Queering BL televisuality across Asia: queer polylocality across Thailand, Hong Kong and South Korea

In recent years, a vibrant body of scholarship on queer television studies has critiqued the heteronormative and capitalistic understandings of televisual experiences. In particular, as Glyn Davis and Gary Needham write in Queer TV, ‘How can we queerly theorise and understand television? How can we as queers make sense of television?’¹ Despite the ambitious aim of their edited volume to address the theories, histories and politics of queer television, its analytical scope remains largely Euro-American. This essay critiques the lingering Eurocentrism of queer TV studies and demonstrates that one way of moving beyond this blind spot is precisely by outlining a theoretical model that can account for the genre diversity and the heterogeneous time-space of queer (post)modernity evident in emergent popular Asian televisual cultures. Building on previous scholarship in queer Asian studies that examines global Asian cities like Hong Kong and Singapore as sites of disjuncture between western queer liberalism and inter-Asian urbanism and modernization, I suggest that televisual narratives of boys’ love (BL) is one pivotal domain for unpacking these features of queer (post)modernity and urban unevenness.² Here I propose that polylocality offers a productive framework for conceptualising the incommensurable and messy entanglements of queer temporality, postmodern spatiality and alluring urbanism that are increasingly the hallmarks of Asian BL media. I explore specifically the polylocality of queer desire as it manifests in some of the most popular BL television series across the transregional contexts of Thailand, South Korea and Hong Kong.

In Yingjin Zhang’s original framework of polylocality, the concept refers to ‘the production of scale and translocality’ in cinematic representations of space and scale in globalisation.³ In his critique of Fredric Jameson’s generalizing concept of cognitive mapping, Zhang argues that polylocality captures ‘instances of cinematic remapping that favor street-level views over cartographic surveys, contingent experience over systematic knowledge, and bittersweet local histories over a grand-scale global history’.⁴ My coinage of ‘queer polylocality’ describes how queer televisual representation, consumption and reception in globalising Asia have enabled individual queer TV series to cite, transpose and transform queer cultural sources from within their own national borders, while drawing inspiration from Asian regional and transnational queer influences. I briefly examine two cases of BL television series, namely the highly erotic Thai BL series KinnPorsche: The Series (2022) and the short Korean queer vampire series Kissable Lips (2022). KinnPorsche capitalises on the growing popularity of Thai BL series, such as 2gether: The Series (2020), that often feature a narrative of schoolboy romance played by mostly ‘straight’ actors. Here the romance between Kinn, the young heir to a mafia family empire, and Porsche, his bodyguard and lover, additionally draws on elements of sadomasochism (S/M), soft pornography and queer urbanism. I also examine how the city of Hong Kong plays a crucial role in generating Sino-Thai BL fandom and queer regionalism. Similarly, Kissable Lips taps into the global popularity of Korean zombie TV dramas such as Kingdom (2019) and All of Us Are Dead (2022), both made for Netflix. Some recent studies have already examined the role of co-commissioning between Netflix and local Korean networks in further globalising the Hallyu (Korean wave) romantic blockbusters for global audiences.⁵ While acknowledging that Korean zombie TV series like Kingdom might indeed be allegorical of the crisis capitalism and secret algorithm of Netflix’s audience reach,⁶ I turn to the queering of the zombie televisual genre precisely to unbind the zombie-capitalism-nationalist crisis triangle. By queering the national and global anxieties of contagion and financial insecurity that underpin the ‘K-Zombie’ genre, the Korean BL series Kissable Lips also actualises polylocal utopian spaces of schoolboy romance. By exploring the transnational cross-pollination of queerness in BL cultural productions from globalising Asia, one can appreciate the polylocal queer telemodernities in global Asian TV industries. Conceptually I frame the transnational circulations and consumption of Asian BL televisual productions as queering the concept of telemodernities, which was originally restricted to analyses of lifestyle television in a globalising Asia.⁷

