BLLoversLink

I want to start by sharing part of a review a friend created on letterbox which is beautiful (just like the movie imo) and demonstrates how today we are forced-fed conservative and reactionary ideas masquerading as progressive ones under a fig leaf of liberal identity politics.

She writes: “male sex work is portrayed as being done for survival but it is made very clear that all of these men are pushed into this line of work where their bodies are commodified and their personhood is alienated because of financial need and capitalist incentive. the negative impact their sexual exploitation has on their psyche is communicated very well.” I think many supposed BL Directors who think it’s edgy to portray male prostitution as a cool, positive choice men make, could learn from this queer Director how not to flippantly portray people like Jet at the corrosive, dead end of the labour food chain under capitalism as enjoying their own exploitation! BL is political and as such cannot treat prostitution as an apolitical process, or the product of individual choice among the most oppressed segments of the labouring class.

I think Yon Fan, the Director who was also the Writer, did a very good job and I am now keen to look at the rest of his filmography since most of them seem to be queer stories including lesbian stories.

Some points of departure I want to raise given the discourse I’ve seen from viewers.

- It’s Not the Father; It’s the Son -
I don’t think that the father necessarily rejects Sam. That man loves his son. And as a parent, a loving - nay a doting parent, the first thing you worry for is how is your child, this sensitive, socially aware and upstanding young man going to be treated by the world and how will that affect the man that he knows his son to be. No matter what the dad’s level of shock or even disappointment, no matter how big or small his worry or his son’s future after he is gone, I feel he would have surmounted it; but Sam was so wound up in his own guilt, much of which is deserving guilt for unethical actions that violated the trust of a primary person in his life, which turns out to be all for nothing (spoilery) and that understandable guilt he carried also would not let him go back and make good on the irreversible harm he had caused.

This is the core of the story; how living a life on the margins doesn’t necessarily allow one to have superior insights into the human condition or the good life but can enmesh good people into a series of bad choices that limit not only their own future but those of several people around them for whom they actually have love towards and receive love from. If not for the cataclysmic events, which Sam’s accumulated actions precipitated, he would’ve been able to assure both his parents as a filial and responsible son. This is the true tragedy of the closet. Not primarily who gets to have sex with whom.

I love the way Bishonen utilises the devastatingly beautiful lady Kana, the Fujoshi in the mix, to remind us that to love is one thing but to be loved and to know that you are loved is *everything*. To ignore this aspect is to evacuate the meaning of the story from the point of view of the protagonists which is the story being conveyed.

- First & Second Cinema is Part of Today’s Filmaking Rot -
This brings me a discussion a few of us have been having in our Killer and Healer Discord about first, second and third cinema because people keep mentioning the degree to which Bishonen is good “for a low-budget film”. No it was good for a film - period.

Director Yon Fan does everything himself, he even picked up Sam for the cast as his lead actor quite randomly on the street; he didn’t even have a stable of experienced actors and as I’m always saying when the Director knows what they’re doing and has a story to tell that’s important to him, even a basic actor can portray that story because the most important, the bulk of the meaningfulness of the work comes from the Director’s creative vision and skill. Every scene, every bit of narrative said and unsaid, every frame that gets into the final cut, reflects the Director’s choices and intent. Director Yon Fan owns this story; hence it cannot be replicated or mass produced, which is the essence of revolutionary filmmaking and allows Bishonen to be evaluated from within a Third Cinema political space, just like all good BL.

If we compare Bishonen to what is coming out of the most highly funded, Thai corporate machine in terms of what passes for BL these days for example, it is clear that the more money that is put into BL productions, the more reactionary, the more fake, the more exploitative, and the more boring and insincere is the result.

Money is not only undermining the enjoyability, even the very watchability of the BL in countries where it has become industrialised, but it is also seriously destroying and separating the resulting productions from the radical queer potential of that genre.

Industrial, mass-produced culture is an oxymoron. Bishonen is one of a kind precisely because it is art, created not for profit (it made $18k when it was released) while the big studio movie Bros with a price tag of $22M flopped critical as well as financially and is no longer talked about, but Bishonen’s legacy will still be moving audiences who stumble across it to tears, to smiles and to complete empathetic recognition for at least another 30 years.