Witch Yoo Hee

So, just yesterday I started watching Witch Yoo Hee. It's strikingly similar to "My Girl," with the whole atmosphere, and the use of a classic as its theme song. I would think that they copied it, but it turns out that it's the same director. Ha. I never knew, but I'm a complete fan of modernized versions of classical songs, like Beethoven's Fifth Symphony in "Witch Yoo Hee" and Brahams' Hungarian Dance in "My Girl." Plus, I totally loved "My Girl." After watching it, I've marked it as one of my favorite romantic comedy dramas. Totally saw Lee Da Hae in a different way after that drama. After some researching on Dramabeans, it turns out that the whole title of the drama is a play on words, like a lot of Korean dramas. While it means "Witch Yoo Hee," it can also mean "Witch Amusement," where "yoo hee" means "amusement." I never knew that! See, watching Korean dramas really does improve your Korean.

Gender in Korean Dramas

So, tomorrow, in Gender Studies, I'm supposed to do a presentation on representations of gender in the media. And, I have no idea what to show. All I know about gender is in Korean dramas. Maybe I could show that?

The first thing that I came up with is the part in Personal Taste where Jin Ho gives Gae In a makeover. It's essentially where the subject of gender is indirectly addressed, as in, what makes a woman, a woman. Now that I've found the episode, I realize that the whole makeover is called "Jin Ho's Making a Woman Project." Also, there's the whole being gay thing in Personal Taste, particularly in episode 1, with the motel and elevator scenes.

Then, there's the whole gender bender thing going on with Korean dramas. I'm not sure what I should show exactly. Maybe a transformation scene, like in You're Beautiful, or the Irene scene in Ma Boy?

And then, I'll probably end with a K-Pop video, like Kevin's female transformation on Star King. I guess that's good, right?

Recent Gender Findings

So, after I finished writing the previous post, I realized that I left some things out, in terms of the other things I wanted to talk about. I wanted to talk about "Ma Boy," the gender bender with a twist. The guy dresses up as a girl, making for a slightly different tale and series of gender hijinks. For once, the female protagonist gets to be our Irene's (Hyun Woo's) protector. Aww! I was kind of disappointed that this was only a mini drama made for the much younger audience. But it gives me hope that there will be more dramas like this...

I just finished "To The Beautiful You" yesterday. Although it was your typical high school gender bender, something about it attracted me, maybe because of all the pretty, the addicting OST (have you listened to J-Min's "Stand Up"?), or the fact that Lee Hyun Woo is in it, and they finally changed his hairstyle eleven episodes into the drama, thank goodness. I wanted to write about this before, but I never thought of writing a post about it.  "To The Beautiful You" was basically my ice cream treat to rely on throughout the week, just for fun and some laughs. However, there's one thing about it that will remain in my memory. For some reason, the part of the drama where Eun Gyul (my beautiful Hyun Woo) contemplates on his sexuality, about his being potentially gay, since he likes Jae Hee, who's a guy (or so he thinks).

There was a scene where he finally got to looking up "gay" on the web. The funny thing is, he finds that "gay" actually means a state of joy, "명랑한 즐거움," instead of its homosexual definition. He then has a daydream about what it would be like if he married Jae Hee, and there's this scene where their kid (Jae Gyul-ie, aw) comes crying to him about getting bullied for having two dads. Eun Gyul says it's a good thing to have two dads. Jae Hee comes in with a six o'clock mustache, talking about how they can wear couple shirts to their army enlistment, which is  coming soon. Ha. Then, Jae Gyul-ie asks them the big question: "Which dad gave birth to me?" That really made me LOL. And for some reason, that scene really stuck in my mind. Episode 4, almost halfway into the episode (here, around 13:30).

I thought that this scene was very unique in that, the drama approached the question about Eun Gyul's sexuality in a slightly humorous way, maybe even being gay as a positive thing, at least something not to be rejected by society. It kind of reminded me of "Personal Taste" in that way. I was kind of surprised that the drama actually bothered to include a daydreaming scene where Jae Hee and Eun Gyul get married. As you can probably tell, I totally soaked up all the parts with Eun Gyul trying to deal with his sexuality, all those innocent and funny bits melted in my heart. It was the younger, innocent version of Han Gyul's more adult angst in "Coffee Prince." It's really different from what you'd expect from a drama like this, with all of its little parts (most of them Eun Gyul's) that make up for what it's lacking story-wise.

