Two Things I Really Loved About This Episode:

two things i really loved about this episode:

1) pat actively encouraging and urging pran to talk to him

that is one of his characteristics that i absolutely adore i admire. he understands that communication is key – whether it was trying to figure his feelings out, or after their fight in ep. 5, or after pran ran away after the kiss – he was always there, knocking on pran’s door, ready to talk to him. and it wasn’t any different during the beach trip. he knew that pran’s overthinking and he knew how to approach him and he knew to write ‘kiss?’ in the sand instead of saying it out loud, but that only goes so far if he doesn’t even know what the real issue is. like he said “if you don’t say it, how will i figure it out? how can i possibly understand you?” he might know how pran works, but he can’t actually read his mind and he can’t help him if pran is avoiding him and giving him the silent treatment. so he tried. he tried his best to let pran know that he doesn’t have to shut him out. that whatever is going on with him, he can talk to pat. he really said i’m here, talk to me, we’re in this together, we’ll figure it out

2) pat’s relentless and unwillingness to back down so easily

so far, we saw pran being brave and putting himself out there, ready to risk getting his heart broken for pat numerous times. and now we get to see pat doing the same. the lengths he went to just so he could show pran that he won’t give up on them? constantly going up to him in front of his friends?? almost getting beaten up by wai?? showing up at his HOUSE??? he was ready to push all the limits and didn’t care about the consequences. because none of that matters to him anymore. what matters is pran.

and that is exactly what pran needed to see. i mean, he’s terrified. he’s already lost so much just because he and pat were friendly. he literally had to transfer schools and give up playing music just because his mom found out he and pat were in the same band. so, can you imagine what will happen if their parents find out they’re dating? all hell will break lose. and pran knows that. and he knows he doesn’t want to risk losing it all again because, this time, so much more is at stake. i feel like he was fine being the one to get the thick end of things the last time (like he said to pat, he doesn’t hate him for it, he doesn’t resent him, he’s just angry, and not even at pat, but the situation itself) because it was a small price to pay in the grand scheme of things. yeah, he had to move and his mom was angry, but at least no one found out about his feelings for pat. at least pat got away unscathed. but now, if people find out that he still has feelings for pat, if they find out that pat has feelings for him, if they act on it, the ramifications are going to be so much bigger. so much worse. and you bet pran’s going to do everything he can do avoid that. he’ll do anything he can to protect both of them.

but what he doesn’t understand is that he doesn’t have to protect them. he doesn’t have to do anything on his own anymore. because pat is here now and he wants pran back just as much. and by going against everything they know, by repeatedly risking being seen with pran in public, by facing PRAN’S MOTHER he’s showing pran that he knows the dangers and he knows the consequences, but he doesn’t care. he’s willing to stand up to their families, to their destiny, to the entire world because that is how much he cares about pran. that is how much he means to him. he’s ready to do whatever it takes to fight for them. but he can only do it if pran’s going to be right there next to him every step of the way

Spare Me Your Mercy, Love in the Big City, and the Trap of Pursuing Mainstream Popularity for Queer Art

I read this excellent post by @waitmyturtles yesterday tackling the frustrating failures of Spare Me Your Mercy, a show that was one of my most anticipated of the year, but that ended up so lost in its own confusing blend of sauces that I didn't even finish it. I appreciated her clarity that despite the show receiving strong ratings and finding popularity with the mainstream domestic audience, that doesn't actually make it a success as a piece of narrative storytelling. And if anything, its popularity underlines why it was a failure as a queer narrative, in particular.

Because here's the thing about great queer art—it's almost never popular with mainstream audiences, especially in socially conservative countries. High quality, well-executed, honest and authentic queer art is more likely to be protested than celebrated in places where real queer people are not safe to live free lives. For an illustration of this, look no further than another highly anticipated queer drama of this year in Love in the Big City. Easily the queerest show to ever get made and aired on Korean television, it drew major protests before it even started, forcing the production to release it quickly in one go to ensure it would reach audiences. And why were those conservative groups so afraid of this little old drama? Because even just in its trailer and promotional materials, it was clear this was no sanitized, G-rated drama created to make gay people seem more palatable to the masses (unlike the film version with the same name, which not coincidentally has been much more warmly received by the Korean media establishment). This show was real, and raw, and QUEER in a way that terrified those bigots, because they know one of the most important ways the oppressed can advocate for themselves is by demonstrating their humanity through art.

Which brings me back to turtles’ post, and the importance of separating the concerns of art and commerce when discussing the different ways media can succeed. This is something I had some good dialogue about with @biochemjess @pharawee @clairedaring @flowerbeasblog and turtles (and even more of you in the tags) when I was still watching and posting about Spare Me Your Mercy. I originally posted to unpack why the show was flopping narratively, which turned into a discussion of the fact that it was getting good ratings from the domestic audience despite this. And while I appreciated understanding how the show is landing with its priority audience, for me, it’s very important to keep a distinction between these two different kinds of success. Especially in discussions of queer art, and especially for a show whose creators explicitly said they were intentionally downplaying the queer romance part of the queer romance ( @benkaben) to avoid “distracting” from their other messaging goals.

The important thing to keep in mind is that for queer stories, when they are popular with a mainstream audience it’s often because they are stripping any authenticity from the representation of queer people. Turtles addressed this well in her review of 2gether when she posited that part of the reason it was such a phenomenon in conservative Asian countries (aside from the timing of its release in the early days of the global pandemic), was because its presentation of queerness was mostly unrecognizable to real queer people, stripped of any true notion of queer sexuality or the realities of homophobia. Compare the reception of The Miracle of Teddy Bear—a show that absolutely refused to make its central queer character palatable for a mainstream audience, because the fact that he wasn’t palatable was the point—to that of Spare Me Your Mercy, a show whose creators chose to censor their own story. The ugly truth is that when we’re talking about queer dramas, the best and most vital shows are pretty much anathema to mainstream ratings success.

The impulse to pursue mainstream popularity and commercial success for queer art inevitably leads to watering down queer stories ( @twig-tea) to make them more light, comfortable and familiar to a majority heterosexual and socially conservative audience. And yes, of course, some degree of commercial success is necessary for queer art to get made in the first place. This is how the Thai BL market took off, by recognizing that there was an audience beyond queer people who were open to watching stories about boys falling in love, as long as it didn’t get too real. But there is a careful line to walk here, and it’s so important not to confuse popularity with artistic merit. Queer people won’t win liberation by self-censoring queer media to make it more palatable for mainstream audiences. We win when we make queer art so good and so honest that the mainstream is forced to acknowledge it. We win by challenging the mainstream perspective on queer people and how they should behave, not by catering to it. As @bengiyo said in a completely different discourse, the question is not whether the audience can love queer characters whose actual queerness is suppressed for their comfort. That kind of respectability politics is old hat and it never fucking gets us anywhere. The real question he posed is this: “Do you love us when we’re ugly, when we’re sick, when we’re old, when we’re being mean or catty?”

Which is why a show like Love in the Big City ultimately won by being so excellent, and so true, and so undeniable, that it broke through with audiences around the world and achieved some measure of recognition in spite of how very unpalatable it was to its domestic audience. Unlike Spare Me Your Mercy, this show did not get amazing domestic ratings, but its message was heard far beyond those who watched it on Korean television. And that is the point. Making authentic art that advances the struggle of queer people and making nominally queer art that can achieve mainstream popularity are completely different pursuits, and we must keep that in mind when we discuss whether and how these shows succeeded or failed. And while both must exist in a healthy media ecosystem, one will always be more vital for the survival of queer people than the other.