Pub Date : 2023-01-02DOI: 10.1080/17564905.2022.2161332
I. Bang
ABSTRACT In The Children Gone to Poland (2018), Sang-mi Choo employs different narrative styles not to faithfully present public history on North Korean orphans who were moved to Poland during the Korean War but to rewrite different groups of subjects who underwent painful experiences during the Cold War, such as North Korean war orphans, the Polish teachers who cared for them, and a North Korean refugee who risked her life during the 1990s. To create their dialogic engagement, Choo uses her personal experience and weaves them into her cinematic narrative. Her filmic endeavour, however, is often conflicting as her audiences encounter a non-linear story world in terms of editing. In addition, she experiments with her filmmaking by having a porous nexus among images capturing disparate spaces and times. Audiences become defamiliarized from the film narrative as historical truth and are instead aware of it as a careful construction creating a dialogic space. To explicate Choo’s cinematic project, this article employs the philosophical concept of gesture elaborated by Giorgio Agamben. Choo’s construction of an unconventional film narrative is an ethical response to the miserable subjects who still have painful memories and urgently seek to be heard.
{"title":"Cinematic collage as an ethical response to the abject: Sang-mi Choo’s The Children Gone to Poland","authors":"I. Bang","doi":"10.1080/17564905.2022.2161332","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17564905.2022.2161332","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT In The Children Gone to Poland (2018), Sang-mi Choo employs different narrative styles not to faithfully present public history on North Korean orphans who were moved to Poland during the Korean War but to rewrite different groups of subjects who underwent painful experiences during the Cold War, such as North Korean war orphans, the Polish teachers who cared for them, and a North Korean refugee who risked her life during the 1990s. To create their dialogic engagement, Choo uses her personal experience and weaves them into her cinematic narrative. Her filmic endeavour, however, is often conflicting as her audiences encounter a non-linear story world in terms of editing. In addition, she experiments with her filmmaking by having a porous nexus among images capturing disparate spaces and times. Audiences become defamiliarized from the film narrative as historical truth and are instead aware of it as a careful construction creating a dialogic space. To explicate Choo’s cinematic project, this article employs the philosophical concept of gesture elaborated by Giorgio Agamben. Choo’s construction of an unconventional film narrative is an ethical response to the miserable subjects who still have painful memories and urgently seek to be heard.","PeriodicalId":37898,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Japanese and Korean Cinema","volume":"15 1","pages":"55 - 69"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45748291","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-01-02DOI: 10.1080/17564905.2023.2209946
Hannah Airriess
ABSTRACT Throughout Japan’s era of high economic growth (1952–1971), hundreds of films were produced featuring the salaryman, or male white-collar worker. While each major studio produced films concerning this figure, Toho Studios was best known for their salaryman comedies. This article examines Toho’s popular Company President series (1956-1970), which consists of thirty-three films released across fourteen years. Redefining the concept of ‘comic timing,’ I argue that the series’ comedic vocabulary is organized around historical temporalities and a time-based perception of white-collar work’s specificity. I then connect textual readings of the series to Toho’s own identity crafted in the studio’s promotional magazine and film periodicals. By highlighting its management style and technological superiority, Toho crafted a self-image as a white-collar workplace that is coextensive with the brightness of their workplace comedies. The studio’s emphasis in films and corporate identity on wholesomeness, brightness, and rationalism are placed in tension with Toho’s earlier history of labour relations. Toho and white-collar comedies act as an important example of an ‘employee culture’ that was elaborated in the era of high economic growth, positing the salaryman as a paradigmatic postwar subject.
