Resisting the Heteronormative Timeline Japanese Womens...

Resisting the Heteronormative Timeline: Japanese Womens Media and Sexuality as Subcultural Capital This seminar took place in the Hall center and it was generally about the gay boom in Japan. The speaker Sho Ogawa talked about the 1991 Gay Renaissance† issue of a popular Japanese women’s magazine â€Å"Crea† which brought about a great rise in the representation of gay men in the japanese media phenomenon which is known as the â€Å"gay boom.† This boom affected how the Japanese media, in an amazing rush of films, nonfiction and fiction books, manga (Japanese comics), and television programs spreads information about gay male’s way of life and sexuality to hetrosexual consumers. He also talked about how the earlier media boom conflated†¦show more content†¦He then further explained how the gay boom brought a change not only in the exposure of the gay subculture or a shift from feminized images of homosexuality to masculine ones, but a change in the target audience for gay images. Also, he told us that there were actually gay male images that were produced for non-gay audiences prior to the gay boom in adolescent female teen culture (which is called the shojo culture) represented in teen magazines such as Olive or magazines such as June showing romantic relationships between adolescent boys. After about 30mins into the seminar, he talked about a movie Summer Vacation 1999 which was produced before the gay boom and it shows homosexual characters. However, unlike the films produced during the gay boom, the gay characters do not date or get married to homosexual women. Summer Vacation is an adaptation of the boys love manga â€Å"The Heart of Thomas† with young female actors acting as adolescent schoolboys who were romantically drawn to each other. In addition, he went ahead to show us a video clip from the movie and I noticed that the females playing the gay male characters were dressed like westerners and the movi e setting was western. This was because at that time in Japan, homosexuality was seen to have originated from the west and therefore was western. Due to this, homosexual men in Japan were seen as almost western since homosexuality was not present in