So after last night’s episode I finished it feeling a little… off. My fluff, heart-squeezing quota did not feel filled. I didn’t end it feeling like I’d been purified. That’s okay: that’s not what the show’s aim is to do. It never set out to be all rainbows and hugs (okay maybe some – a lot of hugs yes please). But the more I thought about it the more I kept thinking about Chris’ performance/presence.
A lot of comments were going around about the suit, and about the animation team’s budget going on one particular part of his anatomy (cough), but for some reason his performance left me feeling… strange.
I wondered, at first, if that was just me. If I was having an issue with it because it was overt (male) sexuality, and that it was my own kind of prejudice or aversion to a sexuality that wasn’t the ‘cutesy’ kind of thing we have seen so far from Viktor and Yuuri. But after a conversion with @mamamyshka I’m starting to think it might not be.
What first struck me as wrong was when Chris started touching Yuuri. You could see Yuuri was uncomfortable. At first I thought maybe they had a shared history, but I thought that was probably the case only in the way that Yuuri and Viktor had competed against him. This was different, though. This felt… I won’t say predatory because that’s too far. But it felt inappropriate. I felt uncomfortable for Yuuri. I wonder if partly it’s related to how Yuuri has been made almost androgynous in the way he thwarts binary gender constructions, and so it felt, somewhat, like the typical scenario of a man touching up a woman.
I’m not going to get into that; what I will say is that Viktor touching Yuuri and Chris touching Yuuri was different. Viktor touches Yuuri because Yuuri touches him; their relationship is one of shared, mutual skin-ship, and the physicality of it is underlined by a deep emotional connection and relationship built on trust and care and concern, and, also, attraction. Chris’ touch did not feel like that: Yuuri was uncomfortable by it. He tensed up and reared away. He did not return it, and it was not a touch that was warranted. It was not the forehead press and the hand-holding and the back hugging.
Chris touched Yuuri because he could; because Yuuri was there and he is small. It felt like every man who thought they were somehow entitled to touch someone because they were a man and/or confident with their sexuality. But there’s a difference between being comfortable with one’s sexuality and then actually acting towards people in an unwarranted sexual nature.
I get that Chris is a foil to Yuuri. He is some kind of embodiment of the extreme version Yuuri is trying to become comfortable with. But, again, a difference: Yuuri’s transformation and growth is about gaining an understanding of sexuality and gender and if he fits in or not, and understanding that if he does not belong to a regimented, binary sphere then that is okay. Chris is not so much about sexuality as much as it is about sex. And there is a deep, deep difference between those two.
Chris’ performance, and that line he said (we all know what he said) felt cheap to me. It was shoved in our faces – both in dialogue and literally by Chris’ physical presence. Maybe I’m a hypocrite, and that I only want this kind of thing when it is tempered and part of an emotional, connective sphere, not just carnality and slight perversion. Maybe this is the male version of ecchi, and we’re supposed to be grateful that we could literally see and hear everything.
I didn’t… feel grateful. I didn’t find what happened sexy. I felt like the show, for a few frames, had been brought into a sphere that didn’t feel wholly safe. Did anyone else?
Disclaimer: All opinions are my own. They do not reflect anyone else. If you have an opinion, I will gladly hear it in a constructive manner.
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