Romancing other ages and other places

I just finished reading the ‘A Charm of Magpies’ series by K. J. Charles. These are a m/m romance series by a British author, who also by the way is a woman. It is of course not uncommon for women to be writers of male romantic fiction.

Now mostly such romance is to be read for casual pleasure, much like a Mills and Boons, not to be taken too seriously, and with a certain awareness of its unrealistic romantic storymaking. Putting that aside though, I found something amazingly fascinating going on in this series.

 

This story is set in an imaginary Victorian England in which magic operates, and involves a love story between a ‘practitioner’ from a humble class background and a man who is an Earl from an influential family, but has returned to England after a rough 20 years spent as a trader and smuggler in China. A ‘practitioner’ here, implies someone who can do magic, that is control the ether - the energy fields that pervade everything, much like a shaman can manipulate ch’i. The practitioner can manipulate energy through his fingers, move things, touch people and influence their thoughts, hurt someone or heal them, sense negative energies, trap and free spirits, perform some spells, spirits possessions occur, magical duels too. They are sort of like Merlin the warlock, except warlocks here are practitioners gone rogue and evil. Two people deeply connected in magic and affection, may even sense each other’s feelings. The practitioner who is our male lead, Stephen, has the role of a justiciar -  those who ensure that magical norms and ethics are being followed by others like them.

 Anyway, what is of interest here is that Stephen’s, love interest is Lord Crane, who lived freely and openly as a man’s man (i.e. as gay) all those 20 years in Shanghai, a land where no one cares two hoots about all this. He now hates having to be stuck in the niceties of high society Victorian England and further having to hide his sexual preference in a time when people are sent to prison for it. The East is presented with some typical orientalizing gaze, it is crude, rough, lawless, but also freeing, not priggish and open to gay life, lively and never boring. Lord Crane misses that life, but also wants to stay in England as the man he loves - Stephen - is here. Won’t go into the details as that is not the point of this piece.

In England too, the community of practitioners are not that strict about men being with men, as they are of pagan faiths, though they may use such secret knowledge to blackmail people on and off. The Earl Crane’s forefather was a practitioner himself, and magical blood runs through Crane’s veins. While he himself does not do magic, he knows much about it from the openly practiced shamanic cultures of Shanghai, where again magic is openly practiced. Shamans are respected and feared, and are meant to practice simple lives and even celibacy. Stephen, his lover is fascinated to know about this unknown Eastern world where both magic and loving a man can be practiced openly. He wonder what such a life would be like! One of the novels also shows the temperance movement in London in those days, another conservative movement which sees drinking alcohol as evil. 

It is a fascinating twist to today’s age. I have read about gay couples in India who wish to move to the West where they can live more freely. It is also well-known how some people move to the West to move away from narrow-minded cultures (though many in India move more for ambition, jobs and status). To turn this around, to a Victorian age when Britain was far more conservative than some Eastern lands (where homosexuality was at least not a sin, though maybe not as free as depicted in this fiction) makes for a great twist. 

In the last of the books [SPOILERS] the two men have finally taken the leap to travel the world, to see the East. They go to Constantinople, to Shanghai, but finally land in Nagasaki. In this city which is cosmopolitan in those times, they feel a desire to settle. They can be openly together, they begin to learn the language. They enjoy how the peach tree blossom in season and people stop busy activity to admire them and picnic ad even drink under them. Public luxuries unknown in foggy and what priggish England of the age. They decide to live and work there for some years. Most importantly, Stephen the practitioner, begins to work with the magical community here. Here I made the most exciting discovery. While the practitioners in Shanghai were known as Shaman, those in Japan are the mahoutskai! This term immediately harked me back to that sweet Japanese m/m romance called Cherry Maho (those who see this sort of stuff will know). And suddenly I began to see K J Charles' work coming from this vast influence of Japanese, Korean and Chinese paranormal and m/m romance content. Of course that is not the sole influence. Cherry Maho is a quirky story about how men who stay virgin till 30, suddenly gain a magic power that lets them read the thoughts of anyone they touch. This power then (obviously!) helps the lead character find the man he can love.

