Proceedings of the 2021 4th International Conference on Humanities Education and Social Sciences (ICHESS 2021)

The Popularity of Adapted Boy’s Love TV Series and the Ambiguous Social Identity of Gay Group

A Case Study of the Audience Analysis on the New TV Series Word of Honor

Authors
Hongye Ni1, *
1China Agricultural University
*Corresponding author Email: hongye.ni@ucdenver.edu
Corresponding Author
Hongye Ni
Available Online 24 December 2021.
DOI
10.2991/assehr.k.211220.283How to use a DOI?
Keywords
TV series; Boy’s Love culture; Stereotype; Fujoshi
Abstract

In the 1990s, the Boy’s Love (BL) culture has been introduced into China and developed under the Chinese social context. In the past five years, the adapted editions of boy’s love TV series have been gaining extreme popularity. Most studies claim that these TV series are positive since they bring the gay community to the public, and few argues its drawbacks in sociological aspect. However, the virtual characters in novel or TV are not real, the adapted boy’s love content actually marginalizes the real gay’s love under the control of dominant culture of China. Based on the audience analysis of the TV series “Word of Honor”, this study explores the audience’s thoughts and attitudes toward the gay group. As an evidence, audience analysis is the important source of this case study, collected from Douban, a widely-used comment platform in China. It is discovered that the image of boy’s love in the TV series is too ideal to be applied in reality, which is more similar to friendship in the adaption. For audiences, those who love BL culture only focus on the ideal romance narrative, while the public pays attention to another factors in this TV series. Drawing on the subculture theory of Birmingham School, this paper discusses the implications of the findings and provides suggestions for further researches on the actual behavior of gay’s community and the influence of TV.

Copyright
© 2021 The Authors. Published by Atlantis Press SARL.
Open Access
This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC license.

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Volume Title
Proceedings of the 2021 4th International Conference on Humanities Education and Social Sciences (ICHESS 2021)
Series
Advances in Social Science, Education and Humanities Research
Publication Date
24 December 2021
ISBN
978-94-6239-495-7
ISSN
2352-5398
DOI
10.2991/assehr.k.211220.283How to use a DOI?
Copyright
© 2021 The Authors. Published by Atlantis Press SARL.
Open Access
This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC license.

Cite this article

TY  - CONF
AU  - Hongye Ni
PY  - 2021
DA  - 2021/12/24
TI  - The Popularity of Adapted Boy’s Love TV Series and the Ambiguous Social Identity of Gay Group
BT  - Proceedings of the 2021 4th International Conference on Humanities Education and Social Sciences (ICHESS 2021)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 1677
EP  - 1682
SN  - 2352-5398
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/assehr.k.211220.283
DO  - 10.2991/assehr.k.211220.283
ID  - Ni2021
ER  -