Abstract
Sailor Moon, a Japanese series grounded in manga and anime, began airing translations in the West throughout the 1990s. The series provided what could be interpreted as resistance to dichotomous conceptualizations of sexuality, sex and gender. The focus of this article is the set of challenges presented by the genderqueer characters in Sailor Moon and how Westernization and English translations have worked to erase and re-write queer identities. Arguably, Sailor Moon acts as a site to play out the contextualities and complexities of sexuality, sex and gender identities. To name Sailor Moon characters in Western specific terms would be at the expense of reducing the complexity of their identities to a categorical system whose boundaries detract and limit meaning. Queer characters in Sailor Moon are not translatable into dichotomous Western thought - categories fail us and, through their enforcement, the depth of meaning and the complexities of queer identities/desires are lost in translation. Working within Western binary systems, categories and language, many of these identities appear contradictory and incoherent. Sailor Moon characters offer a re-envisioning of identities that is not limited by Western binaric thought and cannot be easily pegged within the heterosexual matrix.
Highlights
The tradition of bifurcated thought is heavily influenced by Renee Descartes, who divided all of reality into „conscious subjects” and „mere bodies” – otherwise known as mind/body dualism (Bordo)
The current paper explores the discursive process through which queer sexualities, genders and sexes were erased and re-written for the Anglicized version of Sailor Moon and how these censorships can be linked to historical and symbolic methods of disciplining bodies that are deemed not to fit within the dichotomous bounds of heteronormativity
In the original Japanese version, Zoisite is in a relationship with Malachite, both of whom are readable as cisgender men
Summary
The tradition of bifurcated thought is heavily influenced by Renee Descartes, who divided all of reality into „conscious subjects” and „mere bodies” – otherwise known as mind/body dualism (Bordo). Operating within Western systems of thought, cultural intelligibility relies on dichotomous pairings. These dichotomies prop up much of Western thought and are largely the framework through which Western society derives meaning. One of many social expressions of discursive dualities is that, while some groups have been awarded subject-status and protections, others have regularly and systematically been denied those protections, stripped of their „dignifying, and humanizing subjecttivity” and erased from the public view (Bordo). The current paper will examine the function of discursive binaries in maintaining Western heteronormativity through the translation and transmogrification of Sailor Moon. This paper will demonstrate how discursive practices are carried out through exclusions and erasure within cultural imagination and representation of what constitutes proper subjectivity
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