Cherry Maho is not important I suppose, because mahuotskai might be a generic word for shaman type people and may exist in many other stories. It just happened that for me it was linked with Cherry Maho. There are some nice connections though - the association of magic with m/m romance is not new. Perhaps it is romantic and unreal - in the harshness of the real world. It is a bit like the Angels in America stuff, though that one has a more tragic past. Yet the links of magic with love, especially in male romance stories, whether it is China's danmei stories like Mo Dao Zhu Shi or Cherry Magic or a whole range of paranormal romance (even lesbian and straight) is a fascinating cultural phenomenon. In short the term mahoutskai suddenly brought these universes in contact for me. 

Somewhere in the story, having begun to settle in Nagasaki, Stephen realizes that he may not want to return to England having discovered the freedoms of this land. And recognizing the wanderlust of his lover. He reflects that, ‘it was a great deal easier to hold one’s country sacred if you didn’t have anywhere to compare it to’.

 This thought made me suddenly think so many things. I felt that KJ Charles may have (I’m speculating) felt the same kind of thrill and joy I have experienced in the past few years seeing some Asian dramas (the ones that are not too melodramatic), seeing/m romance, or with paranormal stories, or just simple children’s fantasy or stories with ghosts and mythological creatures from Japan. And she masterfully tries to weave some essences from this into her Victorian fantasy. It may not be true that the Eastern nations were actually that open to alternative lifestyles. But it is the concept of it. Perhaps it is the world that male romance stories and fantasy dramas from the East have conjured in our minds. And how they have suddenly opened out a different mythology, a different kind of television entertainment, so different the American and British content we grew up with in the past decades.

For me over my life, it has been amazing how everything from an Enid Blyton to now Asian dramas or British detective shows from the 80s and 90s, or Iranian films or an American show like Dr. Quinn Medicine woman (donno why I thought of that), have all widened my horizons, have been a forms of travel, have shown me parallels to my own country’s world. Sadly, it is rarely high cinema that moves me, but rather popular television and fiction. People in a different land having challenges similar to yours, and also not at all caring for some things that are big issues in your world, suddenly puts things into perspective. It is the most entertaining way to free oneself from dogma.

 It seems to me that in the past decade Asian content has opened new imaginations in the minds of people, the way perhaps Star Wars or Friends or Abba or the Beatles must have for the rest of the world in another age. I wonder perhaps does this bode of the rise of Asian countries as new superpowers. After all entertainment, runs closely with cultural dominance right? Yet it is so much more than that too. Miyazaki’s own Studio Ghibli films for instance were hugely influenced by European content and music. They carry the deep feeling for Japan and also for universal values, for happy and trauma free childhoods, for healing pain and loss, living through war etc. Don’t we all draw from the cultural depths of others as much as our own? And then it comes back full circle, to teach yet another generation in another land. 

Just the other day I encountered a fascinating YouTube talk. A pair of fathers in America- one of whom is a filmmaker and another a therapist -  were discussing Miyazaki’s film ‘My neighbor  Totoro’. It is a heartfelt film, which could be called a children’s movie, but really could touch anyone who watched it. The two men, were sitting on lazyboy chairs, having not ‘beer and sports TV’ but a detailed discussion on how the film is an fine example on the art of good parenting, how a father raises his two girls, responds to their fantasies an fears and constant excitement without being judgmental and balances his own anxieties. The two middle-aged American men are fascinated with this artistic and heartfelt Japanese film and analyze it thoughtfully. It was yet again a fine example, of how good content is culturally unique and yet belongs to the whole world, transforming anyone who finds it.

 Wow, did not know K J Charles’s m/m romance could take me in this journey of reflection!