mixed-up muddled-up shook-up world
23 Oct 2010 07:33 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kaigouI've been watching a kdrama called Sungkyunkwan Scandal (which I will probably never be able to pronounce, and here I thought Nurarihyon was a tongue-twister). There's a short summary at mehanata.net (along with dl & subs, if you're interested) but the gist is that it's a cross-dressing/genderbender storyline. Girl must pretend to be a boy for various reasons; the stakes are definitely life-or-death (due to historical injunctions against women in neo-Confucianism).
In the most recent episodes, the main love interest has struggled with his growing attraction to our heroine, whom the hero believes to be a boy. It's the same angst-fest (more or less) as in many other genderbender storylines. From what I can tell, one thing that appeals to modern readers about genderbenders (and I'm not counting cross-dressing stories where the intent is farcical) is that on one level, it's illustration of the notion that "girls can play equal to boys", even if this does require that part of "being equal" requires, well, not being a girl. Meanwhile, readers also get to enjoy seeing a boy grapple with his sexuality before coming to the love-affirming position that the sex of the beloved doesn't matter, that his love transcends physical sex. (I also think this decision is seen as affirming because the reader is in on the knowledge of the girl's true identity, so the stakes -- at least for the reader -- are never quite as high as they are for the hero going through the process.)
I knowbranchandroot discussed this at some point in the past, but I seem to recall her commentary mostly discussed the end-point of any genderbender, which is that ultimately everything does end up heteronormative. The hero's heterosexuality is confirmed when the girl reveals herself to be a girl; the girl takes off the pants and puts the skirt back on; the world returns to its comfortable heteronormative place.
There's two things I recently realized, while watching SKKS and reading various genderbender manhwa, and if you can think of other examples (or anti-examples), help me out here. Just in case anyone's unfamiliar, "manga" is the Japanese form of graphic novels, and "manhwa" is the Korean form. (I've had trouble tracking down more than a smattering of manhua -- the Chinese form -- and haven't read any Chinese/Taiwanese genderbenders at all, so I'm not including it here. If I mean manhwa/manga/manhua, I tend to use the umbrella term "Asian comics".)
Below the surface of any genderbender storyline -- including the rare genderbender in western literary/cinematic genres -- I realized there's still a fundamental, errr, how to put it. Well, bluntly, a very anti-feminist message, despite the superficial non-normative, non-shoebox premise in the storyline.
Because when I start to think about what the hero's going through -- and when I say 'angst' here, I mean in the very classic sense of 'a complete division and isolation from the world as one knows it' -- and the way the story invariably wallows in his self-doubt, self-revulsion, desperate attraction, and total upheaval of his self-identity... the conclusion is that the hero is suffering for the sole reason that the girl is not being a girl. If the girl were to reveal herself as a girl (get in her girl-place, socially), the hero wouldn't be forced to go through the agonies of trying to determine what's happened to his place. His internal struggles are entirely the result of her refusal to act like a girl.
So when the girl does finally reveal herself a girl, it's both affirming the heteronormative message (that the proper place is to be a girl), and possibly also illustrating that a man is only comfortable in his place/identity when a woman is not trying to be what she isn't. The woman's displacement leads to the man's displacement; thus, the man's dis-ease is the fault of the woman's dis-ease.
From the Asian comics I've read, Japanese and Korean stories take different paths towards the revelation of the girl-as-girl. In manga, the hero is the first one to discover (whether or not the girl's aware), and from then on, the hero does a lot of running interference on the secondary love interest to prevent the secondary from also discovering the truth. (A secondary love interest often suspects the girl-as-girl, but it's the hero who finds/learns definitively.) This path means the Japanese hero's angst is minimized. The bulk of the story consists of the two characters aware of their attraction (since genderbenders are almost always, also, romances), possibly fighting it due to environment ie fear of discovery by others, but generally united in attempting to keep the girl's secret.
In manhwa/kdramas the revelation takes forever, torturing the poor hero with the angst. Meanwhile, the secondary love interest is first to learn of it, and thereafter is either unable to act on it, or acting on it and not really getting anywhere. SKKS falls into the former category, and Han Yu-Rang's manhwa fall into the latter category. One kdrama, Coffee Prince, drags the poor hero through something like eleven hours of wangst before the big reveal. (Come to think of it, that series' reveal was at about the three-quarter point, and if SKKS goes only the advertised twenty episode total, its reveal was also at the three-quarter point. Hunh.)
Side-note: despite my annoyance with the direction for You're Beautiful (another kdrama), the Hong Sisters do prove to be both genre-savvy and so very witty at subverting just about every genre convention you can name -- including having the hero discover the girl's true sex pretty quickly. Like, the second episode. (Whiplash on the genre-breaking!) Note, though, that the hero still isn't the first to learn of it; as usual, that's for the secondary love interest, who pretty much pegs it almost immediately.
