The "Y" phenomenon: dystopia, utopia, and heterotopia in Thai boys love media.

In the past decade, Thai Boys Love (BL) media has gained phenomenal popularity in Asia in the form of film and drama series, garnering considerable interest from scholars of cultural studies, gender studies, and media studies. Using frame analysis, this article traces the evolution of Thai BL themes...

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Publicado en:Inter-Asia Cultural Studies Vol. 26; no. 6; pp. 1086 - 1105
Autores principales: Chan, Ying-kit, Lee, Tong King
Formato: Essay
Publicado: Taylor & Francis Ltd Dec2025
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Acceso en línea:Ver este registro en EBSCOhost
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      dt: Dec2025
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        atl: The "Y" phenomenon: dystopia, utopia, and heterotopia in Thai boys love media.
      aug:
        au:
          Chan, Ying-kit
          Lee, Tong King
        affil:
          Department of Chinese Studies, National University of Singapore, Singapore
          School of English, University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong
      su:
        Dystopias
        Utopias
        Film series
        Cultural studies
        Asia
      sug:
        subj:
          Asia
          Dystopias
          Utopias
          Film series
          Cultural studies
      keyword:
        Chronotope
        dystopia
        frame analysis
        Thai Boys Love (BL)
        timespaces
        utopia
      ab: In the past decade, Thai Boys Love (BL) media has gained phenomenal popularity in Asia in the form of film and drama series, garnering considerable interest from scholars of cultural studies, gender studies, and media studies. Using frame analysis, this article traces the evolution of Thai BL themes from cinematic dystopia into small-screen utopia, i.e. from the tragic (dystopia) to the heart-warming (compromised utopia), and to the comic and hyperreal (utopia). We understand post-2014 BL productions as subsisting within a specific frame that breaks with that of pre-2014 Thai homoerotic films before BL series became mainstream. Frames are chronotopic in the Bakhtinian sense; they are timespaces in which spatial and temporal indicators are fused into one carefully thought-out, concrete whole. Applying this to the case at hand, one may observe as follows: temporally, the post-2014 BL frame encompasses adolescence or young adulthood; spatially, it invokes the high school, senior high school, or university as microcosms of an idealized or romanticized pre-society characterized by childlike innocence, parental (usually maternal) approval, and homosocial relations. This article thus proposes a spectrum of affective readings from dystopia to utopia to critically understand the popular reception of Thai BL and explain why some of them are better received than others.
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    language: English
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