I hate the term ‘bromance’ tbh and here’s why - I feel it trivialises and diminishes male friendships that aren’t based on the idea of masculinity doled out by society. I also believe the idea behind the term is quite homophobic, as if two males in a romantic relationship is unnatural and we must shy away from it....
As a woman, I don’t have homances (or whatever you’d call them) with my girlfriends, so why does it have to be different with men? It doesn’t, end of story.
So I had two thoughts going into Bromance (2015) - 1) this is going to be a load of homophobic hogswallop; and 2) I hope this isn’t as homophobic as I’m expecting. I love dramas and don’t like to bail on them, but was fully prepared to bail on this one if I had to. I really expected to see some next level ‘ewww he’s a boy / how could I possible fall in love with a guy / two guys together is disgusting’ BS.
Fast forward a couple of eps - time to throughout the bailing bucket...
I was pleasantly surprised by just how not homophobic this show was. Frankly I think it was probably quite well timed for Taiwan (if I were a betting man, I’d definitely put money on Taiwan legalising gay marriage before Australia, the most backwards bastard country in the world).
I loved that almost no character batted an eyelid when two dudes fell in love. Any potential scandals that could have come out of it were quickly shut down and any eyelid batting that did happen was met with a swift ‘but they love each other’ love-is-the-most-important-thing-here kind of message from another character or their own soul searching.
I also love the random background characters shouting ‘we support diverse family formations’ occasionally. I myself am part of a family that would be considered to have a ‘diverse formation’ and have many loved ones in similar such families. I kind of felt the show was a little bit of a PSA for gay marriage equality, and while it wasn’t particularly subtle (as subtle as the product placement!!!) when it’s for a good cause, es ist mir egal how blunt-forced a message is.
Some of the sting of the title was also taken away for me as the ‘bros’ in this show were literally sworn brothers, like, ewww gross, they drank each others’ blood FFS, not just buddies.
Why can’t there be some solid dramas on the telly with non-hetero lead characters? It’s 2016!
PS Thanks to Netflix there’s some of this going on, but I feel it is still pretty niche. Let’s get mainstream people!