This makes Han Ru-Yang's manhwa stand out even more, in that her heroes do not, in fact, angst all that much (relatively) when it comes to their attraction to the heroine. Han's heroes are actually rather matter-of-fact about it, more interested in following their lust than really going into existential crisis over what this means for their sexual/self identities. In Love in the Mask and Boy of the Female Wolf, both main-interest heroes approach the situation/girl as simply, "well, I'm attracted, so I'm going with it, and maybe the point is that I'd like you no matter what sex you are." It's the overall lack of extreme angst, I think, that marks Han's heroes as being much more open-minded about themselves and their sexual potential/identity. (That said, Boy of the Female Wolf twists it further by having a character who's more like the tertiary love interest -- way down the totem pole in terms of the heroine's radar -- be the only one who knows.)
Whether manhwa or manga, the hero's discovery is always posited as an 'accident'. Either the girl's startled when dressing/bathing, or the boy sees the girl when she's unaware, or some other contrived situation, but the end result is that a) the revelation is unintentional, and b) the hero hadn't suspected (even if baffled by the girl-as-boy's odd behavior). There's a gray area when a boy-character suspects something is up; if he acts on even a momentary suspicion or curiosity, that'll count against him, genre-wise. The hero is the character who willfully turns away with no interest in finding out (if he's even aware there's anything to find).
Any character who does his best to 'reveal' the girl is often, in fact, the love interest's competition. He may put in a good showing, and (more often in manga but sometimes in manhwa) may even use a soft type of blackmail on the girl about her secret-girl status. Whether he protects/assists from a discreet distance or actively inserts himself into the heroine's path, his original suspicion seems to doom him to permanent secondary status.
So is the prerequisite for being a hero is that one be really, really dense when it comes to observing the lover, including missing the obvious clues that a girl might be a girl (honestly, do these people never think to check for an adam's apple?)...
Or is the corollary more true, that closer one observes another, the more that visual or verbal quasi-interrogation reduces the potential for love? In manhwa, the character who moves in close enough, who studies the heroine hard enough, (or who just happens to be in the right place and time and looking in the right direction to catch the clues) is automatically doomed not to get the girl. Is the underlying message that to get the girl, one must remain blind to her true nature, or is it more that love can't exist where one looks too closely?
In the most recent episodes, the main love interest has struggled with his growing attraction to our heroine, whom the hero believes to be a boy. It's the same angst-fest (more or less) as in many other genderbender storylines. From what I can tell, one thing that appeals to modern readers about genderbenders (and I'm not counting cross-dressing stories where the intent is farcical) is that on one level, it's illustration of the notion that "girls can play equal to boys", even if this does require that part of "being equal" requires, well, not being a girl. Meanwhile, readers also get to enjoy seeing a boy grapple with his sexuality before coming to the love-affirming position that the sex of the beloved doesn't matter, that his love transcends physical sex. (I also think this decision is seen as affirming because the reader is in on the knowledge of the girl's true identity, so the stakes -- at least for the reader -- are never quite as high as they are for the hero going through the process.)
I know
branchandroot discussed this at some point in the past, but I seem to recall her commentary mostly discussed the end-point of any genderbender, which is that ultimately everything does end up heteronormative. The hero's heterosexuality is confirmed when the girl reveals herself to be a girl; the girl takes off the pants and puts the skirt back on; the world returns to its comfortable heteronormative place. There's two things I recently realized, while watching SKKS and reading various genderbender manhwa, and if you can think of other examples (or anti-examples), help me out here. Just in case anyone's unfamiliar, "manga" is the Japanese form of graphic novels, and "manhwa" is the Korean form. (I've had trouble tracking down more than a smattering of manhua -- the Chinese form -- and haven't read any Chinese/Taiwanese genderbenders at all, so I'm not including it here. If I mean manhwa/manga/manhua, I tend to use the umbrella term "Asian comics".)
Below the surface of any genderbender storyline -- including the rare genderbender in western literary/cinematic genres -- I realized there's still a fundamental, errr, how to put it. Well, bluntly, a very anti-feminist message, despite the superficial non-normative, non-shoebox premise in the storyline.
Because when I start to think about what the hero's going through -- and when I say 'angst' here, I mean in the very classic sense of 'a complete division and isolation from the world as one knows it' -- and the way the story invariably wallows in his self-doubt, self-revulsion, desperate attraction, and total upheaval of his self-identity... the conclusion is that the hero is suffering for the sole reason that the girl is not being a girl. If the girl were to reveal herself as a girl (get in her girl-place, socially), the hero wouldn't be forced to go through the agonies of trying to determine what's happened to his place. His internal struggles are entirely the result of her refusal to act like a girl.
