A Yearning for Yaoi: A
fan-girl’s exposé on a cross cultural phenomenon
Jennifer Burdin
Mentor: Shawn Rider
I have struggled my whole life to reconcile my two great passions: Writing and Art. Both require every extra moment I can spare to refine and develop my skills, voice, and style within them. I have come to terms with the idea that comics and graphic novels is the best way to represent my ideas and showcase both skill sets.
Many people have told me, write what you would want to read. I read and enjoy fantasy, romance, and erotica. I’ve always been interested in social issues and taboos (abortion, homosexuality/gay rights, divorce, affair, etc), and I enjoy writing about these in a creative writing setting. I’ve always felt very cautious on writing creative stories centered around gay protagonists or dealing with homosexual issues, even though these subjects interest me greatly. I’ve struggled on how to write on these sensitive issues without appearing insensitive, ignorant, or offensive. Yaoi is unconcerned with appeasing the gay community, it is unapologetic, frank and refreshing to my creative writing sense.
I tried to force my art into a neatly compartmentalized box of “fine art,” that is to say the traditional methods of painting and drawing, attempting to get as close to realism as possible. I wanted to sketch people with sensitivity and photorealism. I wanted to paint landscapes that a viewer could step into. On the side of this road I journeyed, I sketched cartoons and simple drawings that friends and family praised, but which I dismissed as too easy, too simple, to ever be counted as true art. I collected American comics (Gen13, X-men, Dangergirl, Batgirl), in which women were drawn with loving attention to form and detail, but I never considered it a true career choice. Manga especially had either overblown masculine figures drawn in choppy blocks of muscle, or delicate-as-glass women whose eyes watered and spilled with tears at every turn. Unable to connect to this form of art, I turned my back on the manga market, and attempted to form my own style in painting and drawing. For the past two years, I have been slowly drawn back into this world of bambi-eyed female protagonists and increasingly effeminized males. To be specific, my interests have turned to the subgenre of Yaoi, which satisfied my struggle to merge my interests in writing, the gay community, and art. My art may never be hung on the walls of the Metropolitan, but yaoi has an important role in the art, manga, and gay community; and I enjoy reading writing and drawing it. Some of its styles are very realistic, and the way manga is written pays close attention to emotions and sensitivity often overlooked in American comics. Before long I realized Yaoi and Manga is the string to tie my two passions together.
My main concern in the beginning is how can I share subject sensitively and honestly? What is Yaoi, why is it so fascinating to so many, and how can I share its ethnography and structure, tastefully? Yaoi IS a form of manga erotica, it depicts sexual acts between men. I don’t want to sugarcoat it, but I also want to present it in such a way that my peers will approach the project with an open mind.
Yaoi, to put it simply, explores the loving or sexual relationship between men. It literally stands for “Yama nashi ochi nashi imi nashi,” or “no climax, no resolution, no meaning.” It is a form of erotica and has very specific terminology and character subset. Over the past few years manga has exploded on the American market, and yaoi is rapidly rising in popularity as well, mainly among young women and girls.
My goal is to create a project that will explore the rapidly rising yaoi
phenomenon, and the structure of its characters and plotlines. This will have a
strong basis in manga and its community, so I will have to do extensive research
on manga, it’s influences and history, as well as how it is put together and
affects the Japanese. From this I will springboard directly into Yaoi – I would
like to focus on the popular yaoi flooding the market at this point in time, but
I will also reference important cannon yaoi that paved the way in history. I
will detail the ethnography of yaoi fans, yaoi writers and artists, as well as
plot structures and standard characters used in yaoi manga.
My goal is to research Yaoi, specifically its influence and presence in the United states, as well as explore how Yaoi is put together. What are the protagonists made of? How is manga comic paneling and storytelling different than American comics, and how is this more effective in yaoi? How popular IS yaoi in the united states? Where is its position as a piece of literature, versus as a simple form of entertainment? Why do girls like reading about the sexual relationship between two men?
I have started reading books on manga, the history and development of an
art form in Japan. This will give me a good firm base to start building my
knowledge of yaoi from.
I’ve also already bookmarked scholarly articles on the ethnography of yaoi fans, yaoi terminology, and yaoi communities in the United states (which is especially pertinent to my project, since I have no professional, scholarly, or cultural background on Japan), which I intend to go through.
I wish to present the how and to some extent the why of Yaoi manga, how
it is important as gay literature, fantasy, and art. I hope to display this
subgenre of art to a new audience and educate my peers on a subject that holds
such fascination for me.
IDEAS ABOUT HOW TO PRESENT THIS WORK
I am hoping by the end of the semester
to have gathered enough information on how manga and yaoi is put together, to be
able to put together my own short graphic novel in which I display the
information I’ve researched. This will be “scripted,” storyboarded, then drawn
out, inked, lettered and hopefully bound. Considering the length of time it
would take to put all the information together in an entire graphic novel
format, I might write out an extensive paper detailing all my information, and
keep just the simple aspects of the subjects I wish to explore in the drawn out
form.
I will either print out copies of this
short graphic novel for my peers, or create a powerpoint presentation with
samples of yaoi and yaoi events which I can present to the class while going
over my information orally. Possibly both, dependant upon time constraints and
how much money I have left at the end of the semester for printing.
TENTATIVE BIBLIOGRAPHY
(presented in accurate MLA form)
Primary
bibliography – NOT a complete list (any gaps in citation information indicates I
have not received the book in the mail yet):
Aestheticism.com. “Definitions From
Japan: BL, Yaoi, June.” Moderated from 1999-
2005.
Accessed Jan 23rd, 2008 <http://www.aestheticism.com/visitors/reference/jpnse_def/index.htm#BL>
Drazen,
Patrick. Anime Explosion! The what? Why? & wow! Of Japanese animation.
-- : Stone Bridge Press, 2002.
Gravett, Paul. Manga: Sixty years of Japanese Comics.
London: Laurence King
Publishing ltd., 2004.
Jones, Vanessa. “He loves him, she loves them.” The Boston
Globe, April 25th 2005.
Accessed Jan 23rd, 2008. <http://www.boston.com/ae/books/articles/2005/04/25/he_loves_him_she_loves_them/>
McCloud, Scott. Understand Comics. Northampton:
Kitchen Sink Press Inc., 1993.
McLelland,
Mark. Male homosexuality in modern japan: cultural myths and social
realities. -- :
RoutledgeCurzon, 2000.
Schodt, Frederik. Manga!
Manga! The World of Japanese Comics. New York:
Kandansha International and Harper & Row Publishers Inc., 1983.
Possible
extra resources:
Fingeroth,
Danny and Mike Manley. How to create comics, from script to print. -- :
TwoMorrows Publishing, 2006.
Kelts,
Roland. Japanamerica: How Japanese pop culture has invaded the US. -- :
Palgrave Macmillan, 2007.
McCloud,
Scott. Reinventing comics: How imagination and technology are
revolutionizing an art form. -- : Harper Paperbacks,
2000.
McLelland,
Mark and Romit Dasqupta. Genders, transgenders and sexualities in Japan
(asia’s transformations).
-- : Routledge, 2005.
Peele,
Thomas. Queer popular culture: Literature, media, film and television. --
:
Palgrave Macmillan, 2007.
Schodt,
Frederik. Dreamland Japan: Writings on Modern Manga. -- : Stone Bridge
Press, 1996.
Youssef,
Sandra. “Girls who like boys who like boys – ethnography of online
slash/yaoi fans.”
May, 2004. Accessed Jan 23rd, 2008.
<http://yuuyami.com/luce/thesis.pdf>