Leaving here a great article by Chairat Polmuk titled "Provincialising Thai Boys Love: Queer Desire and the Aesthetics of Rural Cosmopolitanism"
Bordering on exoticisation of the countryside, the two series nonetheless offer refreshing perspectives on queerness and rurality. In his review of Nha Harn, Wiwat Lertwiwatwongsa compares the series' depiction of queer intimacy between Tlemai and Kay to that of Apichatpong Weerasethakul's experimental queer film Tropical Malady (Sat Pralat, 2004) that also depicts male homoerotic relations in the countryside. Weerasethakul's utopian vision of a permissible queer intimacy in Tropical Malady, he argues, becomes completely normalised twenty years later through the BL-themed series.[19] Through the notion of casualness and ordinariness, Arnika Fuhrmann contends that Weerasethakul's attentiveness to ordinary provincial lives 'opens the view onto the counter normative possibilities of a pervasive, quotidian homoeroticism in contemporary Thailand.'[20] Along these lines, I would further propose that in rendering homoeroticism pervasive and ordinary, these BL series queer the rural landscape. In other words, they transform a rural space traditionally associated with hypermasculinity and heterosexuality into an ordinary scene of nonnormative sexuality and fantasy.[21]
The notion of queer ordinariness does not suggest that homosexuality presented in the series is void of social or psychological conflicts. Love Poison, in its idealised depiction of Isan as a space of social acceptance, features a scene in which Ko and Sek's father verbally comforts the spirit of his deceased wife about the sexuality of their sons. Interestingly, the father is played by Monsit Khamsoi, a famous Isan folk singer who came out as gay in his fifties and faced some homophobic reactions. He later admitted that he had a wife and a daughter but remained ambiguous about his own sexuality. This extradiegetic reference, not unfamiliar to Thai audiences, added another layer to the series' representation of nonnormative sexuality in which the father figure is rendered as queer or bisexual. Social conflicts are also highlighted in Nha Harn, where an absence of the father figure is problematised. In one flashback, the young Tlemai is playing house with his female friend, Calcium or Khaew. Due to his lack of a father, Tlemai is clueless about how to play the role of a father, deciding to take off his clothes in imitation of male guests who frequent his mother's love motel. Sharing the same lack, Calcium is told that her father has been away working as a migrant labourer in South Korea. The absence of the father figure thus explains their intimate relationship, which, in their teenage years, leads them to pretend to be together to cover up Tlemai's sexuality. As Tlemai gradually develops a romantic relationship with Calcium's younger brother, Kay, a love triangle forms. The series resolves this tension subtly by translating this all-too-familiar trope to a kind of queer kinship between these characters searching for family ties.
In his essay on Thai yaoi novels by Ro Ruea Nai Mahasamut, Natthanai Prasannam relates the problematic portrayal of the father figure to a queer critique of patriarchy. Figured as either absent or dead, the spectral presence of the father in these texts signifies looming patriarchal power with which yaoi protagonists struggle as they explore their sexualities and gender roles.[22] This applies to Tlemai's situation in Nha Harn, in which the absence of the father figure can be read as a haunting effect of heteronormativity. However, as Calcium's father is also absent, we might further expand the significance of this motif in imagining the possibilities of queer kinship, understood here as a non-normative form of intimacy and belonging. The absence of the father figure creates a wound for both of them, but it is not simply devised to induce trauma. Rather, it is through the mutual recognition of the other's lack and vulnerability that these characters develop a profound relationship beyond a heteronormative understanding of family and coupledom.
The queer politics of sexuality in Love Poison and Nha Harn not only involve taking over a social space of patriarchy and heterosexuality but also incorporating culturally specific Isan queer practices into their configurations of quotidian homoeroticism. As mentioned earlier, both series draw heavily upon Isan cultural practices such as country music (phleng lukthung), music truck (rot hae), and mor lam music to convey Thai ban aesthetics. These practices are not inherently queer but have been historically linked to queer subculture and sexuality. In his ethnographic study of an open–air mor lam space or nha harn in Northeast Thailand, Pornthep Phraekhao scrupulously details how this mor lam performance provides a space for male-to-female transgender people or kathoeys to express their sexuality and seek potential sexual partners.[23] The nha harn riotous dance as a queer subcultural practice has recently been popularised in mainstream media. An episode of a popular Thai queer comedy, Diary of Tootsie (2016–18), for example, includes a dance battle between urbanised queer characters and rural Isan kathoeys at a mor lam concert (Figure 5). While the team of queer Bangkokians flaunts their urbanised identity by opting for a Korean-style dance, the rural trans people are comically shown as wild and unruly. The episode is indeed a satire about an Isan woman who fails at covering up her Isan origins through her poor imitation of an English-speaking, overseas student. In other words, queer folk culture in mainstream media can be deployed to reinforce a cultural hierarchy between the urban/cosmopolitan and the rural.
