Honglou Meng

Thanks! :)

I don't know, etoks. The bullying felt awfully familiar to me, so much so that I nearly quit. Perhaps even bullying is a phenomenon that's refracted through the prism of culture?

On the top, over-the-top, and the lipstick -- you are right, but I really didn't think about it. :) Mishima is a a hare-brain with an insane degree of self-possession. I was fascinated by that self-possession, so didn't care about the plausibility of the details...

I *almost* gave up after the first 10 minutes. It took me straight back to high school -- as it would anyone who grew up in the 80s, 90s, even early 00s -- when it was perfectly fine, even cool, for other boys and girls, and even teachers, to bully gay kids. If you are someone like me, I was almost going to recommend you don't watch it, unless you find it cathartic to relive those horrendous moments.

But then... the camera settled on Mishima, and I was transfixed. His passivity is not one of submission or surrender, but of serenity and subversion. He has already accepted himself -- not that he needed to -- and loves himself. He needs no other shield. The bullies have nothing on him. I loved it.

Kirino seems like the classic closeted bully at first sight. But even he doesn't seem to be written that way so far. There is a scene where my heart expected to feel wrenched and my eyes to weep. But the scene turned out to be one of joy, and humour. It made me immediately trust the writers.

So, yes, I will certainly come back to this next week. JBLs are finally picking up the slack in a year where the BLs from every other country have been so disappointing and formulaic. Thank heavens for that.

P. S. If you are a straight person, you should watch this. It might give you a glimpse of what we went through, and what we were up against, before we got a measure of equality. It might also make some people think twice before posting an irresponsible, insensitive, or even a homophobic comment here or elsewhere.

You see, in most cases, if not all, I think it's homophobia outright, because it seeks to remove the "sex" from "homosexuality". I always say that gay people were persecuted not for longingly looking at each other, and not for *not* kissing, but for having sex. This insistence, therefore, that wanting to see gay intimacy makes us "dirty" or "sinful", in my view, is homophobic.

Of course, I say this as a gay man. If another gay person feels this way, I'm not sure whether to call it "internalised homophobia" or not. Maybe, but it's not for me to say. However, if I say this to or in the presence of straight people -- the primary authors of and audience for BL -- I get crucified for calling it homophobia. The mods on Reddit, all straight people, banned me outright. Apparently, I made their sub an unsafe and unwelcoming space for them (mostly straight people), when ironically, they banned a gay man from a BL forum for speaking his mind. Isn't straight people banning gay people the very definition of homophobia? Not that I'm still angry about it. :)

All of which is to say, I agree with you, and thank you for saying it out loud.

I can't quite tell whether you are agreeing with me, or saying I'm making it "a simple matter." However, I hope it is evident from my comments above and below, and specifically the previous one, that I think it far from simple, and immensely complex.

No, no, don't worry. I didn't read your comment as disparaging of Asian cultures at all. (I doubt Maggi did either.)

Most cultures and religions appear to condemn incest, and it seems we are programmed by evolution to avoid it at all costs. After all, incest results in a host of irreparable biological problems, including severe birth defects. (English history is steeped with unhealthy kings and queens for that reason.) Also, the primary driving force in evolution is variation, which heterosexual incest prevents. So, it makes sense that evolution would use nausea as a means to prevent it. (Studies show that for most people, the idea of incest makes them want to throw up.) Many Native American tribes explicitly had religious commandments that you had to marry from another tribe. I think we, as a species, quickly learnt the human cost of (heterosexual) incest.

I think with step brothers -- two things are at play. They are attracted to a member of the same sex (and so there are no implications for children born of incest), and, they are not biologically related. So you can violate a taboo without really violating it, and touching on "real" incest. Finally, there's the point Maggi raises, which is the degree of bondedness, and the age at which the sibling bond is formed. It's an interesting subject.

And yes, within the world of BLs, it is mainly lazy writing!

I don't know that being Asian has anything to do with it, as incest taboo seems a pretty universal human phenomenon. But, as Maggi says above, if you're not biologically related, the taboo seems a lot to do with how young you are when you start living together. So, your feeling might not be all that unusual!

Amen!

Yes, there is a great deal of this on MDL, and the people below and I often have to confront people and say, what you're saying is kind of inadvertently homophobic. When viewers see straight kiss -- unless you genuinely hate or dislike sex -- they don't go, "eww..., if I wanted to see that, I'll go watch porn." No, you see it as a normal part of a developing relationship. The fact that they say it of BL series is very telling.

I can't tell you how many times I've tried to get people to see how this contributes to gay erasure, but I think I have given up that fight. Everytime one of us asks for gay men to be more intimate on screen, or worry that gay intimacy is being censored, the first line that comes up is... "why don't you go watch gay porn?"