{"title":"White-collar comedy and Toho’s ‘Wholesome Color’ in Japan’s era of high economic growth","authors":"Hannah Airriess","doi":"10.1080/17564905.2023.2209946","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17564905.2023.2209946","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Throughout Japan’s era of high economic growth (1952–1971), hundreds of films were produced featuring the salaryman, or male white-collar worker. While each major studio produced films concerning this figure, Toho Studios was best known for their salaryman comedies. This article examines Toho’s popular Company President series (1956-1970), which consists of thirty-three films released across fourteen years. Redefining the concept of ‘comic timing,’ I argue that the series’ comedic vocabulary is organized around historical temporalities and a time-based perception of white-collar work’s specificity. I then connect textual readings of the series to Toho’s own identity crafted in the studio’s promotional magazine and film periodicals. By highlighting its management style and technological superiority, Toho crafted a self-image as a white-collar workplace that is coextensive with the brightness of their workplace comedies. The studio’s emphasis in films and corporate identity on wholesomeness, brightness, and rationalism are placed in tension with Toho’s earlier history of labour relations. Toho and white-collar comedies act as an important example of an ‘employee culture’ that was elaborated in the era of high economic growth, positing the salaryman as a paradigmatic postwar subject.","PeriodicalId":37898,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Japanese and Korean Cinema","volume":"15 1","pages":"1 - 18"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43947477","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-01-02DOI: 10.1080/17564905.2023.2204799
Tomoyuki Sasaki
ABSTRACT Naruse Mikio’s Yearning (Midareru) is a melodrama released in 1964, at the height of Japan’s high-speed economic growth. A commonly accepted reading of this film focuses on the intimate relationship between the protagonist Morita Reiko and her brother-in-law, but this article understands the significance of the film within its socioeconomic and sociospatial context, that is, the growing dominance of big-capital corporations in the distribution and retail industries and the transformation of space and spatial relations instigated by it. I first underscore that this is a film about a historically and geographically specific place, Shimizu in Shizuoka prefecture in the early 1960s, and then examine how it communicates the tension created by intense capitalist expansion in places and people in this provincial city. I read the protagonist’s departure from the family and the city as her search of freedom from the patriarchal reorganization of the family business in an increasingly competitive industrial society. Through this reading, I articulate the historically specific nature of this melodrama and exploit its potential as a text that mediates contemporary Japan’s experiences of capitalist expansion, patriarchy, and social relations—especially those related to gender—during high-speed growth.
{"title":"Shimizu elegy: capital, patriarchy, and desire for freedom in Naruse Mikio’s Yearning (1964)","authors":"Tomoyuki Sasaki","doi":"10.1080/17564905.2023.2204799","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17564905.2023.2204799","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Naruse Mikio’s Yearning (Midareru) is a melodrama released in 1964, at the height of Japan’s high-speed economic growth. A commonly accepted reading of this film focuses on the intimate relationship between the protagonist Morita Reiko and her brother-in-law, but this article understands the significance of the film within its socioeconomic and sociospatial context, that is, the growing dominance of big-capital corporations in the distribution and retail industries and the transformation of space and spatial relations instigated by it. I first underscore that this is a film about a historically and geographically specific place, Shimizu in Shizuoka prefecture in the early 1960s, and then examine how it communicates the tension created by intense capitalist expansion in places and people in this provincial city. I read the protagonist’s departure from the family and the city as her search of freedom from the patriarchal reorganization of the family business in an increasingly competitive industrial society. Through this reading, I articulate the historically specific nature of this melodrama and exploit its potential as a text that mediates contemporary Japan’s experiences of capitalist expansion, patriarchy, and social relations—especially those related to gender—during high-speed growth.","PeriodicalId":37898,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Japanese and Korean Cinema","volume":"15 1","pages":"19 - 36"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45195910","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-09-23DOI: 10.1080/17564905.2022.2127184
Brett Hack
{"title":"Dialectics without synthesis: Japanese film theory and realism in a global frame","authors":"Brett Hack","doi":"10.1080/17564905.2022.2127184","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17564905.2022.2127184","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":37898,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Japanese and Korean Cinema","volume":"15 1","pages":"81 - 84"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-09-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49105693","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-09-13DOI: 10.1080/17564905.2022.2121595
Marshall Deutelbaum
ABSTRACT This essay surveys how from time to time over the course of his filmmaking, Hong Sangsoo has experimented with crosscutting and parallel editing, taking apart their basic elements and recombining them in novel ways. This essay focuses on the way The Day After presents two plot line edited in parallel that move in opposite chronological directions. One plot line moves forward in time while the other moves backwards. Hong's considerable ingenuity and skill in manipulating these basic tropes of filmmaking have passed unnoticed as critical attention has focused on the films' repeated themes. As rich as these themes are, however, this essay argues that Hong merits equal critical recognition for his experimentation with the formal elements of filmmaking.
