Boys Love Media in Thailand: Celebrity, Fans, and Transnational Asian Queer Popular Culture

BL (‘boys’ love’) stories—tales of romance between young men, aimed at a largely female audience—originated as a genre of Japanese manga, though for the past decade Thailand has produced its own BL drama series, many of which have become popular throughout Asia. In fact, in Boys Love Media in Thailand: Celebrity, Fans, and Transnational Asian Queer Popular Culture, the first book on Thai BL culture, Thomas Baudinette argues that Thailand’s BL industry has now superseded Japan’s: “the center of queer cultural production within the Asia-Pacific has shifted from Japan—long considered the most influential producer of queer media in Asia—to Thailand.”

Thailand’s first BL drama, Love Sick: The Series (รักวุ่น วัยรุ่นแสบ), was broadcast on Channel 9 in 2014. Baudinette acknowledges the significance of this series, though he also notes the influence of the earlier film Love of Siam (รักแห่งสยาม), directed by Chookiat Sakveerakul, which introduced BL conventions into mainstream Thai cinema. Love of Siam was released in 2007, and Queer Bangkok: 21st Century Markets, Media, and Rights—edited by Peter A. Jackson, the leading scholar in the field—argues that it was in this precise period, in the immediate aftermath of the 2006 coup, that Thai culture experienced an “early twenty-first-century queer boom”.