KinnPorsche offers an alluring televisual experience of action thriller, homoeroticism and sadomasochism, while visualising the unmistakable skylines of Bangkok and its global urbanism. The series portrays the intense romantic and erotic bonds between Kinn (Phakphum Romsaithong) and Porsche (Nattawin Wattanagitiphat/Apo). From the outset these two handsome men could not differ more. Whereas Kinn is the second son and hopeful heir of the most powerful mafia gang, the Theerapanyakun family, and lives in a grand mansion with his bodyguards, Porsche works as a bartender in a dodgy neighbourhood, where his main income is dependent on his good looks attracting a constant flow of wealthy female patrons. He is responsible for financing his younger brother Porchay’s high-school education, and the siblings’ lives are made even more difficult by having an uncle whose gambling addiction leads them into constant debt and death threats from loan sharks. One night, as Kinn is running away from a violent encounter with the Italian mafia, who have refused to negotiate a business deal, Porsche offers to help him escape on the promise of monetary reward. Eventually Kinn’s father, Korn Theerapanyakun, learns of Porsche’s great fighting skills and demands that his son recruit him as a new personal bodyguard. A second thread of the series revolves around the supporting character Vegas Kornwit Theerapanyakun (Wichapas Sumettikul/Bible), the eldest son and heir of Kinn’s uncle, who heads the secondary branch of the crime family. While Vegas at first lusts after the muscular physique and handsome looks of Porsche purely out of jealousy towards Kinn, he later develops romantic feelings for Pete, one of Kinn’s bodyguards who was captured during a major fight between the two families. Vegas tortures Pete and engages in S/M practices, and although Pete eventually escapes his captivity, he secretly savours his time as the submissive partner in an S/M relationship.

Despite the complex plot, KinnPorsche maintains a high erotic energy throughout its 14 episodes thanks to its presentation of Bangkok as a pivotal urban zone for new forms of queerness and homoerotic bonds. The first episode places the viewers within the polylocal queer modernity of Bangkok, where illegal business deals, nightlife and public sex all take place. While in Asian film and media cultures the mafia gang genre usually centres on the heroism of sworn brotherhood and is largely devoid of homoeroticism (the Young and Dangerous film series [1996–2000] in Hong Kong cinema comes to mind), here the series queers this genre by embedding gang brotherhood and homoeroticism in the polylocal time-space of contemporary Bangkok. The opening scene depicts the gay heir Kinn walking confidently into a business meeting with the head of an Italian mafia gang at night; the room where they conduct their seedy ‘business’ directly faces another skyscraper with tall glass windows. The meeting room is well equipped, with a bottle shelf carrying expensive wines. The next scene cuts to the setting of a bar at night, where the minor transgender character Yok, the bar owner, greets us by exclaiming ‘Welcome to HUM Bar!’ Here Porsche is spotlit by colourful neon light as he schools his assistant bartender on the specific cocktails to serve for each female client. His clients are young, beautiful and middle class; one of them eventually seduces Porsche and they engage in rough sex in the alley behind the bar. It is at this exact moment that Kinn asks Porsche, whom he does not yet know, for his help with fighting off the Italian gang members. Porsche asks Kinn to ride with him on his motorbike, leads the gang into his bar and singlehandedly defeats all its members. Here we see eros and finance to be intimately linked, evincing what Neferti Tadiar terms the libidinal economy of sexuality and global relations. She writes that ‘the economies and political relations of nations are libidinally configured, that is, they are grasped and effected in normative terms of sexuality’.⁸ Instead of configuring unequal global relations among countries in sexual and gendered terms, we see how queer desire and illicit sexuality provide the material ground for grasping new urban forms and messy spatial reconfigurations in Bangkok.

