A Pause for Reflection: Part 2- Only Friends, Racism, and the Commodification of Queer Asians
Hello! It is me, your friendly neighborhood wen-kexing-apologist. Before Only Friends aired, knowing how sex heavy this show was setting up to be, I decided it might be kinda funny if instead of posting my initial reactions to the episodes, which I knew were going to be something akin to an incomprehensible key smash, if I instead committed to a bit where I wrote very dry, academic essays on sex and sex imperatives in Only Friends.
Well, I wrote an essay on Boston, his cruising habits, and my speculations around him being an embodiment of older queer culture expecting like…three people maybe to make it through legitimately 13 written pages with block text citations. But it did surprisingly well, and so now I have decided to full send.
In my first Taking Pause post, I wrote about respectable promiscuity and the way I felt that concept impacted perceptions of queer people and queer culture, especially as it relates to engagement with Only Friends. This time, I want to dampen the mood a bit further, and discuss racism and its impact on perceptions of queer Asian characters in the BL industry. This was spurred by Only Friends and especially inspired by the posts I have seen going around that project false purity on flawed characters, but will cover Asian BL engagement more broadly as well.
Disclaimer: I am a white Westerner, addressing this post primarily to white Westerners, and using Western sources.
The Commodification of Queer Asian Men
Racism is a complex subject, and while people of color are not absolved of white supremacy mindsets through colorism, this invitation for conversation is mostly geared towards my fellow white Westerners. Racism is persistent, pervasive, and insidious in part because we do not always know when and how our own personal biases and learned racism impacts how we interact with the world, or in this case media.
With the increasing mainstream acceptance of gays and lesbians, and the increasing visibility of LGBT folks more generally, gay space and straight space, gay sociality and straight sociality, are increasingly blended (Dean, 2014). The commodification of gayness is only one example of this. (Ahlm, 2017)
We are frequently spoiled by BL because of how much exposure to queer people in stories we are allowed to see. These stories are not primarily or inherently made for queer people, but what this massive index of gay shows gives the general public is large amounts of exposure to the concept of gay people (about queers), and growing popularity allows for a rapid commodification of queer Asian experience.
I want to take a second to show the definitions of commodification, so anyone reading this is aware of what lenses I am working from.
Commodification: to turn (something, such as an intrinsic value or a work of art) into a commodity (Miriam-Webster)
an economic good: such as…c. a mass-produced unspecialized product
a. something useful or valued; b. convenience, advantage
a good or service whose wide availability typically leads to smaller profit margins and diminishes the importance of factors (such as brand name) other than price
one that is subject to ready exchange or exploitation within a market (Miriam-Webster)
Personally, I think it is reasonable to argue that BL and BL branded pairs are exploited by and are an exploitation of the market. We have seen the number of in-universe ads in our standard Thai BLs, the number of BLs being created every year is increasing with the understanding that these shows can be profitable, sell products, sell concert tickets, sell out theaters, make money on fan events, etc.. I think many of us have begun to love when Oishi Green Tea, Nivea Micellar Water, or Canon printers show up in our BLs, but it cannot be denied or ignored that those are commercials for products being sold to us through the images of queer characters and within queer stories. Meaning, the queer stories we are able to interact with en masse are there to sell us a product as well as a story.
How does this relate to racism? By making queer characters of color sell products within the stories they exist in, we establish a relationship to queer characters of color that extends the commodification of queer men of color themselves beyond what already exists by nature of racism and white supremacy within queer spaces:
It’s almost as if no gay men of color exist outside of fantasy cruises to Jamaica, Puerto Rico, or the ‘Orient’. And even then, they exist only to fulfill the sexual fantasies of gay white men. ‘Exotic’ vacations to far away places are marketed to rich white men and [low income] colored bodies are only another consumable product easily purchased with western dollars. As such, gay men of color, whether found within western borders or conveniently waiting for white arrival in the far off corners of the globe, are nothing more than commodities for consumption. (Chong-suk Han, 2007)
How many shows have we gotten out of GMMTV in recent years that are absent, or near-absent of in-universe ads? Three? The Eclipse, The Warp Effect, and Only Friends? What themes are at the center of these shows that may make them distasteful to corporations trying to sell their products?
Now, I entered the BL scene after The Eclipse aired, so I don’t know what its reception was like at the time. But I am pretty certain it was a popular show. Yet, I have personally witnessed the adverse and negative reactions to, especially Ayan, when Our Skyy 2 x The Eclipse aired and we saw Ayan keeping a secret that was hurting Akk’s feelings. I saw the sheer amount of posts coming out of tumblr about how Akk and Ayan were characterized so wrong in this show. And, I am trying to be polite here, but there were just grossly misrepresentative takes on tumblr about the characters we got on screen in OS2, who were extremely in character based on the source material, and not the idea of the characters we have built up in our heads as the lines between Ayan and Khaotung or Akk and First blurred over time.