Gender Bender Dramas

Ever since I started taking my Gender Studies class, I've been seeing things through the perspective of gender, particularly things in Korean media, especially Korean dramas. There's a lot going on there with the whole gender thing, so I decided to write a post on gender bender dramas, one of the most popular type of drama out there. The topic's been on my lately, what with "To The Beautiful You" and all.

When I first thought "gender bender," I meant, a drama where a girl (or guy, in some) disguises herself as a guy. But then, I realized it can't be limited to just that, because there're a lot of other dramas that deal with gender switches and the subject of gender in general. So, this post will discuss how gender is addressed in Korean dramas, in general.

First off, I'll start by listing some of the well-known gender bender dramas. There's "You're Beautiful," "Coffee Prince," and "Sungkyunkwan Scandal," as some of the more popular, classic gender benders. The latest addition would be "To The Beautiful You." In all of these, a girl (somewhere between her teens to her early to mid-twenties) dresses up as a guy, in order to fit in with a group of guys. The girl always has some kind of big reason for her to do this, whether it's to take the place of her brother, or just due to financial reasons. I think one important thing to point out is that, in all of these dramas, the female protagonist (who's going through the change) is described to look very feminine, and yet, she is somehow able to pull it off. There's a certain emphasis on the feminine-ness of the character, so as to remind the audience that she really is a girl. I thought that was pretty interesting.

How is this not a girl?

I would also like to point out that the writers almost always make the female character so excruciatingly stupid, the epitome of a damsel in distress. Almost always, they're found to be helpless, dependent, and a frustrating noble idiot. They always fall in love with the hero first, realizes their love is forbidden, and tries to do the right thing by leaving the hero. The most typical storyline in Korean dramas, at least in most of them. These days, I always want to kill the female character, she's made so selfless and Candy-like as possible, it's hard to see her as a person in real life. Like, take "To The Beautiful You," for example. Really, how can a girl be so clueless? At least, make the girl, who's usually really dumb and clueless, suddenly turn all self-conscious and suspicious, maybe smart even, because of the fact that she might be exposed at any time.

Then, there are those comical dramas that also deal with gender, but somehow approach it in a different way, in my opinion. Specifically, "Secret Garden" and "Personal Taste." In "Secret Garden," the main characters actually swap bodies, which make for hilarious role-playing by Hyun Bin and Ha Ji Won. The drama still has that similar Cinderella plot, the evil stepmother, the hurt heroine, etc. But what really stuck in my mind is the switching of gender roles, where the gender stereotypes are made more clear and obvious. Like, for example, I didn't notice how Gil Ra Im's voice, or 말투 sounded so feminine, until Hyun Bin really played it out, as Ra Im in Joo Won's body. It's really ironic actually, because Ra Im supposed to be this confident, tomboyish stuntwoman, but when it comes to her interactions with Joo Won, she becomes a total girl.

"Personal Taste" is very different from other Korean dramas, in that it was the first drama I watched that put out the whole gay topic out there. It used being gay as one of the main aspects of the storyline, in that Gae In thinks that Jin Ho is gay, but he's not. One of the side characters is actually gay. What was really memorable for me was how the drama dealt with being gay, in a humorous, kind of comical way. Like, the scenes where Jin Ho is involved in some behavior or interaction with someone, that makes Gae In think that he is gay. I can still picture that scene at the motel with Seulong's character and Jin Ho, and the elevator scene with Jin Ho and his gay lover (lol, Sang Joon), Gae In's friend misunderstanding, covering her kid's eyes. Although it didn't really deal with the whole being gay thing directly, I thought it was interesting how the whole title of the drama is "Personal Taste," or personal preference, which also means "Gae In's Preference."

Update

Lately, I've been struggling with Wordpress, which is way more complicated and complex than Blogger. Wow, you really need to be some kind of computer science expert to work a blog on that site. So, I've decided to create a new blog on Blogger, this time solely dedicated to blogging about Korean dramas. Yay!