Genre has always been difficult to understand to me, as it always been very blurry. I personally don't watch too many English television shows or movies, I prefer to watch Korean or Chinese shows instead. That lead me down a bit of a rabbit hole when I wanted to learn more about one of my favourite shows. I decided to research Korean dramas (original stories). This lead me on a lot of research while I was looking into this and I found a lot of information on ideas that came into current shows and how things developed.
We first are going to side-track to the history of Korean film and television. So, television was not developed until the 1990s and so with the initial success of the “Korean” wave (flow of Korean pop-culture to other societies) with music shows were quickly broadcasted cross-boarders which were generally contemporary romance whilst avoiding historical as viewers may not have the required knowledge to maintain interest (Chua & Iwabuchi, 2008). To also encourage viewers, they would dub the shows in the language of the country to ‘domesticate’ the shows (Chua & Iwabuchi, 2008).
This obviously worked slowly as the first influential show Winter Sonata caused a surge of tourism from Japan (Chua & Iwabuchi, 2008). It was noted by researchers that Korean shows resonated with Asian audiences due to the sentiments shown made them increasingly more popular in China and Vietnam in comparison to American shows (Chua & Iwabuchi, 2008). Also, with the popularity in dramas was investment by chaebols (Korean conglomerates) such as Samsung, Daewoo, Hyundai, LG and SK investing most (Chua & Iwabuchi, 2008). However, at the end of the 90s profits were declining and chaebols were trying to find an exit, this allowed a reformation of the Motion Picture Promotion Law (1999) which occurred in the hope that by allowing individuals to finance production would reinvent the industry (Chua & Iwabuchi, 2008).
This was coined the netizen fund (netizen meaning internet citzen) which increased exporting by 88% in ten years (Chua & Iwabuchi, 2008). The final bit of information that helps with this initial context is that television dramas accounted for the highest ratings, accounting for 30% of the market, when cable television started which greatly increased the quality of shows as topics previously untouched were now used, shot on locations were also including overseas and scripts and storylines were improved which leads us to today (Chua & Iwabuchi, 2008).
Strong Woman Do Bong Soon is a Korean show that comes under the genre of contemporary romance (which can be viewed on Netflix Australia or Viki ).
Now romance is made to satisfy the viewer and usually concludes in a happy ending (Kaler, 1999). The main male character is usually well off and aggressively heterosexual, whilst the main woman is usually struggling in her current circumstances (Kaler, 1999). It is generally from a female orientated point of view, uses chance encounters in cities, cheerful music during dates and happy relationship moments and props of flowers, jewellery or chocolate (Kaler, 1999; "Conventions of the Romance Films", 2014). Strong Woman Do Bong Soon breaks some of these conventions. Firstly, the main male Ahn Minhyuk is a CEO of a Games company however is rumoured of being gay (Lee, H. 2017).
Furthermore, the main female Do Bongsoon is struggling but instead of falling for the main male she has a crush on her childhood friend who she is worried will fall in love with Minhyuk (Lee, H. 2017). The show also breaks genre through the side stories told which fit into crime, thriller, comedy and fantasy. This break of genre adds to the romance as all the storylines convene towards the developing romance. This idea is better explained by Hellofutureme a YouTube channel in his videos on writing exposition (Linked below).
This just further confuses me by the idea of genre; all that I understand is that it is a way to categorise media. As an Audio student I just avoid genre because I can’t even use it to explain my music taste. No matter what we will just deal with genre as a title and not overthink too much.
Sources:
Amazon. (2018). Winter Sonata [Image]. Retrieved from https://www.amazon.com/Winter-Sonata-Season-1/dp/B07877V5RC
Chua, B., & Iwabuchi, K. (2008). East Asian Pop Culture: Analysing the Korean Wave. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press.
Conventions of the Romance Films. (2014). Presentation, https://www.slideshare.net/gr4cec/conventions-of-the-romance-films.
Hello Future Me. (2018). On Writing: How to deliver exposition PART ONE [ Avatar l Matrix l Game of Thrones l Harry Potter ] [Video]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iq5A5bppyUg
Kaler, A. (1999). Romantic Conventions. Bowling Green, OH: Bowling Green State Univ. Popular Press.
Lee Jin-suk, Park Jun-seo, Park Ji-an, Ra Sung-shik (Producers), Lee Hyun-min (Director), (2017), Strong Woman Do Bong Soon [television series], Seoul, South Korea, JTBC
Viki Global TV. (2017). Strong Woman Do Bong Soon - EP 6 | Ji Soo & Park Hyung Sik Seduce Each Other [Eng Sub] [Video]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qkIEi5x-luU
Yoon, J. Chaebol Companies [Image]. Retrieved from https://seoulspace.com/2015/10/21/chaebols-vs-korean-startups/
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