So when the girl does finally reveal herself a girl, it's both affirming the heteronormative message (that the proper place is to be a girl), and possibly also illustrating that a man is only comfortable in his place/identity when a woman is not trying to be what she isn't. The woman's displacement leads to the man's displacement; thus, the man's dis-ease is the fault of the woman's dis-ease.
From the Asian comics I've read, Japanese and Korean stories take different paths towards the revelation of the girl-as-girl. In manga, the hero is the first one to discover (whether or not the girl's aware), and from then on, the hero does a lot of running interference on the secondary love interest to prevent the secondary from also discovering the truth. (A secondary love interest often suspects the girl-as-girl, but it's the hero who finds/learns definitively.) This path means the Japanese hero's angst is minimized. The bulk of the story consists of the two characters aware of their attraction (since genderbenders are almost always, also, romances), possibly fighting it due to environment ie fear of discovery by others, but generally united in attempting to keep the girl's secret.
In manhwa/kdramas the revelation takes forever, torturing the poor hero with the angst. Meanwhile, the secondary love interest is first to learn of it, and thereafter is either unable to act on it, or acting on it and not really getting anywhere. SKKS falls into the former category, and Han Yu-Rang's manhwa fall into the latter category. One kdrama, Coffee Prince, drags the poor hero through something like eleven hours of wangst before the big reveal. (Come to think of it, that series' reveal was at about the three-quarter point, and if SKKS goes only the advertised twenty episode total, its reveal was also at the three-quarter point. Hunh.)
Side-note: despite my annoyance with the direction for You're Beautiful (another kdrama), the Hong Sisters do prove to be both genre-savvy and so very witty at subverting just about every genre convention you can name -- including having the hero discover the girl's true sex pretty quickly. Like, the second episode. (Whiplash on the genre-breaking!) Note, though, that the hero still isn't the first to learn of it; as usual, that's for the secondary love interest, who pretty much pegs it almost immediately.
This makes Han Ru-Yang's manhwa stand out even more, in that her heroes do not, in fact, angst all that much (relatively) when it comes to their attraction to the heroine. Han's heroes are actually rather matter-of-fact about it, more interested in following their lust than really going into existential crisis over what this means for their sexual/self identities. In Love in the Mask and Boy of the Female Wolf, both main-interest heroes approach the situation/girl as simply, "well, I'm attracted, so I'm going with it, and maybe the point is that I'd like you no matter what sex you are." It's the overall lack of extreme angst, I think, that marks Han's heroes as being much more open-minded about themselves and their sexual potential/identity. (That said, Boy of the Female Wolf twists it further by having a character who's more like the tertiary love interest -- way down the totem pole in terms of the heroine's radar -- be the only one who knows.)
Whether manhwa or manga, the hero's discovery is always posited as an 'accident'. Either the girl's startled when dressing/bathing, or the boy sees the girl when she's unaware, or some other contrived situation, but the end result is that a) the revelation is unintentional, and b) the hero hadn't suspected (even if baffled by the girl-as-boy's odd behavior). There's a gray area when a boy-character suspects something is up; if he acts on even a momentary suspicion or curiosity, that'll count against him, genre-wise. The hero is the character who willfully turns away with no interest in finding out (if he's even aware there's anything to find).
Any character who does his best to 'reveal' the girl is often, in fact, the love interest's competition. He may put in a good showing, and (more often in manga but sometimes in manhwa) may even use a soft type of blackmail on the girl about her secret-girl status. Whether he protects/assists from a discreet distance or actively inserts himself into the heroine's path, his original suspicion seems to doom him to permanent secondary status.
So is the prerequisite for being a hero is that one be really, really dense when it comes to observing the lover, including missing the obvious clues that a girl might be a girl (honestly, do these people never think to check for an adam's apple?)...
Or is the corollary more true, that closer one observes another, the more that visual or verbal quasi-interrogation reduces the potential for love? In manhwa, the character who moves in close enough, who studies the heroine hard enough, (or who just happens to be in the right place and time and looking in the right direction to catch the clues) is automatically doomed not to get the girl. Is the underlying message that to get the girl, one must remain blind to her true nature, or is it more that love can't exist where one looks too closely?
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no subject
Date: 24 Oct 2010 08:51 pm (UTC)Wonderful observations on the Japan vs. Korea content. ^^ I am going to reread Han Ru-Yang, too~
no subject
Date: 25 Oct 2010 04:54 am (UTC)Well, that would explain why so often the site lists zipped packs of Bulgarian subtitles alongside the English subtitles! Just be forewarned if you dl something late in the game -- very few of the kdramas ever get bundled into complete sets as a single torrent. There are at least two series I've not watched because I couldn't get a single seed on several of the episodes, and I'm not going to torture myself with a 17-episode series for which I'm missing episodes 3, 12, 14, and 15. UGH.
