Visualization of "Masculinity" through Main Characters in Boy Love Series

Abstract

The advancement of communication and technology has caused rapid changes in the economy, values, and thoughts of the people in society. People are increasingly focusing on social issues, especially gender studies. The work entitled “Visualization of "Masculinity" through Main Characters in Boy Love Series” is a qualitative work to analyze the main characters that are leading tops and leading bottoms of 3 of the studied boy love series, namely, A Tale of Thousand Stars (2021), Kinn Porsche the Series (2022) and Sky in Your Heart The Series (2022), with the main objective of the building of the understanding of the visualization of the ‘Masculinity’ in main characters of the aforementioned series. The findings from the study point out that the boy love series has presented the masculinity of the top and the bottom leading characters as follows. (1) The ‘top’ leading character has the elements of masculinity that include the profession or career with authority to make key decisions and with the main duty to protect other people who seem to be weaker, the strong and willowy physique that looks dignified and does not show emotions or weakness, the difficulty in expressing the feelings and not so close relationships with men. (2) The ‘bottom’ leading character has the elements of masculinity that include the profession or career that does not emphasize decision making but emphasizes teaching, using the imagination and taking care of others, delicate and petit body, the expression of emotions and weakness to others, the comfort of the expression of feeling, close relationships with men. The masculinity shown in the aforementioned boy love series is both the same as and different from, with the additional features of conventional and modern masculinity. This reflects that masculinity does not have fixed features but can vary in accordance with eras and values in society.