This week’s readings are about gender and melodrama,
the women’s genre. In Film Bodies: Gender,
Genre, and Excess while equally examining three “body” genres – pornography,
horror and melodrama Williams contributes insightful examination toward the
melodrama. In contrast to the feminist empirical assumption that melodrama
offers pleasure of viewing for male only, she argues, this women’s genre also
offers female viewer the “suspension of pleasure” and “pleasure from victims.” From
postmodernist lens, Joy investigates the connection among women, TV melodrama
and consumerism. Like Williams, Joyrich
avoiding looking down melodramas, he rather finds its potential in softening
viewers’ anxiety when they have to face social and ideological crisis because
of the ability offering illusion of the order. Joy argues that because of the
cultural place in which women suffer the patriarchy, women do not have the
necessary distance toward images presented on the screen. This closeness
inspires women’s narcissism. Therefore, they are attracted to images on TV and
become subjects of advertising in the depressing search for the real self.
Rather than adopting Williams’ and Joyrich’s
arguments to analyze Far From Heaven,
I would like to take an alternative road. In the followings, I will clarify the
“suspension of pleasure” (Williams) and
the relations of female and consumerism (Joyrich) through examining blossom of
Korean dramas in the 1990s in Asia and Vietnam.
In the late 1990s and early 2000s Korean dramas
swept over East Asia, pioneering for the invasion of
Korean Wave in many countries in this area. Particularly, in 1997, the show What is Love All About was broadcasted
on China Central Television quickly became a phenomenal hit. Since then, a
fever of Korean dramas quickly exploded in the neighboring countries such as
Hong Kong, Taiwan and Vietnam. I still remember clearly how my mom and I excitedly
waited every episode of The Autum Heart
when I was a high school student. Everybody talked about Korean dramas; they
became a hot topic gathering people together.
Although most of these Korean shows have a noticeably
banal formula of triangle love in which one of protagonists dies of cancer,
Vietnamese viewers still wholeheartedly embraced because of its sentimental
storylines and romance. Night after night my mom and I were crying for the harsh
faith of the female character, a poor women in her twenty-something in The Autum Heart. We cried because of our
impotence as Joyrich points out in his article. As viewers, we cannot help her
out of the severe situation or even tell her lover about her disease as my mom
wished. While the passivity made us annoyed, the suspension of the story
offered us tremendous pleasure. “What is next?” was the question most discussed
in our conversations. We guessed abilities that might happen to her. Then we were
looking forward to the next episode to check them out. It should emphasize here
that it is not only the suspension of pleasure attracting us to the show but
also the pleasure of experiencing the pain of the female protagonist. Despite
of being presented as a victim from the patriarchal perspective, the female
character possesses the most valuable gift of life: the eternal love. It is this
fantasy of being loved forever that maintains the pressure of viewing of
female. By this, I would foster Williams’ argument that female viewers also
share the pleasure of being object of sadistic male’s gaze rather than merely
suffer it. Moreover, for most of Vietnamese female viewers who are unfamiliar
with feminist ideas have been got used to the ideas of being passive in the
norms of Confucian society, it is unlikely for them – back in the 1990s at
least- to expect any subversion in the representations of gender on TV screen.
Instead, they enjoy the illusion of being love at the cost of being passive that
melodramas generously furnish. Mentioning this, I would emphasize the importance
of cultural specificity in the assessment of pleasure.
From the societal angle, it is the abilities to satisfy
the desire of female viewers whose harsh lives sharply contrast with the
comfortable lives represented in this genre that has filled up the “wild fire” of Korean drama phenomenon. The
representation of the glamorous city life in the Korean shows quickly attracted
the Vietnamese viewers’ attention. It is worth noting that Vietnamese
government had just accepted the policy of free market in 1986 and consumerism
went along with capitalism to the country since then. Quickly but surely,
Korean dramas -within the Korean government’s aim spreading Korean cultures over
Asia has established the new conception of fashion standard- Korean style in Vietnamese society. Everybody wanted
to dress and make up just like Korean actors/actress. For over fifteen years, Made-in-Korea
cosmetic products and Korean style –oriented fashions have been Vietnamese teens’
and even middle-aged women’s favorite.
My comment did not intend to this length. What I wrote
above is to elaborate on this week readings’ arguments on a fresher land,
Korean dramas. I would like to on the one hand make use of the feminist theory;
on the other, this take offers me a chance to look at the effects of the cultural specificity on the response toward melodrama genre.
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