Han Ru-yang has written a lot more than I've mentioned in any of my posts, but it seems like the rest of what she's written (and she's done a LOT of manga) is very much standard shoujo-fare. It makes her rather unusual genderbenders stand out just that much more, or maybe I'm just liking more the series where she's explored a little more outside the usual this-makes-money boundaries.
no subject
Date: 26 Oct 2010 03:21 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 26 Oct 2010 03:25 am (UTC)I do that all the time. If you want a link of where to get 'em, just let me know & I'll send a PM.
no subject
Date: 9 Nov 2010 02:43 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 25 Oct 2010 08:06 am (UTC)I'm not sure where it's going to end up - I'm on v11 - and the gender thing is complicated by the fact that Soji's main identification is as bushi, an identity he is training Sei to accept - but it's very enjoyable so far, and not like the high school gender-swap manga I've encountered earlier.
I think your final paragraph is very interesting - is it intended that way round? Or is knowing the "true identity" a consolation prize for losing out on the romantic relationship?
(and man, you post so many fascinating entries. I have about 4 open in various tabs, and this is the first one I've been organised enough to reply to on anything like an appropriate schedule. I am also taking notes on manhwa recs, as apart from Bride of the Water God and Let Dai, neither of which I've gotten particularly far with (the first is very hard to find here, and the second was not clicking for me, but then I tried to read it after loving Banana Fish and being told it was similar, which is untrue), this is very much uncharted territory for me).
no subject
Date: 26 Oct 2010 03:31 am (UTC)I think your final paragraph is very interesting - is it intended that way round? Or is knowing the "true identity" a consolation prize for losing out on the romantic relationship?
I'm not really sure -- I mean, it's just possible meanings of the way the stories tend to be constructed. (Most of these things do tend to work on a rather unconscious level, in that the author doesn't give it much thought, but just follows the conventions of the genre.) I suppose it's possible that knowing is a sort of consolation prize, except that I've noticed the number of times "the one who knows" uses this as leverage against the girl (and almost always, too, with a certain uncaring attitude towards being seen as gay for the apparent two-boys-together). That's less like a consolation prize in & of itself... but more like "here's something you can use against the girl (to force her to date you or at least tolerate you or spend time with you) and that's all the story's going to let you have". I think it's also a writerly thing, because it gives a chance to tease the readers (who probably know full well the 'true' hero, anyway) with the notion that the secondary love interest might 'get ahead' of the main love interest, in terms of catching the girl's attention.
Then you have situations like the bizarre complete turn-around in Love in the Mask when the secondary hero determines Hyun-bin's status as girl, promises to keep it a secret (while utterly baffled as to why it must be a secret), and makes no bones to the rest of the school about the fact that he's mad for Hyun-bin... to the point that he comes out as gay to his classmates. He's even gay-bashed for it. (Now there's something I've yet to see in a Japanese manga.) It's a very surreal set of chapters. I mean, it's logical within the story but talk about taking the genre conventions to the absolute extreme.
Ah, and if you can't track down BotWG, PM me and I'll send you a source for it. *wink*
no subject
Date: 27 Oct 2010 10:06 am (UTC)Nope (or at least not by volume 12) - so far, the only ones who know are the guy she has a crush on, and the courtesan (can't remember exact degree of title) she uses as an alibi for her periods. I think probably I just don't read enough standard shoujo to keep hitting the tropes, because the leverage thing sounds really creepy and not that familiar - I can understand using it to taunt the readers, and I suppose it fits in with the "I stalk because I love" approach to romance, but ick.
Then you have situations like the bizarre complete turn-around in Love in the Mask when the secondary hero determines Hyun-bin's status as girl, promises to keep it a secret (while utterly baffled as to why it must be a secret), and makes no bones to the rest of the school about the fact that he's mad for Hyun-bin... to the point that he comes out as gay to his classmates. He's even gay-bashed for it. (Now there's something I've yet to see in a Japanese manga.) It's a very surreal set of chapters. I mean, it's logical within the story but talk about taking the genre conventions to the absolute extreme.
Ooh. On the other hand, I have a massive weakness for secondary leads who will never end up getting the girl and suffer nobly for it, and this sounds ideal (is he also emotionally uptight and stoic apart from these feelings). Will check this out...
no subject
Date: 25 Oct 2010 12:25 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 26 Oct 2010 03:08 am (UTC)