Gender Inequality and Why Yaoi Exists

[labingi]

Happy New Year, All!

I have been reading Anne Rice's The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty, the first of her erotic/porn series, and it has made me realize anew why yaoi exists. This book prompts comparisons to Ai no Kusabi: both have protagonists who are forced to be sex slaves for implacable social superiors whom our protagonists find irresistibly

Comments

[mallory_blog]

also - the kink research in Beauty SUCKS SUCKS SUCKS -

[labingi]

I've never researched kink, so I'll leave that to your expertise:) But it is hard not to notice the physical impossibility of a lot of what goes on. Example: going on hands and knees over the whole castle. That would be agony and beat your knees to pulp in a day or so, yet it's not mentioned as painful or physically marring. That seems characteristic of a lot of the book: it's about getting off on pain, yet it seems singularly unaware of what the human body actually finds painful.

I suspect Rice would say, "Well, it's a fantasy," which, heck yeah, it most certainly is, but it's so far out of line with anything I can relate to real human experience that I'm not sure what the fantasy is in aid of. But that may just mean I'm not the target audience.

[mallory_blog]

She got a lot of flak from it actually because the positions were impossible and her depiction revealed she knew next to nothing about the concept. However, while in SF around the time her child died, she hung out with some kinky people and later in New Orleans she went through a period where she again hung out with some kinky people.

Now, it looks like she has returned to god in a big way or like maybe she had a health scare (which she did a few years ago) - now she is trying to pay her tithe into heaven etc...

[labingi]

Anne Rice has had an interesting career, that's for sure. She seems to me a be a writer who usually only explores one ideological perspective at a time: for a long while it was atheism, and now it's Christian faith. However, lest I sound snide, I think she did a truly brilliant job of depicting the clash of the religious and secular world views of Armand and Marius in The Vampire Armand.

[metarudogu]

I thought the best comparison between AR's Beauty is with Ayano's View Finder series where the uke, similar to Riki in some ways, pines to be sort-of abused.

The Beauty series is by far the better written, earlier works by AR but the storyline is, I would say, not necessarily acceptable by most people because Beauty wants to be abused. However, AnK is easier to stomach because of the redeeming factor at the end of the story. Nonetheless, there are those who love the former obviously since the "Taming Riki" series is immensely popular.

[labingi]

Interesting. I don't know the View Finder series. Do you think it's good? I'm not very well read in yaoi.

I agree the line-by-line quality of the writing in TCoB is quite good. The book is definitely better edited than a lot of her later Vampire Chronicles books, which tend to be filled with typos and weirdness. The handling of language also seems much more adept than Yoshihara's (as much as I can judge AnK in translation).

AnK definitely has a very good story structure, while it doesn't seem the Beauty series has much at all. This may well "redeem" AnK, but I do think AnK remains much better conceptualized even in the "Taming of Riki" part by itself.

[metarudogu]

Actually I only have 1 View Finder book. The reason for not wanting to read more is the same as not owning any of the erotica by AR; these stuff just gratify the entire BDSM process, I really am not a fan of this genre. On the other hand View Finder belongs to the category of Yaoi manga that is more professionally drawn

[labingi]

I actually find "The taming of Riki" to be very psychologically realistic. The way he's utterly broken down, even after he returns to the slums, carries a weight that is too often missing from BDSM-style stories. Maybe I don't understand your hamster wheel allusion. If Riki is the hamster and the his various torments are the wheels, what effect would you expect (not) to see?

My ears perk up to hear that AR is considering writing vampires again. It would be interesting to see what she produced.

[bluesea81]

You do have some interesting posts on your LJ.Unfortunately I haven't read TCoB,nor AnK(I've only browsed the 1st volume)so I don't really know which one is better.I tried to read some other BL(or yaoi) novels,but most of them start with a rape(or abuse)and I don't like that.The same goes for the manga.That is why I only read M.o.B.(for BL novels,but MoB is more than a BL novel)and Youka Nitta for BL manga(her art is great and her stories don't involve an abusive seme and a submissive uke).I read View Finder(since someone mentioned it)and as it was said the art is gorgeous and the story is somewhat more interesting than your average BL manga

[labingi]

Your post really got me to thinking. My first thought was that whether I like abuse in BL depends entirely on how it's written. But when I reflect on my experience of AnK, I find it's true that the abuse does turn me off a bit. I think "sexy abuse" is as well written in AnK as it can be ("well written" in the sense of drawing the characters not of line-by-line good use of language, which, alas, it's not). It's well written in that Riki does not "like" it, is deeply damaged by it, utterly resists... and Iason is ultimately damaged by it too. But a necessary aspect of this is that Riki (for most of the story at least) does not love Iason. Well he should not. And Iason does not love Riki well. That's his tragedy. But the result is a story that has a central couple that doesn't have much love between them (compared to, say, Kagetora and Naoe), and that is not very compelling. Indeed, I love AnK as I do largely on the strength of Katze and Guy and their interactions with the others

[bluesea81]

Well I loved Katze in the OVAs,I only wish they developed more the story surrounding him.As for Guy I kinda get his hurt and jealousy,but ultimately he was more concerned about what he feels than about Riki(who he was supposed to be in love with).He seemed terribly selfish to me.Maybe he doesn't seem that way in the novels,but this is the impression I got from the anime.
Abuse should never ever be considered trivial.I'm speaking from the point of view of a person who experienced it.It can leave you with emotional wounds that can never be healed.That is why I understood Kagetora's need to test the love and loyalty of the people surrounding him over and over again and found him the most compelling character in BL and one of the most interesting characters in the novels I've read so far.

[labingi]

Sorry for the late reply. Kagetora is a brilliant character. His psychological makeup is absolutely right on.

I think Guy gets a bad rap in the fandom. He is under incredible pressure throughout the entire story and takes it like a saint for 80% of the story, but to ask him never to snap under those circumstances is to ask him not to be human, and he is. He's not perfect. His motives for his actions surrounding Dana Bahn can only be described as mixed. Certainly, he is jealous and enraged at Riki. He also enraged at Iason for hurting Riki and is desperate to free him. Wouldn't all be desperate to free the most important person in our lives from a sadist who has enslaved them? His castration of Riki is extreme and horrid on one level, but given his available means is also the only way I can think of that he could get Riki away from Iason--and they live in a society where it's technologically plausible that he might be surgically mended (if they could scare up the money).