The Warp Effect is a show I have constantly been asking people to watch as Only Friends approached and continue to market as required viewing while we are still in the early stages of Only Friends, but it was not widely watched as far as I could tell from the activity on my own tumblr feed and from the number of people I saw reblogging my Case for Watching TWE post who said they had yet to see it. And I get it, it was marketed more as a heterosexual show rather than a BL, but I will go down swinging to defend my position on that show as The Queerest Show of 2023 (so far).
I think about all the ways people on tumblr have re-written certain characters in their minds to be purer, less morally dubious, more babygirl in order for them to justify loving and supporting a character that is either objectively a terrible person or who has made any number of mistakes that have gotten themselves or others hurt. Listen, my most beloved gay boys are Wen Kexing and Akk but I will be the first to tell you both those men are war criminals. That is not a joke. I love Akk to death as a character, and he let a car roll into a crowd of protestors.
Which is to say, that I am personally made to feel very uncomfortable when I see people twisting the realities of who queer Asian characters are in order to create a false, more pure and innocent version of who they want queer Asian characters to be. Why? Because it treats queer Asian male characters like dolls, like objects to manipulate and control, rather than as the people they are written and intended to be, and the fanservice that is expected of the actors that portray them is not much different:
At the same time that they are invisible, gay Asian men are also seen as being exotic, submissive fantasies for white men. However, being seen as exotic and submissive is yet another form of subtle racism where gay Asian men are not seen as individuals but as a consumable product for white male fantasy (Ayres, 1999). (Chong-suk Han, 2007)
And yeah, I know some of you may try to deflect this by saying or thinking “wka this quote is about white men and thus does not apply to me” it does. It does apply.
On the Subject of Fan Service
These production companies make a lot of money off of selling the fanbase the idea that these actors are romantically involved outside of their acting careers. GMMTV and Idolfactory are perhaps the most committed studios to fanservice that I have seen, often to the detriment of the health and safety of their talent and potentially their own financial interests. He’s Coming to Me was delayed, and had it’s distribution fucked with because fans protested Singto being separated from Krist and paired up with Ohm for one show. Freen was recorded and blackmailed with a video that showed she was in a romantic relationship with Seng. Articles were published making it seem like it was a truly wild concept that Man Trisanu and Ben Bunyapol were acting to create the chemistry they get on screen. These companies know they can make money off of the fictions they create, both the ones we see as television shows, and the ones we see in fan meet ups. These people are actors, some may date, some may not, some may be really good friends, some may hate each other’s guts, but the fact of the matter is we will never know for sure. Everything we see on camera is a performance.
How Objectification of Queer Asian Men Relates to Only Friends
I don’t know about you all, but I have seen post after post of people projecting images of purity and perfection on to Mew, twisting themselves forward and backward to justify a character’s objectively terrible decisions, or finding scapegoats to blame for their blorbo’s actions. I have seen people truly, legitimately struggle with seeing their favorite acting pair engaging in intimate scenes with different scene partners. And, to me it reads like some audience members are physically unable to separate the actor from their character, or to accurately identify reality from fiction. These are actors, they are playing characters, we know how good of actors they are. We are all aware of how much of a chameleon First is with his roles, how powerful Khao is at portraying grief on screen, how expressive Book is, etc.
Force and Book are not fucking, Book is not stringing Force along, Force is not fucking Neo and potentially breaking Book’s heart. Top and Mew are fucking (or will). Mew is stringing Top along. Top is fucking Boston and potentially breaking Mew’s heart. Khaotung is not ditching First to go rescue Book, First is not trying and failing to maintain boundaries with Khaotung. Ray is ditching Sand to go rescue Mew, Sand is trying and failing to maintain boundaries with Ray.
Harkening back to fanservice. Personally, I believe that only ever marketing “love pairs” (aka Force and Book’s characters as a romantic couple or First and Khao’s characters as a romantic couple on screen) severely severely limits the acting potential for any and all of the performers involved in those couplings. Can you imagine what Only Friends would be like with Neo and Louis, rather than Neo and Mark? Louis is great, but I’m not sure that he could do pining simp, or angry revenge the same way Mark can. You can see how good of a match up Fluke Pusit was with Thor in The Warp Effect and you can see how good Fluke Pusit was with Ohm Thipakorn in A Boss and a Babe.
