My Hopeful Little Queer Shows 🌈
Finally someone tagged me! Thank you @williamrikers I've been dying to participate in this one.
You'll notice I'm long-winded as ever, and for some of these, I've spliced in some of my previous writing. But hope's a perennial interest for me as a viewer. I hope you don't mind.
Hope...that I'm understood and supported
I've made it no secret that I share many similarities with Shane, and I'm lucky to have had partners like Kit twice in my life. Kit and the writing in the series treated Shane's autistic behaviors with delicacy, accuracy, and kindness far beyond what I've seen for a gifted autistic-styled character most anywhere else (coded or explicit). The characterization even opened my eyes to some overgeneralized social logics I had instilled. Mick played it's nuances beautifully, too. A spiky profile, as they say.
It balanced the support for his character with demonstrations of Shane supporting others' challenges. The ending made no promises for his future or the other boys, except that they could cherish being truly cared about for now as they took one step at a time forward. People like me and Shane are just people who exist in the world and make our way through life, and it fills me with hope to see creators and characters who understand and appreciate that.
Hope...that the world doesn't ask or require perfection from us
This was my first BL introduction to plot de-escalation. I'm trained to expect a mounting of conflict in my stories (fiction, like this, as well as nonfiction like the one's told on the news or by friends). They culminate in an explosion of sorts, with a cause or person to blame and a few heroes who overcome that mess. Shows like The Trainee, with their alternative structure, revealed how cynical and stress-inducing that line of thought was.
There was no 'gotcha!' moment here. The series brought us so many situations that could've sparked drama or set off a firing process for one of the employees. Maybe you felt some of the problems should've been dealt with that way. The point of the series wasn't the consequences of actions, though. Each week, instead, the episodes restored the dignity of its characters so they could learn and grow and let others inspire them to move forward.
The director's speech to the interns at their farewell party highlighted the central theme perfectly. "I remember the first day we met. I heard none of you were any good. I couldn't tell if three months later, you'd be any better. I just wanted you to find your own path and see your own worth." What kinds of grace and patience are we willing to give ourselves in order to seek out and work toward meaningful lives? And once we can offer this to ourselves how do we offer it to others? if you're feeling lost on your path in life and need a kind hand to comfort and guide you, I can't recommend a better internship than the one offered at Good Pick in The Trainee.
While it was airing, I gushed about how The On1y One's open ending was all about the ability of us and the characters to hope. For me, with its thorough investment in the themes of ephemeral pain and beauty, The On1y One is a rare instance where the intangible hope for a future story we can't see lies at the very foundation of the series itself. It chooses the moon instead of the tangible coin. We have to believe in potentials and futures that didn't necessarily arrive for these characters. Author Marilynne Robinson writes in What Are We Doing Here, "We may all live in anticipation more than in present time, worry and dread pulling us out of the moment, too, but hope giving us better purpose, the imagination of what might fall into place, to our benefit or satisfaction. Hope shapes intention. It leaves improbable possibilities open." This series did not seal itself with a kiss the way many viewers seemed to want, but for me it artfully opened a door of possibility.
The last image we get in the series is that ellipsis of belief, moving us toward something we cannot see. After Jiang Tian symbolically reties the circle of his bracelet, committing to a bond with someone after his years of abandonment, we return to the dreamlike image of the glass pitcher filled with mint lemon tea--the one we've watched break again and again in flashbacks--now whole again. So it is with these two. We hear a nondiegetic promise from Sheng Wang that he'll come back. It's ostensibly a promise to return to Class A for Jiang Tian but it's also a promise of a greater reunification for them and all things. What's broken is rendered whole again, not exactly as it was, maybe not even in reality, but in hope.
Hope...that you're not alone in this mess
Said a drag queen, "We're selfish and vain creatures of beauty, and isn't it bizarre how we make the best friends in the world?" That queen, Sharon Needles, has since been widely disowned by fans for her offensive comments and other queens for her rude behavior and disruptive drug habits. Ah, sweet irony! The ugly, honest truth of queer friendship was at the heart of Only Friends, which more than any other BL attempted to capture queers in all their petty contradictions--it's not a coincidence that many of the emerging gay male BL podcast pairs start with this series. It hits close to home.