Actually, "vagrant" is here the perfect word for it. Spot on!

American homelessness is just... I can't bear it.

Sorry, not sure which message you're replying to. But I've basically shown -- with others -- that 7/7 movies quoted above have kisses. :)

Which is to say, I'm on your side.

Never mind the people who can't bear any criticism and denounce them as a "hater". But it would seem the novel is not the best, but the creative liberties taken by the show are not for the better, but noticeably worse.

On Araki: I don't know that I would recommend it. I also don't think I liked any of his other films. What remains with me is the oppressive vibe of it, and the of the world of male prostitution. I remember it being unbearable at points.

Yes, there is a clear young/old divide in all of these countries. But what surprised me was that Japan should be so up there. I don't doubt for a second that gay kids get disowned in Japan, and in considerable numbers. It is Chihiro's homelessness that, for a moment, made me wonder. But, if he does not have a "koseki", which some 10,000 people of Japanese origin don't, he might very well be in that destitute situation.

jpny01 mentions this above, but, on your last point, I was genuinely surprised to see that in Japan, where gay people have few legistive rights, some 75% approve of gay marriage, and in areas like Tokyo, the numbers go into the 90s. It is the political class -- made predominantly of old men -- who are holding the country back.

But in Taiwan and Greece, which have legalised equal marriage, only about 50% of the population approve of it. The statistics for Israel are shocking. And America is not far off from Japan, only by a couple of percentage points. Even Britain, my home, where I have felt safest as a gay person, does not go too far ahead. (Predictably, the Scandinavians fare the best.)

Roughly 20% of LGBT people in America, I believe in the most recent survey, have experienced homelessness due to being disowned at one point. Given that Japan perhaps has the least number of homeless people in the developed world (perhaps in *the* world), I did wonder how realistic HOTE was in this regard. (But that didn't matter to me in the least, of course. In any event, the problem of homophobia is very real, so if the writer wants to take the artistic license to portray it through the symbol of homelessness, she should. You know?)

None of which is to detract from the larger point you make about LGBT vs. BL, or the warped relationship that BL, as a genre, has with reality. (My six month stint in BL land so far has convinced me that it is far from the torch-bearer for the LGBT community it seems, and more often the opposite -- which has caused me considerable disillusionment.) I just wanted to add more complexity to it, because it makes it even more interesting. In fact, as you point out, Night Flight is very realistic, because the amount of school bullying in SK, and suicide statistics related to bullying, are shocking. It is so much worse if you are LGBT. (But then homophobia seems to have imported large-scale into Korea, by America, and using Christianity as a blunt instrument, during occupation, so I don't know to what extent Americans can condemn that. And Kishida, lest we forget, resigned in part over money taken from an American church which wanted to spread vile homophobic propaganda in Japan.)

Two further points. One, have you (or jpyn01) seen Gregg Araki's Mysterious Skin? I don't remember much of it anymore, but the vibe of HOTE is very similar to it. Not for the soft of heart.

Two, I'm at least glad that my tongue-in-cheek comment resulted in a civilised discussion below, rather than simple name-calling. Thank you both for that.

In reply to your last question: yes, only if they then end up in a hospital with broken teeth and bloody mouths.

On failure of communication/misunderstanding: my one absolute no-go and no-no in BLs. I'll dump it faster than radioactive waste.

Así tengamos mucho tiempo libre, no te corresponde a ti juzgar cómo lo empleamos, y es nuestro derecho usarlo como queramos. ¿No es verdad?

Because it is the comments section, and we are allowed to talk to each other -- even where our opinions differ dramatically. Even if we have dropped it, we might still be interested in talking about past episodes, the good and the bad -- and to learn about how the story ends. Or is that not allowed by this positive community? Does the positive community only allow comments that it approves of, deems positive, and follows the general consensus? For a community that calls itself "positive", it sure is quite mean-spirited about people who disagree with its views.

And so you should! Stick, that is! :)

In my case, the offense was less to my morals than to aesthetic choices, and less on pain of identity than of romance. Lisa, I think, was more offended because of her identity. But she's also not the trip-wire "I'm offended" type.

That said, I'll stick to my yuck, well, because yuck sticks. :)

I just checked. 12 Years A Slave also has just an R rating.

I don't know what more to say.

I have no rational reason to give you as to why I found it grotesque. It just gave me the yucks. Also, I haven't actually seen the whole film. Lisa, a Jewish friend of mine, forced me to watch that scene, and the moments leading up to it, and wanted my thoughts. I said... ewwww. She, you see, watched the whole film (there's no accounting for her taste), and was so infuriated by it that she threw her phone across the room and broke it. Her mum was not happy.

Strangely, though, I do agree with you, and think Anne Frank would have approved of the kiss -- not romantically, but ironically. Her diaries always did remind me of Austen.