infatuation. It's entirely about his dad - not In.

Meanwhile In is completely taken by surprise to have these living reminders of the man he loved show up unexpectedly. He's just going along with his very quiet, isolated life and boom, all of this old, buried, difficult psychological stuff comes to the surface with two people tied to it making conflicting demands of him. His romantic feelings towards Wang's dad do NOT count as romantic feelings towards Wang or make this a romance.

The older one is a coward for staying isolated and letting that part of the past define him - that's what those conversations are about. That screen in In's bedroom, with its prison like vertical bars - In has imprisoned himself in the past and his house.

It's a very different story when you recognise it's not about romantic feelings between In and Wang. But this is a thread for talking about controversies, not re-enacting them. If you want to continue this we can do that elsewhere.