How could that ugliness fill me with hope? Well, I've known these people, experienced these kinds of broken friendships, watched self-righteous discourse roll across my screen about who should be canceled, excluded, punished, and barred from our concern. Even a doctor's diagnosis that offers no cure can still be a comfort. You're not imagining it! A diet of narratives about everything only getting better has the side-effect of making the world a disappointment compared to the ideal insisted upon.
For a more literary perspective than drag race, writer Wendy Smith wrote about Chekhov that he "invites us to be tolerant and accepting, to see the inevitability of change, but to understand that it brings loss as well as gain. His characters can be foolish, selfish, oblivious, wrongheaded, even hurtful, but their longings and loneliness are so evident." The Realism of Only Friends comforts me. I am not a lone perpetrator of or witness to the mess of life. 'Shit happens' is a compassionate, hopeful message for a series to offer if you've felt alone amongst the shit while everyone said you ought to be smelling roses. In fact, demands for ideal subjects can cause severe political damage. Gays, like any other group, don't deserve civil rights because they're morally pure--no one is. It's because they're human.
Hope...that people want to care for others
Achi is not unkind or inconsiderate, but Cherry Magic's gently-offered observation that his insecurity (like our own) derives and reproduces itself through negative assumptions about others' thoughts is profound. He doesn't realize it and would never do it intentionally. In fact, he admires most everyone and their capability. He just has a hard time seeing his own worth, and projects that blind spot onto others instead of seeking out their actual perspectives as an alternative. When we truly engage with others face-to-face, Cherry Magic believes we'll start to see how others admire the light we bring to the world, too.
Cherry Magic Thailand is overflowing with kindness and love. And it matters so much that it's a queer narrative at the center. Presuming others won't see your worth is so much more ingrained when there's such a prevalent history of it. This series insisted upon pushing past that history to create a new present in which we can appreciate that most people are genuinely seeking ways to care for other people. Maybe not to the sparkly-eyed level of Karan, but people will be thankful you see them as a person to trust and ask for support.
Let Free the Curse of Taekwondo
Hope...that the cycles of abuse and neglect can be broken
For all the hope that people genuinely want to care, I'm no stranger to the crueler realities of the world. Without diving into my personal history, I'll just say I'm fast to spot a dangerous glint in someone's eyes, and for a portion of my life, like Do Hoe, lived in fear and restraint at the thought of enacting some things I'd experienced.
LFTCOT in its Realism is an intense watch, but every moment depicts the two leads attempting to break out from the cruelty. The leads stumble and, without realizing it, stubbornly mirror the psychology of their families as they grow older but always in a drive to move beyond those painful pasts. Particularly, I felt understood by the draw they both have to work with children, overseeing their growth, care, and protection in contrast to how they experienced adolescence. To watch them in the last episode soft and free from the entanglement of their shame and past miseries changed me.
Hope...that the current state of the world is not permanent
I won't even claim to be a strict Marxist, or anything, but hear me out. Marx wrote (and has been widely misunderstood for writing), "The theory of the Communists may be summed up in the single sentence: Abolition of private property." In Peaceful Property, we watch a landlord release his properties to tenants one by one, until he finally smashes a model of his own family's first home, releasing all their accumulated savings. It's one of many political threads sewn into a series that at the heart of the issue is more concerned about the spiritual alienation and loneliness everyone is made to feel from their work, from themselves, and from each other under this system.
It's not that I think a QL series or a whole slew of them will end capitalism, but I'm moved by the depth and the emotional sensitivity with which screenwriter P'Dome showed these theories (meta incoming on that front). There is a celebration of explicit and subtextual political density in the writing of Thai QLs that thrills me. American writers especially have as of late leaned into irony and tragedy to convey political messaging, but in Thailand, despite a more restrictive regime, they have found a means to transform their frustrations and knowledge into heartwarming broad-appealing entertainment brimming with commentary and hope.
What Did You Eat Yesterday?