{"title":"The play of parallel editing in Hong Sangsoo’s The Day After","authors":"Marshall Deutelbaum","doi":"10.1080/17564905.2022.2121595","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17564905.2022.2121595","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This essay surveys how from time to time over the course of his filmmaking, Hong Sangsoo has experimented with crosscutting and parallel editing, taking apart their basic elements and recombining them in novel ways. This essay focuses on the way The Day After presents two plot line edited in parallel that move in opposite chronological directions. One plot line moves forward in time while the other moves backwards. Hong's considerable ingenuity and skill in manipulating these basic tropes of filmmaking have passed unnoticed as critical attention has focused on the films' repeated themes. As rich as these themes are, however, this essay argues that Hong merits equal critical recognition for his experimentation with the formal elements of filmmaking.","PeriodicalId":37898,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Japanese and Korean Cinema","volume":"15 1","pages":"70 - 80"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-09-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42173714","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-07-03DOI: 10.1080/17564905.2022.2120999
Jinsoo An
ABSTRACT The entry of international SVODs into the Korean broadcasting industry since 2016 has altered the genres, quality, and sheer scale of K-drama, arguably creating a new type of television that no longer possesses the characteristics that have so far defined K-drama. Though overshadowed by this new phenomenon, K-drama’s representative genres have been evolving to stay afloat in the rapidly changing terrain of globalized K-drama. My article explores this unheeded development by examining what has historically been the most typical K-drama genre, the romance genre – what I call the 'K-romance.' Through the case of Crash Landing on You (2019), the article elucidates three methods adopted by the K-romance. First, representative tropes of K-romances are savvily updated to align with the post-feminist audience’s values, allowing the genre to appear ‘woke’ in the face of global viewership. Second, intertextual references to other K-dramas play a crucial role in conversing with fans within the text, thereby securing their fanbase against a plethora of fresher materials. Third, the tactics of Korean cinema from two decades ago are employed to facilitate K-drama’s ‘glocalisation,’ namely by inserting Korean history into their narratives and applying cinematic (national) visuals into what has so far been a visually simple genre.
自2016年以来，国际svod进入韩国广播行业，改变了韩剧的类型、质量和规模，可以说创造了一种新的电视类型，不再具有迄今为止定义韩剧的特征。虽然被这种新现象所掩盖，但韩剧的代表类型一直在不断发展，以便在快速变化的全球化韩剧领域中保持漂浮。我的文章通过研究历史上最典型的韩剧类型——爱情剧——来探讨这种被忽视的发展，我称之为“韩剧”。本文以《Crash Landing on You》(2019)为例，阐述了K-romance采用的三种方法。首先，k -romance的代表性比喻被巧妙地更新，以符合后女权主义观众的价值观，使这一类型在全球观众面前显得“清醒”。其次，与其他韩剧的互文引用在与粉丝的对话中起着至关重要的作用，从而确保他们的粉丝基础不受过多新鲜材料的影响。第三，20年前韩国电影的策略被用来促进韩剧的“全球化”，即通过将韩国历史插入其叙事中，并将电影(国家)视觉应用到迄今为止视觉上简单的类型中。
{"title":"K-Drama 2.0: updating tropes with intertextuality and cinematic visuals in Crash Landing on You","authors":"Jinsoo An","doi":"10.1080/17564905.2022.2120999","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17564905.2022.2120999","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT The entry of international SVODs into the Korean broadcasting industry since 2016 has altered the genres, quality, and sheer scale of K-drama, arguably creating a new type of television that no longer possesses the characteristics that have so far defined K-drama. Though overshadowed by this new phenomenon, K-drama’s representative genres have been evolving to stay afloat in the rapidly changing terrain of globalized K-drama. My article explores this unheeded development by examining what has historically been the most typical K-drama genre, the romance genre – what I call the 'K-romance.' Through the case of Crash Landing on You (2019), the article elucidates three methods adopted by the K-romance. First, representative tropes of K-romances are savvily updated to align with the post-feminist audience’s values, allowing the genre to appear ‘woke’ in the face of global viewership. Second, intertextual references to other K-dramas play a crucial role in conversing with fans within the text, thereby securing their fanbase against a plethora of fresher materials. Third, the tactics of Korean cinema from two decades ago are employed to facilitate K-drama’s ‘glocalisation,’ namely by inserting Korean history into their narratives and applying cinematic (national) visuals into what has so far been a visually simple genre.","PeriodicalId":37898,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Japanese and Korean Cinema","volume":"14 1","pages":"131 - 147"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-07-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47096134","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-07-03DOI: 10.1080/17564905.2022.2124029
