The paradox of queer aura: a case study of gender-switching video remakes

Abstract

ABSTRACT This paper explores a subgenre of the slash (homoerotic fan art) videos that have proliferated on Chinese-language websites: gender-switching (性转) videos. Gender-switching in internet subculture designates the bodily transformation of characters from biological males to females in fan adaptations. In the gender-switching videos circulated on the video-sharing website Bilibili.com examined here, fan-producers re-edited clips of female actresses to narrate homoerotic romances between heterosexual males from China in the historical period of the Three Kingdoms (AD 220–AD 280). My analysis shows that the absent-presence of homosexual males in these gender-switching remakes exemplifies a paradoxical “queer aura” that hints at what lies beyond the screen by maximizing the visibility of the on-screen gender performance. Although the video remakes share the apparitional aspect of Walter. Benjamin's notion of “aura”—the disappeared homoerotic materials are imbricated into the video through an indexical link—they also contradict such an analysis, as the source of the aura here is not the context or content of the visualized images but rather the queer subtexts that the images of the actresses conceal. This “queer aura” is not only an aesthetic choice but also a strategic negotiation with government-imposed censorship.