Korean dramas are widely spread across Asia and other countries. According to Thomas Mark, Korean dramas are well-watched, especially in the Asian countries because Koreans know how to entertain and leaves a good impression on its audience. Other factors that affect its vast popularity are the actor’s look, their fashion styles and the various plots they offered to its viewers. There are poor girl-rich boy theme, fantasy romance, suspense drama, melodrama and romantic comedy. Melodrama genres tackle various social issues of Korean societies through its emotional language especially issues on gender and sexuality. There are changing representations of gender in Korean drama, film and literature over the years and this paper analyzed how gender and sexuality prevails on The Housemaid, Something Happened in Bali and Bungee Jumping of their Own.
The Housemaid (1960)
The film is a familial horror thriller about a family’s destruction because of the introduction of a housemaid into the household. When the piano composer’s pregnant wife becomes tired from working to support the family, the composer employs a housemaid to help with the chores around the house. The new housemaid behaves weirdly, spying on the composer, seducing him and finally becoming pregnant by him. The composer’s wife encourages the housemaid to provoke a miscarriage through falling down of stairs. After this event, the housemaid’s actions become increasingly more unpredictable. She tricks the composer’s son into believing that he has swallowed poisoned water and in panic, he falls to his death down a stairs; she also threatens to murder their new born son, and then convinces the composer to commit suicide with her by ingesting rat poison.
The film was directed by Kim Ki-young, who was known for his contentious features, which often tackled themes of sexual obsession through horrific objects. The gender issues within The Housemaid are intriguing, presenting a large modification in gender supremacy as active and passive characters are reversed. The young women are highly conscious of their sexuality and power, and they use them to reach their goals. The housemaid manipulates the composer by wearing wet garments and attracting him with her naked body. The composer is constantly described as a passive individual, a characteristic often attributed to feminine roles. His confession of his affair with their housemaid resulted in further submissiveness and the incident becomes his ultimate disgrace, apparently it is his punishment for his fault and truthfulness. This film was ahead of its time in portraying a strong female protagonist wronged by a successful man during a period of absolute patriarchy, as the influencing women’s rights movement began to surface in Korean culture.
Something Happened in Bali (2004)
This drama is about a travel agent named Lee Soo-jung who is finding her good luck in Bali after a cruel and unforgiving childhood. She meets Jung Jae-min, Kang In-wook, and Choi Young-joo in Bali, three seemingly perfect people entrapped in a love triangle. When Lee Soo-jung is back in Seoul, her yearning for success leads her to seek Jae-min for an employment which unexpectedly setting a series of events that further complicates the relationship between the four characters. Something Happened in Bali is a drama that reveals the selfish desires of people. It reflects upon the ugly (but truthful) side of humans where the only important thing in life is money.
This drama is actually all about “greed” like greed for money, greed for love, greed for acceptance and greed for freedom. But due to their hidden desires, their sexual roles intensified and they also become manipulative. There are also switching of roles in this drama, like in the film The Housemaid in which men are passive and the women are active. Soo-jung and Young-joo are both very vocal on their feelings towards the guys and Soo-jung doesn’t even care if her pride and dignity were crushed into pieces just to satisfy her needs. However, the male protagonists, although they are strong physically, they were very passive in conveying their feelings and it leads to misunderstandings which caused the death of the protagonists.
Bungee Jumping of their Own (2001)
This film is about romance between a man and a woman and also between men. In the year 1983, In-woo accidentally meet a girl named Tae-hee. They both fell in love with each other at first sight. Regardless of their shy nature, they both feel that they are destined to be together and so their relationship has a good start. However, a terrible accident killed Tae-hee. Seventeen years later, In-woo got married and have a daughter. He becomes a teacher and has changed a lot since then. He rapidly builds up a good status at school due to his benevolence and sincerity in supporting his students in every possible means. But In-woo's life turns upside down as he gets to know Hyeon-bin, who is also his student. Hyeon-bin shows an unbelievably resemblance of Tae-hee. Although he tries to endure his weird feelings, his feelings for his student become stronger and stories about In-woo's sexual orientation began to spread at school.
Homosexuality is still a forbidden subject in Korea. Despite of its unusual plot, Bungee Jumping of their Own has been relatively successful at the box-office. The film is not just about the love between two men in particular, but it is about love which is nearly uplifting and not bound to any social customs, and therefore isn't bound to any gender rules either. Absolutely remarkable is the expression of the development of feelings of the two men for one another, especially In-woo’s love for Hyeon-bin. Relatively late, his feelings surpassed the ones of a normal friendship. On the other hand, In-woo's sexual orientation is not questionable since he is married and has a child. It is interesting that the sexual orientation of the two men is not questionable and the love between them becomes remarkably undeniable, without confessions in a usual manner, or being destroyed with rumors and gossips.
Conclusion
The three films mentioned in this paper discussed different forms of gender and sexuality and according to the reviews; the films were successful in showing an acceptable forms of sexuality in the Korean society. In her book Women, Television and Everyday Life in Korea, Kim Youna states that women changed their lives and identities in relation to the impact of the most popular media culture today: television. The book argues that television is a significant resource for women, motivating them to explore their own lives and being able to discover the appropriate career for them. Since the first two films showed a very active and strong personality of the female protagonists which is not a standard notion of women, it can helped the women audiences to have an idea of women empowerment and equality in Korean society but not to the extent of forgetting their dignity and value as a woman. The third film discussed homosexuality which is a very sensitive theme in Korea. Robert Cagle argues that Bungee Jumping of their Own breaks down stereotypes relating male homosexuality with femininity. The director reassures the audience that neither In-woo nor Hyeon-bin have ever gathered homosexual desires and the only reason they are solely attracted to one another is due to the interferences of fate.
Bibliography
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Mark, Thomas J. The Popularity of Korean Drama across Asia and the World. Web. 6 June
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“The Bali Story”. SPCNET. 15 June 2004. Web. 6 June 2012.
“The Housemaid (1960)”. Haenguk Yeonghwa. Web. 6 June 2012.