Taeyoung Kim
ABSTRACT This paper examines the changes and continuities of makjang drama series within the structural changes that abound in the Korean broadcasting industry. Based on analysis of publications by terrestrial broadcasters and statistics of television ratings, the findings indicate that terrestrial television networks, which have been the major production and distribution outlets of Korean television dramas, recognize makjang drama to be important in securing their position following the entry of new players into the market, namely mobile and social media platforms, streaming services, and new broadcasters. While leading screenwriters and production studios strive to evolve and move away from the genre by reflecting the changing tastes of audiences, terrestrial broadcasters continue programming makjang drama despite criticisms against the genre as they record high television ratings with strong support from older audiences. In spite of criticisms and controversies over their improbable plots and violent and sensational clichés, the findings of this study explain that much of broadcasters’ persistence in producing makjang drama should be understood within the context of industrial changes.
{"title":"Changes and continuities of Makjang drama in the Korean broadcasting industry","authors":"Taeyoung Kim","doi":"10.1080/17564905.2022.2124029","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17564905.2022.2124029","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This paper examines the changes and continuities of makjang drama series within the structural changes that abound in the Korean broadcasting industry. Based on analysis of publications by terrestrial broadcasters and statistics of television ratings, the findings indicate that terrestrial television networks, which have been the major production and distribution outlets of Korean television dramas, recognize makjang drama to be important in securing their position following the entry of new players into the market, namely mobile and social media platforms, streaming services, and new broadcasters. While leading screenwriters and production studios strive to evolve and move away from the genre by reflecting the changing tastes of audiences, terrestrial broadcasters continue programming makjang drama despite criticisms against the genre as they record high television ratings with strong support from older audiences. In spite of criticisms and controversies over their improbable plots and violent and sensational clichés, the findings of this study explain that much of broadcasters’ persistence in producing makjang drama should be understood within the context of industrial changes.","PeriodicalId":37898,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Japanese and Korean Cinema","volume":"14 1","pages":"114 - 130"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-07-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42376928","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-07-03DOI: 10.1080/17564905.2022.2119807
B. Han
ABSTRACT This article examines how Itaewon Class (Itaewon Keullasseu, JTBC, 2020) employs melodrama as a mode to recognize racial injury in the form of cathartic pathos on the character of Toni. This representational strategy renders Toni’s Blackness less legible to construct the series as quality, diverse, and progressive while failing to tackle the cultural specificity of the Black Korean experience. Despite the growing visibility of Black entertainers and the use of Blackface in Korean popular culture, which have been the subject of controversy and scrutiny, there is a dearth of scholarship that analyses the representation of Blackness in contemporary Korean media. Drawing on industrial and textual analysis, this article explores how the illegibility of Toni’s Blackness is used to obfuscate dominant representations of Blacks in the past with ties to U.S. military occupation. The cultural specificity and legibility of Blackness as a signifier of racial difference is disguised under the exploited melodramatic narrative of mixed-race children’s search for their biological father. The article also argues that Itaewon Class aims to obscure antiblackness embedded firmly in Korea’s racialized past involving Black Korean children, while calling forth racial incidents and Black victimization to envision a new modern Korea.
