Discussing the mainland Chinese web series Guardian, adapted from a homoerotic “boys’ love” novel, this paper examines the practices and discourses of producers, viewers, and the state with respect to queer representation and readings in the People’s Republic of China (PRC), where media is regulated not just for sexual content but also sociopolitical principles. Even as the series made the central relationship between the two male characters non-romantic, official paratextual content fed fan passion for queer readings. However, by and large, fans have had a collaborative relationship with producers, illustrating how queerbaiting discourses, almost absent in this case, are crucially dependent on larger contexts of media production and regulation. Fans were careful in how they discussed their enthusiasm for a romantic pairing and the two lead actors, but subsequent government censorship of Guardian a few weeks after its debut suggests that the queerness of both fan readings and the source material became an issue, as well as reflecting societal and state ambivalence concerning women’s sexual expression and the commodification of male bodies in consumer culture. Thus, the analysis here is contextualized within broader social and political conditions in the PRC with respect to sexuality, gender, and the moral-political dictates of the state.
Ng et al. (Mon,) studied this question.