Saturday, February 23, 2008

It's Pronounced YOW-ee

Michael Quinion the word man introduces me to “Yaoi,” hitherto unknown to me, which he describes as (link):

…a type of manga or anime, so originally Japanese, that focuses on male-to-male sexual relationships. Though it's therefore popular among gays, it has proved to be still more popular among women. So it has that in common with the - originally SF - genre of slash fiction, in which male stars of popular TV shows and films are portrayed as engaging in gay relationships, a genre that's also popular with and mostly written by women.

Quinion’s a generous guy: he assumes you already know that a manga and anime are avatars of Japanese comic art. Two points in particular caught my notice.

One--my friend Ignoto, in the entertainment business, told me that the nice thing about lesbian porn films (from a marketing standpoint) is that some women will watch them, while men will watch anything—so you increase your market share. Didn’t realize it worked the other way around.

And two, Quinion showcases this:

One of the earliest examples of “yaoi” Shakespeare is Yasuko Aoike’s manga for girls, titled Ibu no musuko tachi ( Sons of Eve, Tokyo, 1978), in which Shakespeare, Lear, Hamlet and Romeo appear as male gay characters.

...Crediting Peter Holland, Shakespeare Survey 60, 2007

Quinion also introduces us to “the Twaddell Scale,” deployed inter alia for the proofing of Scotch whiskey.

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