{"title":"Melodramatizing racialized Korea: the impasse of Black representation in Itaewon Class","authors":"B. Han","doi":"10.1080/17564905.2022.2119807","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17564905.2022.2119807","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This article examines how Itaewon Class (Itaewon Keullasseu, JTBC, 2020) employs melodrama as a mode to recognize racial injury in the form of cathartic pathos on the character of Toni. This representational strategy renders Toni’s Blackness less legible to construct the series as quality, diverse, and progressive while failing to tackle the cultural specificity of the Black Korean experience. Despite the growing visibility of Black entertainers and the use of Blackface in Korean popular culture, which have been the subject of controversy and scrutiny, there is a dearth of scholarship that analyses the representation of Blackness in contemporary Korean media. Drawing on industrial and textual analysis, this article explores how the illegibility of Toni’s Blackness is used to obfuscate dominant representations of Blacks in the past with ties to U.S. military occupation. The cultural specificity and legibility of Blackness as a signifier of racial difference is disguised under the exploited melodramatic narrative of mixed-race children’s search for their biological father. The article also argues that Itaewon Class aims to obscure antiblackness embedded firmly in Korea’s racialized past involving Black Korean children, while calling forth racial incidents and Black victimization to envision a new modern Korea.","PeriodicalId":37898,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Japanese and Korean Cinema","volume":"14 1","pages":"148 - 163"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-07-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43285566","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-07-03DOI: 10.1080/17564905.2022.2127079
H. Park
ABSTRACT The military ‘comfort women’ films go beyond homogeneous groups, but instead speak to an inherently singular human existence to construct affects that lend themselves in creating a public memory that is both collective and political. In examining the chronopolitics of South Korean ‘comfort women’ films, the essay looks beyond the notion of linear and homogeneous history and underscores the power of imagination in reviving historical memories from the present perspective. Especially, it pays attention to the contemporary narrative films such as Spirits’ Homecoming (2016), I Can Speak (2017), and Herstory (2018) and their distinctive strategies of melodramatic sensibility and imagination.
{"title":"The visual chronopolitics of ‘comfort women’ narrative films in South Korea","authors":"H. Park","doi":"10.1080/17564905.2022.2127079","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17564905.2022.2127079","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT The military ‘comfort women’ films go beyond homogeneous groups, but instead speak to an inherently singular human existence to construct affects that lend themselves in creating a public memory that is both collective and political. In examining the chronopolitics of South Korean ‘comfort women’ films, the essay looks beyond the notion of linear and homogeneous history and underscores the power of imagination in reviving historical memories from the present perspective. Especially, it pays attention to the contemporary narrative films such as Spirits’ Homecoming (2016), I Can Speak (2017), and Herstory (2018) and their distinctive strategies of melodramatic sensibility and imagination.","PeriodicalId":37898,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Japanese and Korean Cinema","volume":"14 1","pages":"180 - 194"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-07-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41974746","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-07-03DOI: 10.1080/17564905.2022.2120280
