‘Given’ premiered last week, to generally positive reception. Its first episode gave us lush visuals, creative use of lighting, and music references that show that the production team really know what they’re doing.
Then someone posted a review which began with ‘If you can stand BL…’ and like a George Romero zombie, the BL debate lurched back on to the scene for yet another sequel. The most annoying thing, though, is not that the argument about whether BL and its fans are valid or problematic just won’t end: it’s that both sides actually have a valid point to make, but everyone is too busy defending their side to stop and listen to the other. The two opposing sides here can be summed up as ‘ BL is a problematic genre because of its harmful and inaccurate portrayal of gay men’ versus ‘ BL and its fans receive unfair criticism because the genre is aimed at women, and anything aimed at women is always unfairly criticised’. I’m leaving out the ‘BL is bad because it’s about gay people’ faction because, honestly, if that’s all you have to say on the matter, then you have bigger problems than which comics to read.īL (or more specifically, yaoi and shounen ai) works are historically viewed as being by straight women, for straight women readers. We’re learning now that this isn’t always the case, and that some BL works are actually produced by queer men using female psuedonyms.
