Li, Eva Cheuk-Yin and Pang, Ka-Wei (2024) Queer Media from the Global South : The Emerging Girls Love (GL) Industry of Southeast Asia. Feminist Media Studies. ISSN 1468-0777
Full text not available from this repository.Abstract
This article examines the recent rise of Girls Love (GL) media featuring women’s same-sex romance, produced in Thailand. While Boys Love (BL) media has gained mainstream attention since the mid-2010s, GL has received less industrial and scholarly attention. Despite Thailand’s relatively long history of producing BL television series for the global audience, its first GL series, GAP (Thai: ทฤษฎีสีชมพู, “Pink Theory”) premiered only in 2022. The success of GAP has sparked an increase in GL productions and the formation of a transnational fandom largely consisting of queer women. In 2023, two GL series aired. By August 2024, eight full-length series and two mini-series had aired and finished, with several a few more currently ongoing. Through a preliminary discourse analysis of the GL series broadcast by August 2024 and media interviews of creators, this article explores how the GL media industry charts a new path in queer media, despite its commercial underpinning and references to the production and marketing practices of BL.