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Resource type: Web Article Language: en: English BibTeX citation key: Maana2013 Email resource to friend View all bibliographic details |
Categories: General Keywords: "Life", Gender, Japan, Manga, Sexuality, Suenobu. Keiko, Youth culture Creators: Sasaki Collection: Critical Theory and Social Justice |
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Attachments | URLs http://scholar.oxy.edu/ctsj/vol3/iss1/4 |
Abstract |
This essay examines Keiko Suenobu’s shojo manga sensation LIFE in the context of Japan’s cultural history of negotiated gender roles, female sexual desire, and alternative subjectivity. Teen female cutting emerges as a literal and figurative opening into a gendered contemporary version of Japan’s “Floating World” tradition, portraying scenes ranging from middle-class pleasure culture to interactive fantasy-scapes. Using evidence ranging from the earliest examples of manga’s graphic presentation of sexuality to gender regulation in the era of modernization to Western concepts of “lesbian panic,” this essay demonstrates how seemingly self-destructive behavior and teenage melancholy in these “young girl comics” challenges normative gender as well as heteronormative sexuality.
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