Found you through seeing yumekutteikt pimp your project on fujoshi. This is a topic that has fascinated me a lot in the recent years, so I'm extremely happy to see someone tackling it!! :)
I'm not very sure if you're ready just yet to start planning a PhD diss. dealing with the yaoi genre, though. Most if not all of your tentative questions listed above strike me as so off base that they don't even seem applicable or comparable to the yaoi sphere. Like, if we wanted to study a tribe in a remote jungle and objectively understand how their value system works, to compare how it's similar to or dissimilar to the value system we're familiar with, it wouldn't be a good idea to start by questioning what their view of Jesus Christ is, you know? That's the way your questions tend to sound to me -- for instance where you talk about pairings and canonicity. (Even though I do feel there might be some difference in the two cultures' attitudes to canonicity.)
What I mean is... Look. In OotP, James jumps on Snape out of nowhere, ganging up on him with another male character, and knocks him over, gags him with soap water, then pins him upside down by his ankles. Exposing his bare thighs and graying underwear, for the clear purpose of public humiliation. Then he proceeds to taunt him about maybe exposing his genitals to "who[ever] wants to see" this happen.
That's classic kichiku (http://bangin.wordpress.com/2007/08/03/the-classification-for-%E6%94%BB%E3%82%81seme-and-%E5%8F%97%E3%81%91uke/) Seme behavior, in mainstream yaoi waters. You don't need to show that scene again, as the whole sequence requires no re-interpretation. It's all there. Much better to spend the time (or pages) exploring what *else* might be going on with these two characters, as suits their canonically shown dynamics.
And kichiku tops tend to be rapists *and* loving; their victims tend to (at least eventually) love them back. Things aren't as black-and-white as consensual vs. non-consensual (or dubious-consent) because in Japanese yaoi, the default is for the bottom to not want to have the sex they're having while loving it at the same time. Think "your mouth says no...," only the whole thing is internalized so that the bottom often sincerely *thinks* "no" while feeling "yes" somewhere deep down all at once. (*) ((*) And yes, I personally find myself deeply disturbed by this whole cultural norm, but just because the RL world should be regulated by strict adherence to the principle of censensuality doesn't mean it's always useful to analyze a fictional culture from the sole value-based viewpoint of whether it agrees or disagrees with our own notion of goodness.)
Which brings us to Snape, whose vehement hatred towards James (both observed through Harry's pensieve POV and referred to by various characters) can be directly interpreted as another yaoi archetype, the Tsundere (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsundere) (which is usually a girl or an uke). He bares his teeth at you everytime he sees you, but he cares that much only because he actually secretly loves you. He's just extremely shy to the point of violent confrontation. That's a well-ingrained archetype. So you see how I mean you have to immerse yourself in the culture first to even postulate the question about what's going on? When Harry encounters Snape Harry doesn't act particularly Seme-ish (and indeed there's quite a lot of Snape x Harry fics out there), but Snape is still acting extremely Tsundere-ishly. That's a cultural factor that doesn't seem present in the Western slashland.
Obviously these are just my two cents, and I'm far from well-read in all of HP yaoidom (which is pretty huge, and ranges from mangas to textual fanfics) much less in a position to compare it to HP slashdom. If you're thinking seriously about analyzing the yaoi narrative texts I'm sure you're already familiar with several main search engines in Japan, so if I were you I'd browse through several dozen dojinka sites before setting up any analytical framework. And read lots of meta written by culturally-Japanese yaoists.
I wish I could help you more, but this is about all I have energy for at the moment. Wishing you the best of luck in your research!
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momijizukamori
no subject
Date: 2009-02-08 09:22 am (UTC)I'm not very sure if you're ready just yet to start planning a PhD diss. dealing with the yaoi genre, though. Most if not all of your tentative questions listed above strike me as so off base that they don't even seem applicable or comparable to the yaoi sphere. Like, if we wanted to study a tribe in a remote jungle and objectively understand how their value system works, to compare how it's similar to or dissimilar to the value system we're familiar with, it wouldn't be a good idea to start by questioning what their view of Jesus Christ is, you know? That's the way your questions tend to sound to me -- for instance where you talk about pairings and canonicity. (Even though I do feel there might be some difference in the two cultures' attitudes to canonicity.)
What I mean is... Look. In OotP, James jumps on Snape out of nowhere, ganging up on him with another male character, and knocks him over, gags him with soap water, then pins him upside down by his ankles. Exposing his bare thighs and graying underwear, for the clear purpose of public humiliation. Then he proceeds to taunt him about maybe exposing his genitals to "who[ever] wants to see" this happen.
That's classic kichiku (http://bangin.wordpress.com/2007/08/03/the-classification-for-%E6%94%BB%E3%82%81seme-and-%E5%8F%97%E3%81%91uke/) Seme behavior, in mainstream yaoi waters. You don't need to show that scene again, as the whole sequence requires no re-interpretation. It's all there. Much better to spend the time (or pages) exploring what *else* might be going on with these two characters, as suits their canonically shown dynamics.
And kichiku tops tend to be rapists *and* loving; their victims tend to (at least eventually) love them back. Things aren't as black-and-white as consensual vs. non-consensual (or dubious-consent) because in Japanese yaoi, the default is for the bottom to not want to have the sex they're having while loving it at the same time. Think "your mouth says no...," only the whole thing is internalized so that the bottom often sincerely *thinks* "no" while feeling "yes" somewhere deep down all at once. (*)
((*) And yes, I personally find myself deeply disturbed by this whole cultural norm, but just because the RL world should be regulated by strict adherence to the principle of censensuality doesn't mean it's always useful to analyze a fictional culture from the sole value-based viewpoint of whether it agrees or disagrees with our own notion of goodness.)
Which brings us to Snape, whose vehement hatred towards James (both observed through Harry's pensieve POV and referred to by various characters) can be directly interpreted as another yaoi archetype, the Tsundere (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsundere) (which is usually a girl or an uke). He bares his teeth at you everytime he sees you, but he cares that much only because he actually secretly loves you. He's just extremely shy to the point of violent confrontation. That's a well-ingrained archetype. So you see how I mean you have to immerse yourself in the culture first to even postulate the question about what's going on? When Harry encounters Snape Harry doesn't act particularly Seme-ish (and indeed there's quite a lot of Snape x Harry fics out there), but Snape is still acting extremely Tsundere-ishly. That's a cultural factor that doesn't seem present in the Western slashland.
Obviously these are just my two cents, and I'm far from well-read in all of HP yaoidom (which is pretty huge, and ranges from mangas to textual fanfics) much less in a position to compare it to HP slashdom. If you're thinking seriously about analyzing the yaoi narrative texts I'm sure you're already familiar with several main search engines in Japan, so if I were you I'd browse through several dozen dojinka sites before setting up any analytical framework. And read lots of meta written by culturally-Japanese yaoists.
I wish I could help you more, but this is about all I have energy for at the moment. Wishing you the best of luck in your research!