University environment? A university in Bangkok? Faculty of Engineering? Hazing boss? A secret love between two boys? A boy in love with a sundere, that is, a person whose initial behavior is cold and reserved, but who gradually transforms into someone warm, sensitive and friendly? One of them who, after a while, turns from hostile and unfriendly into an individual whose behavior is affectionate? Is one of them from a year older than the other? One called Khonprot, a name very similar to Kongphob? All this in a Thai BL?
This is how I reflected while reading the synopsis of 'A Secretly Love'. Then, other recurring questions would arise: By some chance one of the boys gives the other a "gear", that small toothed wheel, symbol of the Faculty of Engineering? Are you sure it's not SOTUS?
With this idea I immersed myself in the first episode of the series that tells the romance between Khonprot, a role assumed by Kut-Thanawat Sukfuengfueng, a third-year hazing leader at the Faculty of Engineering, and Pluem, played by actor Kimmon-Warodom Khemmontha.
Since I started watching BL dramas, I have found that if you ask any fan of the genre what the biggest cliché is in this type of productions, they will undoubtedly answer that placing the plot in the Faculty of Engineering and its protagonists are future engineers. I don't consider it bad to repeat the same cliché over and over again, especially if it is developed well. But this requirement is rarely met, which undermines the success of the drama.
The main problem with these series is not the use of the much-questioned cliché ad nauseum, but the fact that it is not even made good use of, in addition to ignoring a cruel reality, such as the hegemonic masculinity prevailing in the faculties of Engineering.
Homosexual engineering students in Thailand suffer from violence perpetrated by homophobes, both inside and outside the University, as well as mockery and harassment from students in higher years. This affects their self-esteem and daily life, to the extent that many have been forced to leave their studies because they feel harassed, while others commit suicide.
Future engineers and other careers, especially the "effeminate" ones, describe psychological, physical and sexual violence against them, demonstrating the articulation of homophobia and misogyny in Thai universities. Much of his narratives describe the role of alcohol in strengthening masculine bonds, negotiating manhood before groups of peers, and evading feelings and frustrations. Others, to hide their homosexuality, are forced to seduce and have sex with several women and separate them from their true feelings and emotions.
Let us remember that Thailand is a sexist and conservative society in which marriage between people of the same gender is not yet legal and in which homosexuality is taboo and frowned upon by both family and religion.
Topics such as the need to seek new ways of “being human and free” in the university environment, or how boys construct new ways of being a man and being young in the society in which they live, as well as the other problems highlighted in this review. to 'A Scretly Love' are absent in the plots of BL series, which do not take into account the social and historical nature of masculinity. This is a social construction recreated, reproduced and reinvented daily by social actors differentiated by age, sexual orientation and other factors.
Whether it happens organically due to the environment in which they grew up, due to their desires for expression through physical appearance, due to experiences lived in the school environment or, on the contrary, due to their feeling of not aligning with the paradigm, the Engineering students assume the consciousness of being a male subject who develops daily in a sexist environment or environment, exalting masculinity and even homophobic, which expects from them strength and resistance, sporting inclination, independence, self-sufficiency, passion, determination, open mind and abruptness as concepts associated with them.
Thai BL dramas, and others, do not take into account the reasons why these situations and beliefs have arisen. They do not tell how homosexual engineering students (and other majors) are excited about the possibility of reimagining and deconstructing the reality that surrounds them. They do not reflect on how they expect to live in a community in which no one feels pressured to align with certain thoughts or be forced to act in a certain way that is foreign to their personalities and characters.
Given this reality, the series on this topic within the BL genre suffer from not addressing the necessary equality policies that must be established in Engineering faculties in Thailand and other places in the world, and for which so many members of the LGBT+ community have fought and still fight to make them a global reality.
These dramas are limited to reflecting a homosexual romance and leave aside everything related to equity, justice and equal opportunities as the benefits that everyone would receive as a result of actions being implemented for their benefit. These dramas ignore everything that has to do with the need to recognize problems, question behaviors and join the essential changes that do not come and do not focus their attention on something more rooted in the freedom with which each person experiences life. .
In this context, the interest of scriptwriters and directors in presenting engineering students in romances with other boys of the same sex is striking and, above all, if they all dream of training as engineers, ignoring everything else.
All of the above would change if the premise were better supported within the script. It can get tiring, due to oversaturation, that creators want us to believe over and over again, that engineers, so “masculine”, can also love other boys, especially when in most cases they represent to these not so masculine.
'A Secretly Love' shows that it is not necessary to place the protagonists as students of the Faculty of Engineering. In the series, as in other previous ones, this fact has no relevance within the plot. Apart from using the faculty as a setting for various scenes, the interest in demonstrating a supposed superiority of some students over others depending on the faculty in which they study, or the much-used gear as a symbol that represents the official acceptance of the student at the faculty, or the representation of the actors proudly wearing the blue shirt that becomes another emblem of future Thai engineers, do not seem to have greater importance than the role they play in the story.
The series repeats the same mistake of its predecessors determined to place the story and the characters in an Engineering faculty, by attempting to show the great importance that this career has, when this circumstance collides with the little value that it truly represents in the plot line.
As is the case in other Thai BL productions, 'A Secretly Love' confirms that it would not suffer any alteration in its plot if the protagonists were placed in any other faculty other than Engineering.
At the opposite extreme, stands SOTUS: The Series and SOTUS S: The Series (2016-2017), by director Pongpisit Sri, based on a BL novel by BitterSweet, a pioneering work par excellence within this type of series of this Thai genre.
Sotus is the perfect demonstration of the evolution and development of the main plot, subplots and characters, both main and secondary, in an environment of students from the Faculty of Engineering. The entire cast manages to cope and develop within this reality in such a deep and emotional way, as has never been seen before or since in a BL, by achieving a good balance between romance and the everyday life of engineering students.
It would be meritorious for Odd Ramet Ruangpratum, the director of the television adaptation of Avery Pie's novel of the same name, if he managed, without repeating Sotus, to show us in a more profound and convincing way than his predecessors within these BL-themed series, a romance between engineering students, renewing formulas and ignoring clichés.
I just hope that the fictional characters that represent one a noble boy who keeps his word and has leadership qualities, the one who tries to act strong all the time, although inside he is a very sensitive person, and the other a young athlete who speaks little, but hits hard and likes to be pretentious, but deep down he is a sensitive person with a fragile heart, easy to love and difficult to forget, so that the young Engineering students that they embody can live in freedom. , equality, equity and justice, and their human rights are respected.
I would like Khonprot and Pluem to be able to live up to Arthit and Kongphob, the two heroes of Sotus, by convincingly showing us situations such as hazing, the upper-year student-lower year hierarchy relationship, the effort involved in achieving the long-awaited gear, or achieve the title of engineer, while their romantic relationship matures, grows and becomes as strong as the metal from which the small cogwheel, symbol of the Faculty of Engineering, is made.