Boys’ love (BL) media, a genre centered on male-male romance, has emerged as a global media phenomenon, yet its transnationalization across Southeast Asia highlights stark contrasts shaped by institutional and cultural disparities. This thesis compares the Philippines and Thailand through the lenses of Historical Institutionalism and Queer Theory, examining how government participation, private sector, and viewing public interplay with queer identities in shaping BL media. By analyzing government and corporate documents, Pinoy and Thai BL series, and in-depth interviews with directors, producers, and writers, the study reveals the factors accounting to the diverging outcomes of BL media in both countries. In the Philippines, weak institutional pathways—marred by state censorship anchored on moral policing, reluctant and homophobic media industry, and divided viewing public lacking BL literacy—relegated Pinoy BL media into the periphery of the industry, exposing its precarity. In Thailand, its conducive institutional pathways, especially through investments from media companies, enabled the mainstreaming of BL in Thai media but commodified queerness in favor of marketable, masculine gay images. These findings highlight a contradiction: BL media’s potential to challenge heteronormativity is often co-opted by institutional forces that prioritize profitability. The thesis concludes with a challenge to reimagine BL not as a genre controlled by market logic but as a platform for genuine queer representation.

Authors:
Erwin James dela Cruz, University of the Philippines Diliman, Philippines

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Posted by James Alexander Gordon

Last updated: 2023-02-23 23:45:00

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