"Spock or Kirk?" I asked the two Chinese 20-something gals after exiting a screening of the newest Hollywood blockbuster showing in town. It seemed like a no-brainer to these girls.
"Spock, of course," they replied.
I was in a button-pushing mood so it was time to bring up the queer world of slash fiction, that (American) subculture of female fan writing that got its start by reimagining the yin-yang pairing of one cool Vulcan and one hot-headed Human as a swishy, swoony gay romance. Then came Wolverine/Cyclops. Sam/Frodo. Harry/Ron.
To my surprise, this was hardly news to one of my two Chinese companions. Meh, she shrugged. Yeah, lots of people here knew all about Wolverine's irrepressible attraction to one laser-eyed, mutant boy scout from the Chinese fan fic sites out there. And of course, she told me, now that the new Star Trek film had premiered in China, there will be some creative photoshopping of Zachary Quinto (Spock) and Chris Pine (Kirk) into making googly eyes at each other on the internet. She didn't get Sam/Frodo, though. Frodo was pretty enough but Sam? Definitely not worthy of the Japanese-influenced, Chinese fantasy of "Boy Love" between "Bishies" (Japanese: Bishonen/Chinese:美少年/English: Beautiful [Male] Youth). And she had only one thing to say about Harry/Ron: eeeeeeeewwwwwww. Way too pre-pubescent for some BL (Boy Love) by Chinese standards.
Self-proclaimed "Rotten Girls" (腐女), i.e., the Chinese readers and writers of BL, differ somewhat from their American counterpart in the slash fiction world. While in the U.S., it's been largely college-educated older women (geeky "cougars," if you will..) swapping homoerotic fantasies of comic book superheroes, TV and film characters and even a few real-life heartthrobs, in China "Boy Love" has been strictly a school girl obsession with fans ranging from middle school through college. At least where I am in China, this phenomenon seemed to have exploded overnight less than a decade ago when teen girls everywhere began to quietly seek out and circulate illicit translations of classic Japanese BL among themselves (very much behind their parents' and teachers' backs). A sly pun on the term for "woman" (fùnǚ: 妇女), "Rotten Girls" (fǔnǚ: 腐女) seemed, thus far, to have been masters at flying under the radar. They appear to have no distinguishing fashion sense and could be your average hyperstudious, exam-oriented teen. They may be getting all hot and bothered over 'mo fantasies but they're doing so through the very introspective signs of the model guai (乖, well-behaved) child: by staying put at home and clocking in hours and hours of reading and computer "work" in the privacy of their own bedrooms.
A whole underground industry has since blossomed around the voyeuristic pleasure of teen girls for fey dudes boinking with Chinese writers joining the ranks of their Japanese predecessors in producing their own BL manga and original fiction. Some of this can be purchased from the shady corners of small, backstreet bookshops and news stands. Even more of it can be seen on the internet. And speaking of the aforementioned boinking, it seems like their Japanese counterparts, these Chinese tales of gay lust have also taken a turn in recent years from queer "Gone with the Wind" territory to more "Debbie [read: Dudley] Does Dallas" graphic. [Historical side note: this is nicely captured by the transformation of the old Japanese acronym for this type of fan fic, Yaoi, from "Yama nashi, ochi nashi, imi nashi" (No climax, no point, no meaning) to "Yamete, oshiri ga itai" (Stop, my butt hurts!).] I must admit: I didn't dive too deeply into the nitty gritty Barthesian turn of the BL texts available at the slew of makeshift book stalls I checked out. But the recovering ex-Rotten Girl I knew sure did blush the shade of Boy George's kisser when she described the "reality effect" of the new pile-on, more-is-more approach to bishie hook ups (bodices popping and whatnot no more than three pages into a story...).
I was also struck by how these girls seem to be fantasizing not only about pretty boys who dug each other but about decidedly Euro-looking pretty boys with glam duds and emo haircuts to boot. People say the original Japanese BL bubbled out of the potent '70s milieu of Ziggy Stardust/David Bowie and self-consciously traces its genealogy back to the late 19th century effete movement of aestheticism and its star pupil, Oscar Wilde (another name for Japanese and Chinese BL fans is danmei or 耽美, short for 耽美主义 or aestheticism). Somewhere along the way Todd Haynes' cinematic homage to the glam, polyamorous days of his youth, Velvet Goldmine, also snuck its way into the Rotten Girl blogosphere with its fictionalized Bowie, Brian Slade (Jonathan Rhys Meyers: above in full androgynous, glam regalia), added to the pantheon of lust-worthy bishie idols.
I'm betting that there is a new real-life bishie about to break big on the Rotten Girl scene in Japan, China and wherever else "Boy Love" rules. I don't know if it's by way of self-conscious, manga fashioning or sheer cultural osmosis but you can't deny the uncanny BL fit of America's (and the global blogosphere's) most recent queer pop obsession:
Whole Lotta Boy Love: popular "Rotten Girl" manga and the bishie-worthy Glambert.
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