國立成功大學多元文化研究中心

【Speaker】Amporn Jirattikorn（清邁大學社會科學與發展學系副教授） 

【Time】 10am-12pm, 6/13, Thursday, 2024

【Venue】 台文系館88155

【Moderator】台文系楊芳枝教授

【Organizers】主辦單位：台灣文學系

協辦單位：性別與婦女研究中心、多元文化研究中心

不須報名，直接參與

【Abstract】

Over the past two decades, boys' love (BL) media has developed to become a strong subculture in Asia. Thailand, an unprecedented player in Asian pop culture, has risen to become a significant producer of BL series within the last decade. To date, Thailand has produced more than 100 BL series and has garnered a large following throughout Asia. This paper explores how Asian fans engage with Thai BL texts, focusing yticularly on two different countries, Japan and China. In Japan, despite BL texts originating in Japan, the country has now become a consumer of BL content from Thailand. Historically, cultural exchanges between Japan and Thailand were characterized by an imbalance, with Thailand primarily receiving cultural influences. In China, despite the development of its own robust BL literature called "danmer. the production of BL live-action series is limited due to strict censorship. Chinese audience have thus become significant followers of Thai BL media.

Using the "inter-Asia referencing framework, the talk analyzes how Thailand is imagined and idealized by Asian youth in relations to its portrayal of queerness. Thailand, once a relatively minor player, bas emerged as a key reference point, influencing queer politics across Asia. Through in-depth interviews with Japanese and Chinese audiences, the paper explores how the interregional circulation of Thai BL not only diversifies knowledge sources about homonormativity but also challenges the hegemony of Euro-American voices, placing Asian voices and experienees at the forefront.

【About the speaker】

Anporn Jirattikorn is Associate Professor in the Department of Social Science and Development at Chiang Mai University. Thailand. She received her Ph.D in Anthropology from the University of Texas, Austin in 2008. Amporn's research interests are in two areas: media flows and mobility of people across national boundaries. One area focuses particularly on the movement of Shan migrants from Myanmar into Thailand. Her publication has centered on the formation of Shan migrant identity in Thailand and the construction of masculinity among Shan male sex workers who engage in selling sex to gay men clients. The other aren involves cross border flows of Thai television series to Asian countries and the audience reception of Thai popular culture. Her recent research involves the transnational audience reception of Thai boys' love series, particularly in Japan and China.