While these early sequences in the first episode serve the instrumental purpose of introducing the protagonists, they also place Kinn and Porsche within the queer polylocality and urban capitalism that are the hallmarks of early 21st-century Bangkok. Peter A. Jackson demonstrates how queer urbanisation and capitalist modernity dates back to as early as 1930s Bangkok in the form of erotic cartoons, gay male and transgender sex work catering to local clients, and LGBT-related magazines that predate the arrival of western influences. As Jackson writes, ‘capitalism is also a national phenomenon that has a local impact, producing both new forms of local cultural difference and cultural parallels to the West’.⁹ Elsewhere Jackson points to an ‘increase in the number of commercial gay venues in the city – including gay pubs, bars, discos, and saunas – from 165 in 2003 to 216 in 2007; gay saunas doubled in number over this period, to more than fifty’.¹⁰ While KinnPorsche visually scans the queer textures of the economic boom of gay capitalism in contemporary Bangkok, it also vividly details the polylocal divergence, heterogeneity and messiness that index class and social divides among different queer subjects. For example, both Kinn and Porsche engage in forms of illicit trade, the former as a leader of a mafia family that derives profit from illegal loan sharking and gambling, the latter as a handsome bartender whose popularity might be linked to sex work. By visualising gay male characters as the conduit to understanding commercial forces and the informal economies on the ground, the series pivots BL as the new cultural form for prime-time television and visual pleasure for all viewers, regardless of sexual orientation.¹¹ Crucially, BL marks a new queer telemodernity by unpacking the polylocal experiences of queer desire.

Beyond illustrating the uneven polylocal experiences of gay men who come from different social backgrounds, the series queerly reinvents the conventional BL aesthetics of beautiful young boys falling in love in workplace and high-school settings into a narrative of eroticism and S/M practices within the urban metropolis of Bangkok.¹² While popular BL series in East and Southeast Asian contexts such as Addicted (2016), 2gether: The Series (2020) and Cherry Magic! (2020) all portray young men falling in love in school and work settings that display a conservativism and homonormativity in their lack of explicit erotic content, KinnPorsche exploits diverse spatial configurations for screening alternative queer sexuality. Its polylocal urban settings are central to its visual logics of queer sexuality. Beyond serving as merely the setting, polylocal urbanism intensifies the queer affect and erotic sensation that are taking place within a particular scene.

There are two particular examples of this. In the third episode, Porsche has successfully integrated into the mafia gang and is living fairly happily in Kinn’s mansion. One night, he takes Kinn and his flamboyant older brother Tankhun out to have fun at his former workplace, HUM Bar. After a wild and exhausting night of drinking and dancing, the two young men sit by the harbour overlooking the beautiful Chao Phraya River. Porsche smiles drunkenly and childishly at Kinn, who can no longer control himself and starts to kiss him; the episode ends on this scene of intense kissing. During the fourth episode, Porsche is tasked with security control at an important diamond jewellery auction in which Kinn is attempting to outbid his cousin and enemy, Vegas, for a necklace. Porsche unwittingly drinks a glass of water that has been deliberately spiked with a love potion by Vegas and his team. Kinn arrives just in time to save the intoxicated Porsche from being raped. That night, Kinn carries the still drugged Porsche back to his room, at first with the intention of simply caring for him. But with Porsche still in a sexually charged state from the love potion, they end up fucking passionately, their bodies pressed against windows that look out on the skyscrapers of Bangkok. In these two specific scenes, romance and gay male eroticism are infused with the urban landscape of nightlife, iconic landmarks and an elevated perspective, all pointing to the queer polylocality of imagining young men’s homoeroticism in contemporary Bangkok. In turn, these queer polylocal spatial configurations have led to a level of BL fandom in which devotees of the series now rent the hotel room where this sex scene took place, in an attempt to re-experience the urban texture of queer desire.

