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owlectomyMori Naoko, "A Media Studies perspective on yaoi"
Mori focuses particularly on yaoi fanfiction/doujinshi based on shounen series; this is not really my corner of fandom, so I don't have any particularly strong opinions on this, except that it's sort of interesting how the idea of women creating their own corner of very male-centered fandoms, not by reworking the canon but by reinterpreting it, echoes some of what I've read about slash.
Mori references Marshall McCluhan's "The medium is the message" -- wants to look at manga as manga, how manga construct a narrative with panels and speech bubbles.
Romance is used as a tool for communication between women; that is to say, "Who do you have a crush on?"/"Who likes who?" is a thing girls talk about with each other from elementary school onwards, even before they're seriously interested in dating.
Manga are comprised of three elements, words, images, and panels; and words can be divided into the categories of "speech bubble," "internal monologue," and "onomatopeia." Shoujo manga has a particularly strong emphasis on internal monologue.
Modern shoujo manga has a visual vocabulary that's different from prewar manga (where the panels tend to signify movement through time) and postwar shounen manga (where the panels tend to divide character actions). In shoujo manga, panels tend to be laid out so as to navigate the viewpoint character's internal landscape -- their memories, fantasies, emotions. In 90s shoujo manga and later, the white space between the panels starts to vanish, and you have more images overlapping each other and fading into each other.
Mori posits a distinction between "caricature" and "character," where the former refers to simple, iconic depictions -- like Doraemon and Hello Kitty -- and the latter refers to characters that are more realistic and three-dimensional. [Scott McCloud's books on comics make a similar distinction.] Series like in Shounen Jump are more toward the "caricature" end of the spectrum -- which, she says, is why there's a lot of One Piece doujinshi and not as many Nana doujinshi. The characters in Shounen Jump series are simple and iconic enough that you can draw them in a different style, or take them away from their original context, and they will still be recognizably themselves.
According to Watanabe Yumiko, yaoi writers tend to use as source material seinen and shounen manga where they're fighting for some reason other than love, fighting to protect something at all costs, and there's no room for love in there. Yaoi is a kind of play of finding your own interpretation, so you need room to imagine; part of the fun is in the gap that emerges when you change a strong non-romantic relationship into a romantic relationship.
Yaoi doujinshi borrow their stylistic conventions from shoujo manga -- so they have that same emphasis on internal monologue and a style of panel layout that conveys a huge amount of subjectivity and interiority. In effect, the author contends, yaoi doujinshi function as a means of reinterpreting shounen manga through a lens that's more immediately comprehensible/familiar to girls, both stylistically and with the translation of friendship or rivalry into romance.
Mori focuses particularly on yaoi fanfiction/doujinshi based on shounen series; this is not really my corner of fandom, so I don't have any particularly strong opinions on this, except that it's sort of interesting how the idea of women creating their own corner of very male-centered fandoms, not by reworking the canon but by reinterpreting it, echoes some of what I've read about slash.
Mori references Marshall McCluhan's "The medium is the message" -- wants to look at manga as manga, how manga construct a narrative with panels and speech bubbles.
Romance is used as a tool for communication between women; that is to say, "Who do you have a crush on?"/"Who likes who?" is a thing girls talk about with each other from elementary school onwards, even before they're seriously interested in dating.
Manga are comprised of three elements, words, images, and panels; and words can be divided into the categories of "speech bubble," "internal monologue," and "onomatopeia." Shoujo manga has a particularly strong emphasis on internal monologue.
Modern shoujo manga has a visual vocabulary that's different from prewar manga (where the panels tend to signify movement through time) and postwar shounen manga (where the panels tend to divide character actions). In shoujo manga, panels tend to be laid out so as to navigate the viewpoint character's internal landscape -- their memories, fantasies, emotions. In 90s shoujo manga and later, the white space between the panels starts to vanish, and you have more images overlapping each other and fading into each other.
Mori posits a distinction between "caricature" and "character," where the former refers to simple, iconic depictions -- like Doraemon and Hello Kitty -- and the latter refers to characters that are more realistic and three-dimensional. [Scott McCloud's books on comics make a similar distinction.] Series like in Shounen Jump are more toward the "caricature" end of the spectrum -- which, she says, is why there's a lot of One Piece doujinshi and not as many Nana doujinshi. The characters in Shounen Jump series are simple and iconic enough that you can draw them in a different style, or take them away from their original context, and they will still be recognizably themselves.
According to Watanabe Yumiko, yaoi writers tend to use as source material seinen and shounen manga where they're fighting for some reason other than love, fighting to protect something at all costs, and there's no room for love in there. Yaoi is a kind of play of finding your own interpretation, so you need room to imagine; part of the fun is in the gap that emerges when you change a strong non-romantic relationship into a romantic relationship.
Yaoi doujinshi borrow their stylistic conventions from shoujo manga -- so they have that same emphasis on internal monologue and a style of panel layout that conveys a huge amount of subjectivity and interiority. In effect, the author contends, yaoi doujinshi function as a means of reinterpreting shounen manga through a lens that's more immediately comprehensible/familiar to girls, both stylistically and with the translation of friendship or rivalry into romance.