As I mentioned in Part One, Jojo has said there is going to be sex in every episode. We know these boys have already hurt each other and will continue to hurt each other. We know these boys have already slept around and will continue to do so. There is no need to vilify a character for being a flawed human being. There is absolutely no need to vilify an actor for portraying a character who is a flawed human being. We don’t need to uplift the characters that are withholding their sexuality from others as inherently good, moral, victims of the inherently bad, immoral, predators ruining their lives with their high sex drives.
…popular culture is permeated with ideas that erotic variety is dangerous, unhealthy, depraved, and a menace to everything from small children to national security. Popular sexual ideology is a noxious stew made up of ideas of sexual sin, concepts of psychological inferiority… and xenophobia. The mass media nourish these attitudes with relentless propaganda…
All these hierarchies of sexual value- religious, psychiatric, and popular- function in much the same way as do ideological systems of racism, ethnocentrism, and religious chauvinism. They rationalize the well-being of the sexually privileged and the adversity of the sexual rabble…this kind of sexual morality has more in common with ideologies of racism than with true ethics. (Rubin, 1984)
I am begging people who are having difficulty seeing their favorite actor be shitty on screen to take a pause, take a breath, remember that they are actors, playing a fictional character in a fictional role. Fictional characters performing fictional actions has not, does not, and will not ever be a true and definitive indicator of that actor’s own personality, morals, or beliefs. Boston being an asshole does not mean Neo is an asshole. Ray being an asshole does not mean that Khao is an asshole just as Gaipa being kind does not mean that Khao is kind. Jojo and co are not monsters for creating a manipulative character(s), or including physical fist fights, drug use, promiscuity, cheating, sexual assault, abortion, kink, fatshaming etc. etc in to their works. You are not a bad person for liking imperfect characters who engage in bad actions, and you don’t need to create scenarios that place blame for those actions on others in order to justify liking a character. Everyone on that set appeared to have a great time, and Jojo stated very clearly that all scenes were run by the actors in those scenes and anything the actors were not comfortable with being shown to a broader audience were immediately deleted. The actors were granted agency and autonomy that is not usually seen and we are seeing the performance they want to share with us, the performance they liked. That does not mean they themselves approve outside of fiction of the behaviors their characters may portray.
We all need to, but white Westerners especially, be extremely careful and introspective with the ways we are engaging with queer Asian media. We need to be careful and introspective with the ways we are engaging with queer Asian characters. Asian BLs, Thai BLs especially lean heavily in to the commodification of queer Asian stories and characters. GMMTV sells products, and uses their talent as the salespeople, which I personally believe makes their talent, and the characters in their stories far more susceptible to objectification than, say, Japanese BLs that do not distribute their work as easily, or cater as readily to international audiences.
As @bengiyo said in his post, it is totally totally fine if you do not like something. Only Friends could not be your style, there could be themes that are triggering for you, etc. that’s fine. But if you are refusing to engage with this Only Friends because Force as Top acted like he was fucking Neo as Boston, or squirming about whether or not you can watch other shows these actors are in going forward because their performances as dumb, horny college students in Only Friends made you question the actor’s morality, then I truly, deeply, and fully beg you to pause, take a step back, and reflect upon what it is about witnessing these behaviors that is causing your reaction.
I want to end with the following quote:
Thus, white men can choose when they want to be objectified, but men of color are simply objects. As discussed above, existing only as props for white male consumption represents another subtle form of racism. As Tony Ayres notes: First, there is overt belligerence…The second response is the exact opposite of this racist antagonism. It is an attraction to me because of my Asianness, my otherness ... This has nothing to do with my individual qualities as a person ... It is the fact that I conveniently fit into someone else’s fantasy (1999, p. 89) (Chong-suk Han, 2007)
As a reminder that we as fans, need to take a step back and consider if, when, and how we are objectifying queer Asian men. We are seeing a huge period of growth in the Asian BL industry, which means we are very likely to get more shows where we are going to see more stories like Only Friends that center realistic depictions of gay Asians as written and directed by gay Asians. And we have to check our privilege, homophobia, and racism at the door.
Ahlm, Jody (2017) Respectable promiscuity: Digital cruising in an era of queer liberalism, Sexualities, DOI: 10.1177/1363460716665783
Chong-suk Han (2007) They Don't Want To Cruise Your Type: Gay
Men of Color and the Racial Politics of Exclusion, Social Identities, 13:1, 51-67, DOI:
10.1080/13504630601163379
Rubin, Gayle (1984) The Thinking Sex: Notes for a Radical Theory of the Politics of Sexuality- Chapter 9: The Sex Wars.
(thank you to @bengiyo, @lurkingshan, @neuroticbookworm, @so-much-yet-to-learn, and @waitmyturtles for your beta readings!)
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