Hope...that even the smallest gestures matter
The signing of a paper in someone's kitchen, a grocery errand for a bag of onions, flexibility in the household budget for a cuter cafe: these are some of the reasons I sobbed--often for more than half an hour--while watching this series. WDYEY is a slice-of-life comedy in nearly the purest sense. It focuses on such intimately mundane aspects of an older gay couple's life together. I could've included this for the hope it brought me as simply a rare model of older gay men, but it's more than that.
Shiro and Kenji's ages place them in a position to appreciate how the small gestures we perform make up our life, offering a balm when the world is chaotic or harsh and a blessing to existence when we could so easily take it's gifts for granted. Childhood's are spent, and parents' pass. Our own lives and those of the people closest to us are so much more precarious than we can bear to always acknowledge. In the face of these existential facts, the cooking instructions slipped into each episode become a ritual. We boil the water, mince the garlic, sear the salmon (it was on sale!), and someone will be home from work soon who will see the daily efforts we've done our best performing to be alive in this world.
Hope...that the people we've lost still matter
Remembering those we've lost in our art, in ceremony, and in even just in our hearts, HCTM insists, helps us to carry a part of them with us. Much of my adolescent awareness of gay men was shaded by the HIV/AIDS pandemic and its unfairness. It's a painful moment in history to recall, but how cruel it would be to move beyond the people who's lives were stigmatized and cut short by it.
HCTM found a profoundly uplifting queer metaphor to commemorate the passing of the torch from a lost generation to those who grew up unconsciously grieving their mentors' absence. Some felt cheated by the ending's refusal to fully bring P'Med back to life, but for me it affirmed that hope is never extinguished, not even by death.
There's a fine edge to deep-seated shame, which for many of us doesn't ever quite touch suicidality. Without breaking the skin, it merely presses down on our hearts with a sharp doubt about our worthiness, whether someone else might live our lives better than we are living them. With no way to restrain the blade, we put our effort into living our lives as an apology for who we are and what we can't forgive ourselves for. We live for others, and even if we can't find solace at least we try to be kind. The slow build-up of the depths of Tian's shame over the course of the series culminating in the cathartic star-counting scene, where Phupha grabs him by the shoulders on the mountain urging him, "No one should use their their whole life to repay someone else's," freed me from a weight years of therapy couldn't manage alone.
It was paired by a theme and a performance by Mix that highlighted the complex internal sense of femininity for many gay men that, due to social persecution and ridicule, can make them feel wrong and unworthy of life even under the most privileged circumstances. By the end, A Tale of Thousand Stars offered hope that I could accept myself--the dreams I have, the intuitions I feel, the paths I choose, the ways I express myself, even the mistakes I make--and at least a few people who mattered to me could love me compassionately without feeling affronted or abandoned when I choose to follow my heart where it needs to go. They'll still be there for me no matter what I do.
Hope...that it's getting better
Not in a utopic fashion, mind you, but watching MSP had me reflecting on how different my life might've been if a show like this been on The Disney Channel or ABC Family growing up. If it had been allowed there, it would've meant the broader culture was accepting of boys falling in love. I would've had feelings far less compartmentalized, conversations far more celebratory, crushes I could've fully realized, for which I'd roll off my bed in giggles and pouts like Tinn.
This series seems to be the most accurate reflection of what the (chaster-side of) adolescent beginnings for gay attraction can look like in the current culture. It's not entirely devoid of homophobia, but it's no longer so beholden to it. There is joy--in the experiences and the media--where struggle and tragedy once predominated. For all the awful things happening in the world, it's because of series like this I can see ways it's getting better. At least I hope so, and that's the point.
For anyone who read through all of this self-indulgence, bless you! Consider yourself tagged just for that feat.
And even though I know some have already done it and some won't participate, I'm specifically tagging @doublel27 @emotionallychargedtowel @williamrikers @mephistopheleswasrobbed @imminentinertia @firstkanaphans @scarefox @ginnymoonbeam @arminthada @hashtagiwannakissyou and @ohnomalora for talking about some of these shows with me and/or to enjoy the thrill of being thought of :)
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