Introduction
Since the late 1980s, forms of queer pop culture have become significant examples of, as well as
vehicles for, cultural transnationalization in this region. Non-straight expressions of both gender
and sexuality have deep roots in the histories of many East Asian societies, but the 1990s and
beyond have seen a proliferation and acceleration of transnational queer cultural flows on a scale
not seen before. As a regional microcosm of the wider processes of cultural globalization, this
is linked to the twin forces of the transnationalization of sexual imaginaries and identities, and the
transnationalization of media, due largely to the spread of Internet connectivity (Appadurai 1996).
In the context of East Asia, the phrase “queer pop culture” could refer to a multitude of
different things. These include both mainstream-popular and minoritarian-subcultural media
forms, as well as examples that, as I will argue, are in some ways the most interesting: those that
trouble a rigid politics of sexual identity by blurring distinctions between both straight versus
queer sexuality and mainstream versus subcultural media. In the latter part of this chapter, I offer
brief case studies of two common queer narratives in East Asian popular media today that pro-
duce such boundary-blurring effects: the narrative of schoolgirl romance, and the narrative of
boys’ love. But first, I will elaborate briefly on some other formations of East Asian queer pop
culture that have drawn the attention of scholars working in the rapidly expanding field of Asian
queer cultural and media studies.
A number of scholars have tuned in to queer resonances in various genres of East Asian
commercial media produced between the mid-twentieth century and the present. Such res-
onances manifest across the spectrum from the deeply subtextual to the flamingly overt, and
have often caught the eye of queer audiences. For example, See Kam Tan and Annette Aw
draw out the rich queer significances of the massively popular 1960s cross-dressing folk opera
film The Love Eterne; Yau Ching performs a queer subtextual analysis of fengyue-style soft porn
films produced in mid-twentieth century Hong Kong; and Helen Hok-Sze Leung explores the
potential for transgender representation in some Cantonese action films of the 1990s (Tan and
Aw 2003; Yau 2010; Leung 2008, 65–84; see also Leung 2012). Another category of queer(ed)
pop culture is found in the sexually ambiguous “star texts” of certain singers, actors, and other
celebrities, which generate queer significance for audiences on the right wavelength while
simultaneously maintaining broad mainstream appeal (Tang 2012). An obvious example is the