Month: October 2011

CONFERENCE ABSTRACT: Challenging Gender Roles in Korean Dramas @ Hawaii International Conference on Arts and Humanities

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She Is Straight Gangster: Challenging Gender Roles in Korean Dramas

Dr. Crystal S. Anderson

Hawaii International Conference on Arts and Humanities

January 8-13, 2012

ABSTRACT

Korean television dramas (Kdramas), particularly those that are historically based, represent sprawling stories that blend history with culture.  Often consisting of high production values and unfolding over 50+ episodes, these Kdramas reconstruct historical narratives and legendary stories.  They also infuse a contemporary sensibility by drawing on nontraditional notions of gender, heroism, cunning and valor.  While such Kdramas are broadcast to Korean audiences, non-Korean, English-speaking audiences from around the world also view these dramas via Internet sites such as Drama Fever and Crunchyroll.com.  These global audiences construct alternative femininities related to the female characters that challenge traditional notions of gender.  Using qualitative methods and discourse analysis, I argue that global audiences construct female characters in ways that challenge traditional notions of gender. In the 2009 critically-acclaimed and popular Kdrama, Queen Seondeok, Korean women are represented as aggressive major power brokers in national politics, rather than passive bystanders, even as they occupy more traditional historical roles for women.  They also exert power over men who are characterized as more powerful both politically and martially, using cunning rather than their feminine wiles. Finally, women also engage each other in ways that showcase their intellectual talents. Such constructions by global audiences allow for more diverse notions of gender in popular culture.

Look Who’s In The Korea Herald? ME!

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Yes, I argue the pro side of the question, “Can Kpop Break the U.S.?”  Read the entire editorial here.

 

 

Paper Swordsmen: Jin Yong and the Modern Chinese Martial Arts Novel by John Christopher Hamm

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I have been wanting to read this book for ages! This book is most excellent! There are so few scholarly sources in English about novels published by Chinese writers featuring wuxia heroes.  Hamm focuses on one of the most prolific authors, Jin Yong (also known as Louis Cha).  I’m drawn to it because Jin Yong’s novels are the basis for many Chinese wuxia television series, including Eagle Shooting Heroes, Return of the Condor Heroes, Book and Sword: Gratitude and Revenge, Laughing in the Wing (Smiling Proud Wanderer; also the basis for Tsui Hark’s Swordsman film series), Deer and the Cauldron, and Sword Stained with Royal Blood.

For my purposes, he does a lot of exposition of the plots of these novels, as many of them have not been translated into English.  This really helps me out because it gives me an idea of where many of the wuxia series engage in creative retelling.  Anyone who has committed to watching one knows that it might closely follow the novel, or it might make some…..changes.  I’m less concerned about authenticity and more interested in how those changes alter the meaning of the series.

Hamm also does crucial work on locating these novels within a Chinese historical context. I’ve always thought it mattered that you had a heroic story about the Song despite their occupation by the Jin in Eagle Shooting Heroes.  Hamm makes this make sense!

I have to say my favorite quote is actually a quote he takes from Wang Shuo’s essay on Jin Yong:  “The only reason Wang Shuo can imagine for this stuff’s popularity is the possibility that it serves as a kind of ‘head massage’ for the overstimulated victims of modern life. Jin Yong’s fiction belongs, in sum, together with the ‘Four Heavenly Kings’ of Canto-pop music, Jacky Chan’s action films, and Qiong Yao-inspired television soap operas, as the ‘four great vulgarities’ (si da su) of our time.” (251).  I love this, because he hits three of my greatest interests in Asian popular culture! Of course I don’t agree; I find the debate about whether or not these novels are literature not very interesting or productive.

Love this book!