![]() (Hein, 2008) The trope of a dominant, hyper-masculine, alpha man who treats women as a subject of perverted voyeurism sells. “The character is the principal causal agency, and causality is the prime unifying factor,” (Mulvey 1975) one of the prime tenets of the Classical Hollywood Narrative that has percolated into fictional narratives today grants power to its heteronormative male character who sees the world through his lens of the “male gaze.” As stated by Laura Mulvey’s theory of the Male Gaze, the complete lack of power balance between the dominant Male and the other genders because of the male gaze manifests in media portrayals across the globe -from films to web series. Overall, the article charts the historical development of a new, affirmative representational queer politics in the Thai mediascape. The article thus also shows how the lakhon educates its users into the affective reading practices of Japanese BL fans, introducing queer readings into the Thai mediascape. ![]() But the article also reveals that Lovesick sits within a broader social process whereby Japanese popular culture has come to influence Thai conceptualizations of sexuality. The article argues that the series’ ‘wavering’ narrative focus between queer and heterosexual romance and its characterization of its male protagonists as stereotypical heterosexual men (phu chai) responds to the need for lakhon to privilege heteronormative romance. Through an investigation of the narrative of the first series of Lovesick, this article shows how the narrative conventions of Japanese BL are ‘glocalized’ to conform to the heteronormative narrative focus of typical lakhon. This lakhon represented a watershed moment in representations of queer sexuality in Thai mainstream media, inaugurating a new genre of media known as series wai. This article explores the adaptation of Boys Love (BL), a Japanese genre of homoerotic media produced for heterosexual female audiences, to the Thai mediascape through an analysis of Lovesick, The Series (2014).
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