Dr Anna Madill - Boys’ love manga: gay porn for girls
Date: 13 June 2012, 4.00pm
Location: Seminar Room, Beachgrove House
Manga, a style of comic, is central to contemporary Japanese visual culture and has become a global phenomenon with translated editions consumed in their millions worldwide. Different kinds of manga, in terms of story-line, drawing style, and character type, are targeted at markets segmented by age and gender. Boys’ Love is a genre of manga portraying romantic and sexual relationships between young men. Perhaps surprisingly, it is produced by women and consumed by girls in their teens and early twenties. Boys’ Love ranges in narrative complexity from multi-volume, emotionally intense love stories to short, mood pieces' - from inclusion of a mere kiss to full-on, explicit BDSM. Translated Boys’ Love manga is available and increasingly popular outside Japan and an English-language academic literature on the genre is developing.
This talk provides an introduction to Boys’ Love manga and considers if it is merely gay porn for girls or something potentially even more interesting.