Male Homosocial Bonding And Masculinity In The Chinese Slash Fiction

The slash culture is a disclosure of male homosexual romantic and erotic narrative that has been indepently produced and consumed by the female fans. In recent years, this female subculture phenomenon has been spread all around the world and a trend of slash culture has formed in the public culture field, which has even attracted the attention of and borrowing by the mainstream media. The slash culture in China takes on-line novels as the major text form and is responding related with Japanese yaoi culture and English world’s slash fiction culture.The Chinese research on slash culture has been put particular emphasis on the research of audience and on cultural phenomenon. In this thesis, it takes the slash culture as research target and uses the method combining text analysis with cultural analysis, then presents and makes conclude of the central characteristics of the slash culture, and finally reveals that the attraction of slash culture to female audience mainly lies on its modification and reconstruction of mainstream gender/sexuality. Through the modification of masculinity and connection of male homosocial relationship mode with male homosexual love relationship mode, it has constructed the status of being watched and sexual object of masculinity, and makes use of male homosexual desire structure to successfully construct the viewer status of femininity as well as an approach for women to watch the men to obtain joy of voyeur, thus develops a new mode of female sexy consumer goods.In the first chapter of this thesis, the viewpoint, opinion and method of Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick has been used for reference to demonstrate the superficial opposition and potential connection and similarity between male homosocial relationship and male homosexual relationship, and to verify that the masculinity could only be confirmed and maintained by male homosocial relationship, thus the heterosexuality relation under current gender/sexuality system is actually acted as an important tool to maintain male homosocial link with a function of suppressing femininity. Referring to the function and rule of masculinity and male homosocial relationship, the description of working class masculinity in Learning to Labour: How Working Class Kids Get Working Class Jobs has been taken as example to make analysis and illustration.In the second chapter, the masculinity and male bonding status in slash fiction are divided to gender mode and master-slave mode, which two modes can be integrated respectively. The gender mode includes male mode and bisexual mode. Male mode is still dominant by male homosocial relationship mode; however bisexual mode is a modified bisexual heterosexuality mode. The master-slave mode primarily refers to force governing and obedience in sexual relation, inclusive of the reverse type of master-slave relationship. Such construction in slash narrative reflects the power nature of sexual relation and the unbalance in bisexual relationship.In the third chapter, it makes further analysis on how slash fiction modify male homosocial relationship to realize the modification of masculinity, especially how it transfers the safeguard from male homosocial relationship on male group’s alliance benefit to individual affection tie relation mode. This modification is embedded with three significances:firstly, by moving close to individual link character of female relation mode, it enables women to substitute male position in the fantasy constructed by slash text and thus to obtain the experience of masculinity and male position acceptance through male homosocial interaction. Secondly, it confronts the depreciation and suppress emerged from mainstream on female link relation and provides right of speech, disclosure space and expression approach for female league. Thirdly, the inherent function of male homosocial relationship to maintain the whole male stratum and to oppress female stratum has been cleared up. The male intimacy link constructed in slash text often possesses the mother-infant like attaching-protection mode, which has brought bidirectional emotional satisfaction to women and has important significance that is explained by the special "mentally handicapped" mode and the originally "giving birth by two men" type in such text.In the fourth chapter, it makes analysis on the purpose of slash fiction to modify masculinity. In public media, the existing mode of women to watch the men to obtain pleasant sensation can not be realized by directly exchanging the position of men and women. Therefore, slash fiction as a new kind of erotic text created by women, its breakthrough value lies on that it borrows and modifies the structure of male homosexual desire which makes it possible for female heterosexuality to be realized in slash narrative construction by means of the former face and posture. The premise to realize this mode is the absence of female role, where the interruption of women being watched is eliminated so as to realize the female voyeur pleasure. Moreover, the description of erotic scene in slash text provides the female audiences with sub, top, on-look and other position to take a view. Slash narrative also enables women to obtain the fantasy experience to substitute into male role or obtain male identity or power or position, and acquire the ideal relation to satisfy female experience so that to resist to social pressure and metaphysical aloneness and sense of loss.Slash fiction, as the main support of Chinese female slash subculture and a new space of female writings, has its important theoretical and practical significance on research on the new circumstance of gender condition of young feminine in current consumer society as well as on revealing of the consciousness of femininity to their own gender condition and the expression of their negotiation, resistance and initiative to mainstream gender/sexuality. Through the writing of slash fiction as well as the mould and promotion of its consuming by fangirls, the influence of modification of masculinity as well as male-social relation has been promoted through the trend of network culture to mainstream media culture and thus participates in the global interaction of slash culture. The market consumption potential and business opportunity of fangirls have attracted the catering from mainstream culture, which can not only state the dominant culture incorporates and uses this new and different gender subculture, but also declare the influence of slash culture to mainstream culture. Further more, upon the response of mainstream media culture, it pushes the slash-style male image in face of mainstream heterosexuality masculinity and forms a banter but true response and impact.