I explore how ‘gender’ and ‘queerness’ are intrinsically linked by using Netflix's Blue Eye Samurai as an entry point.
To claim that gender is a historically contested term would be an understatement. After all, it permeates every facet of our cultural collective and precedes how we act in the world, what roles we perform and how we choose to express ourselves. Gender is both a personal truth and a canon ingredient of human existence. Something this vast doesn’t come in one-size-fits-all packaging, and thus is not universally defined.
But for our purposes here, I shall attempt.
According to the World Health Organization, “Gender refers to the characteristics of women, men, girls and boys that are socially constructed.” In other words, gender is a variety of expressions or performances we all partake in. Throughout human history and across cultures, gender and gendered roles have always been present in nearly every sphere of life, informing how we interact with each other. On a societal level, these socially constructed gendered roles perpetuate disparities amongst genders and a rigid binary that overwhelmingly causes more harm than good.
It is this definition of gender that colours the world of Blue Eye Samurai. Set in 17th-century, Japan during the Edo period, the adult animated show imagines a world where femininity and feminine bodies are minimised by dominant masculinity. Mizu, the show’s protagonist, emerges from here within, a ‘deviant’ in every sense of the word.
Already an outcast for being born mixed-race white with blue eyes, Mizu spends much of her early years as a victim of shame and discrimination. For context, European foreign powers were banned during this period as an attempt to stave off the spread of Christianity, so Mizu’s mixed-race features would’ve likely made her ‘other’ in Japanese society at the time.
The fact that she’s also a woman compounds this further given the roles typically associated with women at the time.
But there is another layer to her character that adds to her ‘otherness’. When we first meet Mizu in episode one, it isn’t clear whether she is female or male. In a Hollywood Reporter article written by Abbey White, co-creator, Michael Green is quoted saying:
“We made sure in the first episode, when people were reading it, that it was a misleading read. We said her gender was Mizu.”
From this, we can affirm that Mizu’s gender non-conforming performance throughout the whole show, but especially in the first episode, is undoubtedly queer. As a result, queerness in Blue Eye Samurai is synonymous with ‘other’, abnormal, deviant etc. and yet is represented in a way modern audiences can feel validated by.
In other words, watching Mizu bear all the trauma and pain that she goes through does not feel like your typical ‘demonizing of queerness’ trope where LGBTQ+ characters and anyone who doesn’t fall under ‘normal’ gender categories or behaviours is punished for their behaviour by the end of the story. Instead, it is extremely empowering to see her unwavering determination in her quest for revenge.
And if that wasn’t enough, the semi-love triangle between her, Akemi and Taigen, breaks the status quo of male-female romantic/sexual relations that are already established in the worldbuilding of the show. Taigen developing feelings for Mizu under the guise that she is a man is reminiscent of Li Shang’s bisexual attraction to Mulan/Ping in Disney’s 1998 Mulan. The difference here though, is Taigen’s same-gender attractions are vividly explicit and a lot more nuanced considering Mizu’s gender identity isn’t so conclusive.
Mizu is both ‘she’ and ‘he’ and neither. In the world of Blue Eye Samurai their mixed-race identity makes them a demon from which everything else follows. It is precisely because of her mixed-race identity that her mother forces her to pretend to be a boy so that she can make a life for herself. From that moment on, their abused, deviant body becomes a metaphorical kintsugi where gender and queerness combine, creating something whole. Something genderqueer.
Works Cited:
Squires, Graham. "Edo Period." World History Encyclopedia, www.worldhistory.org/Edo_Period/.
White, Abbey. "How ‘Blue Eye Samurai’s’ Exploration of Mixed Race Identity Helps It “Break All of the Boxes” in Animated Storytelling." The Hollywood Reporter, 10 Dec. 2023, www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-features/blue-eye-samurai-michael-green-amber-noizumi-interview-1235636619/. Accessed 13 Jan. 2024.
World Health Organization. "Gender and Health." World Health Organization (WHO), 19 June 2019, www.who.int/health-topics/gender#tab=tab_1. Accessed 13 Jan. 2024.
Additional Sources:
Goldberg, Lesley. "‘TV’s Top 5’: Inside the Sprawling (Adult) World of ‘Blue Eye Samurai’." The Hollywood Reporter, 3 Nov. 2023, www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-news/tvs-top-5-inside-the-sprawling-adult-world-blue-eye-samurai-1235636047/.
Just Write. "Why Mulan Mattered." YouTube, 30 Nov. 2020, www.youtube.com/watch?v=XZmaqyLFD3M.
Recommended Sources:
These are sources that were not directly or indirectly referenced and cited in the blog post but served as inspiration in one way or another. I recommend you check these out as well. So much of my perspective on gender, human sexuality and LGBTQ+ rights has been shaped by these eloquent thinkers.
In no particular order:
African Intimacies by Neville Hoad
Straight by Hanna Banks
African Sexualities- A Reader by Sylvia Tamale and various African Scholars
The Will to Change by bell hooks
Khadija Mbowe's YouTube Channel
