Bromance & BL
Academic, Boys' Love / Yaoi Comments (5)
Today my friend Jo called my attention to the new Sherlock Holmes trailer, in which Robert Downey Jr. plays Holmes and Jude Law plays Watson. We swiftly began discussing the slashability quotient of those two actors, which is rather higher than that of Basil Rathbone & Nigel Bruce, even if Rathbone & Bruce are the quintessential Holmes & Watson.
Jo told me that she’d been thinking “bromance” as soon as she’d heard about the movie. “Bromance” is a term that has already been used rather widely to describe the new Star Trek reboot with Chris Pine as Kirk and Zachary Quinto as Spock, and it’s also being used — or, rather, cheerfully dismissed — by the Sherlock Holmes cast.
“I think the word bromance is so passé,” Downey grinned. “We are two men who happen to be roommates who wrestle a lot and share a bed.” (MTV.Com, 2/11/09)
So, it’s not just me. “Bromance” has become a shorthand term for “implied boys’ love.” That is, for the sort of homoerotic M/M tension that has inspired so much slash and dojinshi but that never quite slips across the line into an overt acknowledgement of physical attraction. True, Wikipedia’s definition — at least as of today — doesn’t mention slash, yaoi, or boys’ love, largely confining bromance to real-life implied pairings rather than to the “buddy film.” (The bromance entry might at least mention RP slash; someone should get on that.) But I haven’t heard “buddy film” used by a movie critic for quite some time; it’s all about the bromance now. And, really, bromance is a more honest term, since innumerable cinema scholars have pointed out the latent homosexual content of many buddy films and shows, a latent content made overt by fans across the world.
So, given the rise of the bromance film, I can’t help but wonder … does this suggest that BL, in its broadest possible definition, is finally becoming acknowledged and accepted in the U.S. as it has been for so long in Japan?
The few online articles I’ve found about the rise of the cinematic bromance (e.g., this one from The Boston Globe or this from Independent.ie) point to metrosexuality and a growing acceptance of same-sex relationships as root causes for this genre’s new popularity. However, one has to wonder if the casting of beautiful men as paired action heroes in movies like Star Trek and Sherlock Holmes might also be a nod toward female (and gay) viewers, whose fic and vids and filk have created a gloBL subculture in fandom that can’t possibly be unknown to screenwriters and directors who grew up in the ’70s and ’80s.
Might it be that contemporary filmmakers are more willing to openly acknowledge and engage with fans’ expectations and desires? Might they eventually start providing … fan service? After all, it makes good economic sense to court the widest possible demographic for one’s work, and the giant media conglomerates are finally, begrudgingly, starting to acknowledge the importance of fans’ efforts, as scholar Henry Jenkins — now part of my grad alma mater’s faculty at USC’s Annenberg School for Communication — discusses in his articles and essays about fandom and media.
It would be fascinating to know to what extent these bromantic shows’ writers, directors, and/or execs think about fandom, especially BL fandom, as they work. It seems hard to imagine that they aren’t already chuckling, as are Jo and me and apparently Robert Downey Jr., at the thought of all the fanfic their shows will inspire….
drupagliassotti @ May 19, 2009
Our mutual friend Catherine has suggested that we might be interested in the show Supernatural in part because it seems fandom-aware. There’s even a term for fans who slash the two brothers – Wincest – and although neither Catherine nor I find the idea of incest appealing apparently a mention of Wincest (though not using that term) appeared on the show in a way that freaked the two men out.
Yeah, that would scandalize a lot of people, I think. I’m familiar with the term “twincest,” mostly in the context of the Ouran High School Host Club manga, which includes twins Hikaru and Kaoru who flirt with each other as well as with the female patrons. But while manga and anime has its share of incest storylines, incest definitely crosses the line for most Western BL publishers & many readers, as you point out. I address this issue briefly in my Intersections article http://intersections.anu.edu.au/issue20/pagliassotti.htm, paras 19 & 20. Yamila Abraham blogged about it at Yaoi Press, too. http://yaoipress.wordpress.com/2007/12/06/incest-in-yaoi/
This was fascinating – thanks for introducing me to new words, genres and the idea of bromance.
Was Interview With the Vampire an early instance of bromance? A totally homoerotic relationship between Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt.
Hi, Dru. I get what you’re saying here, and I would ~love~ to agree with you, but unfortunately, I don’t. I actually think that the bromance genre reinforces heteronormativity. Consider the following by Robert McCruer: “I am concerned with the production and reproduction, at the end of the twentieth century, of more flexible bodies: gay bodies that no longer mark absolute deviance, heterosexual bodies that are newly on display. The out heterosexual works alongside gay men and lesbians; the more flexible heterosexual body tolerates a certain amount of queerness. The more flexible gay or lesbian body, in turn, enables what I call ‘heteronormative epiphanies,’ continually making available, to the out heterosexual, a sense of subjective wholeness, however illusory.” In other words, these bromance films, as a facet of having more visibility than say, BL or gay media, have more power in defining the limits of queerness. On the surface it may seem like political progress because heterosexuals are queerer than before, but male-male love has always been present in cinema, because it is present in real life. Like you said, actual physical attraction is the limit.
*nod* That argument, that bromance reinforces heteronormativity, is one that I’ve heard expressed about boys’ love, too. I find the debate very thought-provoking, and in fact we’ll have a few chapters that refer to it in the yaoi book I’m co-editing (about BL, of course, rather than bromance). I agree that any statement that these kinds of genres “advance” a queer sociopolitical presence needs to be examined with caution, especially, as you mentioned, to the extent that these genres may constrain what the mainstream understands to be “queer” in the first place — which is typically very narrowly defined, indeed.