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enbyleighlines · 4 years

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Alright, let’s talk about the theme of homophobia in mo dao zu shi

Before I begin, some disclaimers!

Obviously everything I say here is my opinion and not the One True Way to interpret the text. If you disagree with what I say, or parts of what I say, then good! That’s how literary analysis works. Please write your own rebuttal post if you wish. You can even link me. I would be happy to read a different point of view on this issue

I’m not going to be talking about the author’s intent. I’m pro “death of the author” so it really doesn’t matter to me whether the homophobia depicted in mdzs is a reflection of the author’s own prejudice, or if it’s a social commentary on China’s views towards LGBTA issues, or even if it’s just being employed to push a “forbidden love” trope

I’m not going to be making judgment statements about the quality of the writing or whether or not the homophobia is depicted realistically. While that would make for an interesting topic, it’s not my main concern

I’m going to discuss spoilers, so if you haven’t read the novel, and you intend to read it, and you don’t want to be spoiled, please skip this post!

I’m going to be discussing things like societal homophobia and internalized homophobia. Also, I’ll be discussing Mo Xuanyu’s suicide, so please read this at your own discretion!

With all of that out of the way, let’s begin!

Homophobia is undeniably a running theme in the novel and audio drama versions of the story, and it even plays a minor part in the manhua. However, it is noticeably absent in the live action and donghua. In an ironic twist of fate, censoring the gay romance from the live action and manhua made it so that they also accidentally made the cultivation world a lot less homophobic. Because depicting homophobia would entail acknowledging that gay people exist.

Meanwhile, the homophobia in the novel and audio drama are not like front and center but they are certainly there. As merelhyn points out in this post that inspired mine, “…it’s so common that Wei Wuxian rolls with it and try to weaponize the homophobia to disgust people, hide himself and flee.”

While I don't think it's necessarily dangerous to be gay in the world of mdzs, it definitely is not normalized. The word “cut-sleeve” is most often used as an insult. At one point, Jin Ling calls being gay an “incurable disease”. At another point, the story says that “it was forbidden to engage in cut-sleeve behavior in public.”

Okay, so why am I even bringing this up? Basically, I want to do some character analysis of two of the three canonically gay/bi men in the story: Lan Wangji and Mo Xuanyu. Wei Wuxian could get his own post, and I might do that in the future, but this post just concerns Lan Wangji and Mo Xuanyu.

First: Lan Wangji

Personally, I think Lan Wangji struggles with internalized homophobia, the fact that he is attracted to men.

Lan Wangji is a gay man who cares so very deeply for the rules, he likes knowing right from wrong, good from bad, he likes making others proud and setting a good example, and yet he cannot help but break the rules. The Gusu Lan sect doesn’t have any specific rules against homosexuality that we know of, but I think "Do not indulge in debauchery" and "Do not be promiscuous" could certainly be interpreted to include homosexuality. After all, the Gusu Lan sect is descended from an aesetic monk, and their sect’s philosophy is very much about restraining oneself from earthly pleasures.

I like to imagine that at least part of Lan Wangji’s adherence to the rules is due in part to the fact that, inside, he fears that he's not actually a good person. And not all of it comes from his attraction to men. As we see in all the adaptations, Lan Wangji has quite the temper. He is also prone to jealousy and pettiness, like the way he acts around Wen Ning.

And there’s the childish side, too, the side that wants to play hide and seek or steal someone’s chickens when he’s drunk. Or how he continues to be overly sentimental, like how long he grieved for his mother.

And then Wei Wuxian comes around and Lan Wangji falls madly in love, just like his father did with his mother, except it's with a man, and try as he might, Lan Wangji cannot control his feelings. He can control everything else in his life, but he can't control his feelings. And I think that’s the lesson that Lan Wangji ultimately has to learn.

By the end of the novel, we learn that Lan Wangji actually confessed his love to Wei Wuxian before his death. We learn that Lan Xichen and Lan Qiren knew of Lan Wangji’s confession, and that later Lan Xichen even told Jin Guangyao. Yet Lan Jingyi once told Wei Wuxian, “HanGuang-Jun is not a cut-sleeve.” So Lan Wangji’s feelings are kept a secret, just how the details of his mother’s seclusion were kept a secret. They have to be kept secret, or they would ruin his reputation.

How painfully ironic, then, must it have been for Lan Wangji, when Wei Wuxian is reincarnated into the body of a man who is known and hated for being gay. And as previously stated, Wei Wuxian fully plays into the stereotype of the predatory, promiscuous gay man, in order to keep his identity a secret, and to keep other people from getting too close to him.

In the past, Lan Wangji had to struggle with his own internalized homophobia. And then, once he finally accepts himself, he has to deal with Wei Wuxian’s homophobia. It just makes his whole character arc all the more tragic.

Second: Mo Xuanyu

Admittedly, we don’t know a lot about Mo Xuanyu. We know that he was cowardly and timid, that he was gay, that he dabbled in demonic cultivation, and that after the abuse of his aunt, uncle, and cousin, “he often behaved in a crazy manner, almost as if his life was scared out of him.” He was also accused of sexually harassing Jin Guangyao, his half-brother, though the novel never really clarifies if this accusation is true.

Personally, I find it too much of coincidence to be true. After all, how likely is it that Jin Guangyao would have two half-siblings lusting after him?

If you compare Qin Su with the accusations against Mo Xuanyu, there are some interesting parallels.

It’s said that “Mo XuanYu had always regarded Jin GuangYao as a deity”.

It was also proposed by Wei Wuxian that Jin Guangyao and Mo Xuanyu were once close, since Jin Guangyao allowed Mo Xuanyu to study Wei Wuxian’s manuscripts.

Qin Su, on the other hand, is often described with words such as “innocent”, “naïve”, and “childish”, and apparently she fell so deeply in love with Jin Guangyao that she “never gave up, insisting that she wanted to be his wife.”

We also know that Jin Guangyao never again touched Qin Su once they were married. Now, it’s entirely possible that Qin Su accepted that without question, but it’s also possible that, being the persistent woman that we know her to be, that she tried to seduce him many times after their wedding.

And so, if at any point Jin Guangyao did want to come up with perfect rumor to smear Mo Xuanyu’s reputation and get him kicked out, then he could easily take inspiration from his own wife: A half-sibling, who loved him very much, and frequently expressed interest in getting intimate with him, to his continued disgust. If Jin Guangyao did make up the rumor to get Mo Xuanyu kicked out, we still don’t know exactly what caused his change of heart. But we do know that since Mo Xuanyu was already known to be gay, and since he was already known for following his elder brother around like a puppy, it’s quite easy to see how people would have believed the rumor.

At one point, Wei Wuxian questions whether it’s possible for a man as timid as Mo Xuanyu to have taken his own life. Now, I for one don’t like that interpretation. Suicide does not require bravery, just intense emotional pain.

However, I do think it’s safe to say that a man as timid as Mo Xuanyu probably wouldn’t have sexually harassed his older brother, the one he treated like a deity. He was probably just happy to have someone in his family, other than his mother, who didn’t abuse him. So while it’s not 100% canon that Jin Guangyao framed Mo Xuanyu, it’s what makes the most sense according to my reading of the text.

Aaaaand that’s it!

Kudos to you if you actually read this far. Lan Wangji and Mo Xuanyu are two characters I have A Lot of feelings about, so I wanted to condense it all into one super rambly post.

I hope you enjoyed reading it!

#mo dao zu shi #mdzs #mdzs meta #long post #character analysis #lan wangji #mo xuanyu

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