Towards a queer affective economy of boys’ love in contemporary Chinese media

Wong, Alvin K.

doi:10.1080/10304312.2020.1785078

Cited by 18 publications

(6 citation statements)

References 27 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Over the past two decades, a growing number of Chinese queer studies have engaged in critiques of established social categories, especially family, kinship, and other cultural traditions, and have explored the reciprocal relationship between political economy and sexuality in China (Engebretsen, 2014;Wong, 2020). Since the beginning of the reform era (from 1978 to the present), while sex has become less of a taboo topic, the Chinese government still plays a pivotal role in governing gender, sexual, and family norms, including its suppression of same-sex desires and relationships (Bao, 2018).…”

Section: Queering 'Neoliberalism With Chinese Characteristics': Oppor...mentioning

confidence: 99%

The interplay between intimacy and commodification: Queer agency and vulnerability amid neoliberalism with Chinese characteristics

2023

The Sociological Review

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This article examines the ways in which lesbians’ economic and intimate lives are closely intertwined amid neoliberal development in the urban landscape. Previous research on queer urban life has primarily drawn attention to commodified gay neighbourhoods and other sites for sexual consumption, which are often marketised as part of a liberal and queer-friendly urban landscape, in Euro-American contexts. Such a focus is not adequate, however, to capture the complex interplay between intimacy and commodification in contemporary societies. Drawing upon interviews with 35 lesbians in Beijing, this study shows how the market is experienced by lesbians as a site of queer agency and vulnerability under neoliberalism with Chinese characteristics. The findings reveal ‘commodified forms of intimacy’, through which lesbians actively engage in the labour market and (queer-targeted) pink market in order to develop their intimate relations. Meanwhile, ‘intimatised forms of commodification’ illustrate how women’s gendered and sexual expressions are closely policed and evaluated in the workplace as a site of both economic production and the reproduction of social norms. Participants were conscious of their vulnerable position as women and lesbians in the marketplace, but they were active in strategising ways to navigate urban landscapes of heteronormativity and gender inequalities. This article helps to develop a deeper understanding of the complicated and contradictory impacts of neoliberalism with Chinese characteristics on queer communities. It contributes to urban sociology and sexuality studies by mapping the multiple connections between commodified relations and intimate relations in the neoliberal city.

show abstract

Section: Queering 'Neoliberalism With Chinese Characteristics': Oppor...mentioning

confidence: 99%

The interplay between intimacy and commodification: Queer agency and vulnerability amid neoliberalism with Chinese characteristics

2023

The Sociological Review

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Mystery (2018). 14 Nonetheless, these studies tend to focus on individual cases, especially the textual and representational dimensions of particular BL productions and/or the producer-fan interactions. Moving beyond these scattered case studies, this article seeks to systematically map out the contour of an evolving Chinese BL televisual universe online, situating its development within the context of the larger video industry.…”

Section: Bl Subculture and Its Localization In Chinamentioning

confidence: 99%

When a Subculture Goes Pop: Platforms, Mavericks, and Capital in the Production of “Boys’ Love” Web Series in China

Zou

2022

Media Industries

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This article examines the rise, demise, and afterlife of “Boys’ Love” (BL) web series—or male/male romantic dramas—in China. Through the production of culture perspective, it examines how the localization and adaptation of BL in China take shape amid tensions and negotiations between state regulation, digital media production, and commercial interests. Foregrounding the roles of oligopolistic video platforms, private capital, and entrepreneurial writers/directors (whom I conceptualize as cultural mavericks), this article looks at the paradoxical development of BL web series in China, where digital technology and capital catapult the subcultural genre into the limelight while subjecting it to the hegemonic incorporation by mainstream commercial culture. This article contributes to the growing body of work on BL subculture through an underexplored approach that underscores the organizational and industrial structures shaping local BL production. My analysis situates BL production within a transmedia ecosystem and approaches it not only as an emergent cultural phenomenon but also as an organic cultural economy. Through the case of Chinese BL web series, this article opens up broader discussions on the ontological dilemma of subcultures as well as the interplays between marginal and mainstream cultural formations.

show abstract

“…Ahmed's (2004Ahmed's ( , 2010) concept of affective economies has been a powerful heuristic for scholars in extending critique of representation to account for the way certain identities, bodies, objects and collective cultures take on forms of stickiness to become affective and thus politically and culturally effective in reconfiguring relations of power and identity politics (see McDonald, 2020). There exists, for instance, a corpus of work that draws on affect in mapping the way racialised (Zembylas, 2015;McDonald, 2020), queer and gendered cultures and identities are represented (Wong, 2020), as well as the limited attention to disabled Para bodies we have highlighted above (Tamari, 2017). These studies also go some way to demonstrating how affect is commodified and engineered (see also Wetherell, 2015) in mediated representation.…”

Section: Affect Emotion and Mediationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Materiality, mediation and affective encounters: ‘Rising Phoenix’ and the cultural representation of disability

Pullen

2021

International Review for the Sociology of Sport

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Paralympic and Para sport representation has provided an important cultural site from which to explore the role of popular disability media in shaping everyday disability knowledge(s) through relations of power, ideology and meaning. Yet limited attention has been afforded to the affective dimensions of Para sport media that may help extend our understanding of its performative power on audiences. In critique of the recent Netflix Paralympic documentary film, ‘Rising Phoenix’, this article affords particular attention to the production of disability affects through the cinematic entanglement of things, bodies and language that work to involve audiences on an affective, emotional and sensorial level. Drawing on Sara Ahmed's (2004) cultural politics of emotion, it is argued that the film produces an economy of disability affects that contribute to the qualitative affective qualities of the film yet operate to (re-)configure sites of disabled normativity, gendered disability relations and nourish ‘supercrip’ and ‘medico-tragedy’ disability narratives. Attention is paid to the implications of this and the role of sport documentary film more widely in generating affective modes of representation for marginalised sporting groups.

show abstract

Towards a queer affective economy of boys’ love in contemporary Chinese media

Cited by 18 publications

References 27 publications

The interplay between intimacy and commodification: Queer agency and vulnerability amid neoliberalism with Chinese characteristics

The interplay between intimacy and commodification: Queer agency and vulnerability amid neoliberalism with Chinese characteristics

When a Subculture Goes Pop: Platforms, Mavericks, and Capital in the Production of “Boys’ Love” Web Series in China

Materiality, mediation and affective encounters: ‘Rising Phoenix’ and the cultural representation of disability

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About