Queer polylocality also operates in the ‘minor transnationalism’ and ‘queer regionalism’ of the TV series, especially when the producer and the whole cast of KinnPorsche built further on the momentum of the series’ transnational fandom and hosted a KinnPorsche concert and fan ‘meet-and-greet’ events during late January 2023 in Hong Kong, for which I managed to secure a ticket. In describing the regional impact of the series in Hong Kong, I build on existing scholarship in queer Asian studies that stresses the South–South ‘minor transnationalism’ of queer culture within inter-Asian media flows, while pointing to Hong Kong itself as a vibrant region for reading these dense formations of queer regionalism.¹³ On entering the concert venue at Kowloonbay International Trade and Exhibition Centre, I was immediately struck by how diverse the audience members are. The fans are mostly young girls and women, but I also saw husbands accompanying their diehard-fan wives, along with Southeast Asians and especially Thai women, who scream loudly ‘Kiss! Kiss! Kiss!’ in Thai whenever Kinn and Porsche are close to kissing each other during their singing and dance moves, otherwise known as ‘fan service’. This term refers to the way that male idols and boyband members perform homosocial bonds and homoerotic acts on stage to ignite their mostly female fans’ excitement.¹⁴ I was equally surprised to see that the character most associated with S/M eroticism in the series, Vegas, had garnered a comparable degree of fandom to the KinnPorsche coupling (CP) among fans. A large poster of Vegas was set diagonally across those of Kinn and Porsche, close to the entrance. To reward the devoted fans who largely speak Cantonese in the Sinophone community of Hong Kong, one actor in the series, Jeff Satur – who plays Kinn’s youngest brother, Kim Kimhan Theerapanyakun – sings the famous song by the 1990s Cantopop singer Andy Lau, ‘The Days We Spent Together’ (一起走過的日子). This 1991 song is itself the theme song of a mafia movie, Casino Raiders II (Johnnie To, 1991). While Satur’s Cantonese is heavily accented with Thai pronunciation, his handsome face and skinny body stand in sharp contrast to Lau’s 1990s heteronormative masculine stardom, which catered mostly to a heterosexual female fanbase. Overall, the KinnPorsche concert in Hong Kong and its Cantonese Sino-Thai performance of 1990s Cantopop attest to queer forms of minor transnationalism. Such moments and details demonstrate a ‘cultural transversalism’ that ‘includes minor cultural articulations in productive relationship with the major (in all its possible shapes, forms, and kinds), as well as minor-to-minor networks that circumvent the major altogether’.¹⁵ In other words, beyond studying the global popularity of Thai BL on media screening platforms like the US-originated Netflix, media studies scholars of queer Asia would do well to attend to extra-televisual and extra-textual circuits of BL fandom on the ground, within the minor transnationalism of a globalising Asia.

To fully appreciate the polylocality of queerness in BL television series, it might be productive to explore a newer subgenre within Asian BL dramas that questions the urbanism of BL queer televisual contents, and to examine what queer telemodernity looks like in the dystopian setting of vampirism and zombie narrative. ‘K-Zombie’ is a term that viewers, fans and scholars use to describe a subgenre of Korean horror film and TV drama that centres on the threat posed to humanity by zombies and new mutants. It would be an understatement to claim that the K-Zombie genre has colonised the global imagination of Korean dramas. Korean film and media scholar Joseph Jeon attributes the rise of the genre to the commercial success and global popularity of films such as Train to Busan (Yeon Sang-ho, 2016) and the Netflix series Kingdom (Kim Seong-hun, 2019).¹⁶ For cultural critics, the rise of the K-Zombie genre during the years of the Covid-19 pandemic is not coincidental. Narratives of governmental failure and dynastic corruption in the zombie genre are symptomatic of the dereliction of duty in the governments of South Korea and elsewhere, and in the inability of global humanitarian regimes to provide security, safety and basic healthcare in times of emergency and disaster. Observing both the popularity of zombie-like cultural productions and the potential of zombie thinking as critique, Elmo Gonzaga writes, ‘Feeding on the precarious mobility of flows of migration and money, state capitalism could be regarded as zombieseque in how it derives its vitality from the tenuous, fugitive presence of transitory labour and speculative investment’.¹⁷ Building on this emerging scholarship on the genre, I argue that the BL series Kissable Lips queers the anxiety concerning neoliberal deregulation and the Covid-related fear of mutant non-human others by visualising a polylocal utopian space within a homoerotic high-school setting. While schoolboy romance and school settings are conventional BL aesthetics in Asian series, genre diversification through queer vampirism can potentially open up new spatial and temporal reconfigurations.