Jinsoo An
Just as the ‘K’ prefix in K-pop was starting to lose its novelty, K-drama has triggered a truly dramatic comeback for Korean cultural contents. As Squid Gamemade history as the most watched Netflix show of all times, K-drama has continued to grow in global popularity. No longer something only devout fans follow via (illegal) streaming websites, K-drama is now an integral part of most streaming platforms, evident in the multiple genre categories dedicated to K-drama on Netflix, such as ‘K-drama for beginners,’ ‘Most Bingeable Korean Television,’ and ‘Korean TV comedies.’ As repeatedly reported by news outlets and scholars alike, this surge in interest did not happen overnight. Korean broadcasters and producers have been honing in on their magic formulas that have been resonating with viewers across Asia for decades. Once international streaming platforms like (though not limited to) Netflix entered the Korean broadcasting landscape in the mid-2010s, the same formulas could be easily refurbished to capitalize on both the bigger budgets and new geographical windows, while newer, more experimental genres could also find investment and support through the global numbers afforded by these international financier-producers. It is an incredibly exciting time to study K-drama: new genres and creativity are pushing boundaries to new heights, while older familiar formulas are renewing their traditional conventions with a fresh innovation. Granted this is a relatively new phenomenon, the dearth of academic scholarship on latest K-drama developments has been particularly noticeable. While there has been a general increase in literature on Korean television trends in the English language over the past decade or so, it has tended to be a part of research into the hallyu wave. This point is elucidated by surveying a selection of edited volumes in the field. Youna Kim’s The Korean Wave: Korean Media Go Global from 2013 was one of the first books to delve into Korean popular culture and its then growing global awareness. Yet, by focusing on all of Korean popular culture, this collection of essays deals with topics that range from K-pop dancers to online gaming, and in doing so, it only includes a few K-dramas, such as the hit Boys Over Flowers (Kkotpoda Namja, 2009). More importantly, the overall research is framed by the Korean Wave and its growing popularity, which means emphasis is laid on the global popularity of dramas, rather than readings of the dramas themselves. Kyung Hyun Kim and Youngmin Choe’s The Korean Popular Culture Reader from 2014 combines textual readings with quantitative research, but it suffers a similar broadness in its scope, where only a couple of chapters are devoted to Korean television. While the book’s juxtaposition of contemporary phenomena like PC bangs and female idol stars against
就在“K”开头的K-pop开始失去新鲜感的时候，韩剧引发了韩国文化内容的真正戏剧性的回归。随着《鱿鱼游戏》成为Netflix有史以来收视率最高的电视剧，韩剧在全球的受欢迎程度也在持续增长。韩剧不再是只有虔诚的粉丝通过(非法)流媒体网站关注的东西，现在是大多数流媒体平台不可或缺的一部分，从Netflix上专门针对韩剧的多个类型类别就可以看出，比如“初学者韩剧”、“最能看的韩剧”和“韩剧喜剧”。正如新闻媒体和学者们反复报道的那样，这种兴趣的激增不是一夜之间发生的。几十年来，韩国的广播公司和制片人一直在磨练他们的神奇公式，这些公式一直在亚洲各地的观众中引起共鸣。2010年代中期，一旦Netflix等国际流媒体平台(但不限于Netflix)进入韩国的广播领域，同样的模式可以很容易地进行更新，以利用更大的预算和新的地理窗口，而更新的、更具实验性的类型也可以通过这些国际金融制作人提供的全球数字找到投资和支持。现在是研究韩剧的好时机:新的类型和创意正在将界限推向新的高度，而熟悉的老套路也在用新的创新来更新传统惯例。虽然这是一个相对较新的现象，但关于韩剧最新发展的学术研究的缺乏尤其引人注目。虽然在过去十年左右的时间里，关于韩剧趋势的英语文学作品普遍有所增加，但它往往是对韩流浪潮的研究的一部分。这一点是通过调查在该领域的编辑卷的选择来阐明的。2013年出版的金佑娜的《韩流:韩国媒体走向世界》是最早深入研究韩国流行文化及其当时日益增长的全球意识的书籍之一。然而，通过关注所有的韩国流行文化，这本文集涉及的主题范围从韩国流行舞蹈演员到在线游戏，因此，它只包括一些韩剧，比如热门的《花上的男孩》(Kkotpoda Namja, 2009)。更重要的是，整个研究是在韩流及其日益流行的背景下进行的，这意味着重点放在了电视剧的全球流行程度上，而不是对电视剧本身的阅读。金景贤(Kyung Hyun Kim)和崔永民(Youngmin Choe) 2014年出版的《韩国流行文化读本》(The Korean Popular Culture Reader)结合了文本阅读和定量研究，但它的范围也同样广泛，只有几个章节专门讨论了韩国电视。而这本书的并列当代现象，如电脑刘海和女偶像明星反对
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