Everybody seems at seventeen : queer time and space in Hong Kong popular music

Abstract

This project explores queer time and space in Hong Kong popular music as an aesthetic and social response to the intricate relations between institutionalized sexual politics, homonormative discourses, and the transnational fan culture of Cantopop. I argue that Cantopop can hold space for queer undercurrents to take place in mainstream pop culture due to its simultaneous negotiation with heteronormativity and the potentiality of queer subtext written across lyrics, music videos, stardom, and fan spaces. Within the discourse of Hong Kong popular culture, queer girlhood has been considered a temporary and transitional phase to outgrow. The thesis begins with at17 (Ellen Loo and Eman Lam)’s mode of “queer liminality”: at the threshold of adulthood, the duo navigates alternative ways of experiencing female friendship, intimacy, and growth. Rather than departing completely from the linear and progressive narrative of life, at17 interacts with traditionally heteronormative ideals while turning sideways to a way of life that does not adhere strictly to reproductive temporality. This in-between space is what I refer to as “queer liminality” projected through the duo’s schoolgirl sonic aesthetic. Another chapter looks at the transnational fan space of Goocho followers based on Joey Yung and Denise Ho’s alleged relationship stemming from the early 2010s. What is most confound about the fandom is threefold: its temporal distance with the heyday of Goocho gossip, the Mainland Chinese demographic of fans, and the sense of impossible queer desire that underpins the fandom. Like the premise of the singers’ most prominent pair of songs, Yellow Door and Red Rooftop, the fandom functions as a “queer heterotopia” where fans operate along an alternative line of temporality. The final empirical chapter concerns boys’ love culture in Hong Kong popular culture to examine how it interacts and intervenes with queer representation in Hong Kong popular music. The cases of Danson (Edan Lui and Anson Lo) and Tyrence (Tyson Yoshi and Terence Lam) display a hyper-visible queer visibility that is contrary to the subtlety of what used to be queer “undercurrents”. The chapter maps dissonances within the homophobic culture of the music industry and in media culture, queer representation vs. queerbaiting, as well as the spectator agency that BL enables for Cantopop consumers.