The short BL drama Kissable Lips centres on the intense love between Jun Ho, a vampire, and Min Hyun, an innocent young high-school boy who carries ‘pure blood’ in his veins. Jun Ho is about to die because he has broken one of the golden rules for vampires, namely drinking human blood to the point of causing death; another taboo is the killing of a fellow vampire. While the female school principal (a vampire in disguise and also a dear friend of Jun Ho) attempts to save Jun Ho’s life by urging him to bite Min Hyun, she crosses the line when she recruits his old friend Hae Soo (a fellow vampire with a secret crush on Jun Ho) to compete for the fresh blood of the young boy. By the end of the series, Jun Ho has died without ever consuming the blood of his lover.

What sets Kissable Lips apart from commercial K-Zombie television is precisely its lack of conventional concern for the narratives of national disaster or of zombies being a collective threat to the human race. Whereas Train to Busan, Kingdom, and the more recent Netflix high-school zombie drama All of Us Are Dead all rehearse the trope of national emergency in South Korea, and the state’s standard disregard for certain demographics – women, children, the poor, rural high-school students¹⁸ – Kissable Lips rethinks sexual normativity in an Edenic high-school setting that is everywhere and nowhere at once. While Jun Ho at first befriends Min Hyun primarily for the selfish reason of prolonging his life, he eventually disregards his own existence by refusing every chance to take Min Hyun’s blood. Min Hyun has likewise continually ignored the wise advice of his older brother (who acts as a father figure) to terminate his relationship with the vampire-lover. Instead, on several occasions he offers himself to Jun Ho by begging him to ‘bite me, please bite me’. The numerous scenes of intense kissing between the two young men, during which Jun Ho fights his deepest urge to consume blood, construct an exhilarating affective BL utopian universe within the drama. By reading Korean BL televisual representation of vampirism as queer, I also build on previous scholarship in US TV studies that interprets series like Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1997–2003) and True Blood (2008–14) as occult forms imbued with queer visual pleasure.¹⁹

Kissable Lips queers the K-Zombie genre by visualising affective moments between Jun Ho and Min Hyun. The arresting moment of Jun Ho’s death takes place on the rooftop of the high school’s main building, a location unlike the semi-public space of the basketball court where the two flirted previously. It also marks a departure from the private space of Jun Ho’s apartment in a basement near the school, itself possibly symbolic of the vampire’s existence in the underworld. By the ending, both men candidly declare their love for one another on the rooftop. Whereas the globally successful K-Zombie series All of Us Are Dead (which came out just a week before Kissable Lips) revolves around the desperation of the high-school students who at one point wait on the roof of the classroom for government helicopters to rescue them, Kissable Lips queerly dispenses with any logic of rescue, national rejuvenation, or the phantasm of the imaginary Child as the heteronormative futurity of South Korea, to rephrase Lee Edelman²⁰ – that is, any political future that is predicated on reproductive futurism through the figure of the Child simply reproduces heteronormativity. To anchor Korean BL queer telemodernity in the death drive, as Kissable Lips does, thus invokes an otherworldly queer polylocality, one that is heterotopic to the queer urbanism dominant in most popular Asian BL series. Alternatively, by visualising the polylocal private, semi-public and public spaces of queer intimacy and BL affective landscapes, and by queering vampirism, Kissable Lips reimagines the K-Zombie genre. Ultimately it queers South Korean nationalist narrative and neoliberal anxiety in the time of (post)pandemic futurity.

From the queer urbanism and polylocality of contemporary Bangkok to the Edenic BL lovescape of a Korean high school, recent BL television dramas produced in Thailand and South Korea have creatively imagined queer spatial reconfigurations of intimacies. These forms of BL intimacies and affect circulate across transnational and queer regional circuits and media convergence platforms, from concerts and fan events in Hong Kong, to illegal streaming on Chinese websites for Korean dramas, to online discussions of Asian BL dramas created by fans of diverse genders and sexualities. In traversing the temporal and spatial contexts of their original sites of cultural production, transnational Asian BL cultural productions mark the nascent arrival of queer telemodernities.

The writing of this essay is supported by the seed fund for basic research at the University of Hong Kong, under the project code: 2202100706.

Footnotes