1
2
This review may contain spoilers
Club Friday - BL Industry
This is more or less a niche version of Club Friday, the long-running anthology series - multiple stand alone minis branded as a unit, with plots full of betrayal and angst and infidelity - originating with callers' stories to a phone-in radio program and thus purported to be 'based on real stories'. I'm not a Club Friday fan, the ones I've seen are condensed versions of the side plots I put up with for the parts I enjoy in lakorns. The series has been running forever though, obviously many like it.
So I wasn't surprised by the sparsity of HEAs in War of Y or how it often felt heavy and over-bearing, without the zing and zip of a good lakorn, just the angst.
Using the Club Friday approach to 'expose' secrets of the BL industry while also reveling in many of them makes some sort of sense. It also clutters up what was true, what was invented and what was exaggerated for the sake of Drama. Some were clear lakorn stereotypes, like making a middle-aged woman the villainess in one, but yeah, there probably are managers like that and it does seem to be a woman and katoey-dominated field so IDK.
There were times I felt like I should stop supporting the industry altogether, which is a difficult rabbit hole to go down because it doesn't ever end. Corporate entertainment industries exploit actors and musicians, marketing and controlling them as products in order to manipulate and exploit fans' feelings and wallets. Like that Big Spender thing in one of War of Y's stories. If that's not invented, it's literally manipulating fans into directly giving money to already-wealthy corporations, not because their products are any good but because a young actor is doing his job of invoking fans' feelings well. Same with pay-to-vote schemes.
I don't know how much of the toxicity they depicted from the fandom side was accurate. I've seen enough to fear that this largely was. Why is it tolerated? Because that's how social media works these days? Because both haters and defenders get attention and a dopamine rush and that keeps it all going? Because young people get their own sense of self wrapped up with parasocial strangers so it all becomes very personal? I don't know. But the toll it must take on young actors and musicians, being tossed around for other people's agendas. It doesn't have to be this way. Isolate those doing it, don't give them oxygen or reward them with your attention. It's what they're after.
There was a lot of NC. It was manipulatively clever to effectively double up on NC scenes by including those from the fake series being filmed, as well as fake content, as well as the oh they're secretly in love after all scenes, including straight boys going bi/gay for you ::face palm::, and then throw in a few comments criticising the emphasis on NC over plot (you literally did exactly that), or show characters being uncomfortable about doing them.
Where they were just hooking up, and it seemed like it was sex for sex's sake, that was at least believable within the story. But of course every story had to fuel shippers' dreams that their treasured fantasies about strangers' orientations and sex lives might actually be true even while it depicted the manufactured nature of fan service and shipped couples.
For myself too much angst, poor editing/writing and the true/not true approach meant that even when I did get caught up in a character's story line, when it came to the romances with their ships my brain bailed right out. These are actors trying to make careers and doing what they're told to do, playing actors trying to make careers and doing what they're told to do, all of it driven by people looking to make money from fans chasing fantasies about strangers' sexuality.
There were quiet moments, especially in the first two stories, which were quite good and *some* of the acting was impressive. Seng (Pan) and Paper (Fern) were the two who stood out most for me. But when the drama got loud and messy, the editing and scripting often did as well and the overall results suffered. I'm not sure why I put myself through this.
tl:dr Support actors for doing their jobs well under demanding circumstances, but don't buy into the corporate shite or make the circumstances more difficult for them. They're dealing with enough already. Fans can do at least this much. Corporations and managers might contractually 'own' them, but we're not entitled to act like we do as well.
So I wasn't surprised by the sparsity of HEAs in War of Y or how it often felt heavy and over-bearing, without the zing and zip of a good lakorn, just the angst.
Using the Club Friday approach to 'expose' secrets of the BL industry while also reveling in many of them makes some sort of sense. It also clutters up what was true, what was invented and what was exaggerated for the sake of Drama. Some were clear lakorn stereotypes, like making a middle-aged woman the villainess in one, but yeah, there probably are managers like that and it does seem to be a woman and katoey-dominated field so IDK.
There were times I felt like I should stop supporting the industry altogether, which is a difficult rabbit hole to go down because it doesn't ever end. Corporate entertainment industries exploit actors and musicians, marketing and controlling them as products in order to manipulate and exploit fans' feelings and wallets. Like that Big Spender thing in one of War of Y's stories. If that's not invented, it's literally manipulating fans into directly giving money to already-wealthy corporations, not because their products are any good but because a young actor is doing his job of invoking fans' feelings well. Same with pay-to-vote schemes.
I don't know how much of the toxicity they depicted from the fandom side was accurate. I've seen enough to fear that this largely was. Why is it tolerated? Because that's how social media works these days? Because both haters and defenders get attention and a dopamine rush and that keeps it all going? Because young people get their own sense of self wrapped up with parasocial strangers so it all becomes very personal? I don't know. But the toll it must take on young actors and musicians, being tossed around for other people's agendas. It doesn't have to be this way. Isolate those doing it, don't give them oxygen or reward them with your attention. It's what they're after.
There was a lot of NC. It was manipulatively clever to effectively double up on NC scenes by including those from the fake series being filmed, as well as fake content, as well as the oh they're secretly in love after all scenes, including straight boys going bi/gay for you ::face palm::, and then throw in a few comments criticising the emphasis on NC over plot (you literally did exactly that), or show characters being uncomfortable about doing them.
Where they were just hooking up, and it seemed like it was sex for sex's sake, that was at least believable within the story. But of course every story had to fuel shippers' dreams that their treasured fantasies about strangers' orientations and sex lives might actually be true even while it depicted the manufactured nature of fan service and shipped couples.
For myself too much angst, poor editing/writing and the true/not true approach meant that even when I did get caught up in a character's story line, when it came to the romances with their ships my brain bailed right out. These are actors trying to make careers and doing what they're told to do, playing actors trying to make careers and doing what they're told to do, all of it driven by people looking to make money from fans chasing fantasies about strangers' sexuality.
There were quiet moments, especially in the first two stories, which were quite good and *some* of the acting was impressive. Seng (Pan) and Paper (Fern) were the two who stood out most for me. But when the drama got loud and messy, the editing and scripting often did as well and the overall results suffered. I'm not sure why I put myself through this.
tl:dr Support actors for doing their jobs well under demanding circumstances, but don't buy into the corporate shite or make the circumstances more difficult for them. They're dealing with enough already. Fans can do at least this much. Corporations and managers might contractually 'own' them, but we're not entitled to act like we do as well.
Was this review helpful to you?
