Transnational Intimacies: Korean Television Dramas, Romance, Erotics, and Race

In this dissertation, I examine the gendered and racial politics of women’s transnational sex tourism. I draw on thirteen months of ethnographic fieldwork with women from Europe and North America who travel to South Korea to form intimate relations with South Korean men in a phenomenon known as Hallyu tourism. Hallyu (also known as the Korean Wave) is a transnational phenomenon whereby people from all over the world consume South Korean popular culture including music, films, and television programs. In my dissertation, I focus on the transnational popularity of romantic South Korean television dramas and how they generate erotic desires in their viewers for South Korean men. I build on interdisciplinary debates in the fields of Gender Studies, Asian Studies, and Media Studies to examine the racial, gendered, and sexual politics of the Hallyu tourists’ erotic desires and their intimate relationships with South Korea men. I argue that these transnational relationships of intimacy produce racialized discourses of South Korean masculinity emerging at the intersection of South Korean cultural conceptions of gender and transnational discourses of race. Furthermore, I suggest that these intimate encounters between South Korean men and “Western” female Hallyu tourists compel us to reconfigure binary conceptions of West versus East, national versus transnational, sex versus romance, and masculine versus feminine. By analyzing why and how the Hallyu tourists use South Korean television dramas to racially eroticize South Korean men, I demonstrate the inextricability of erotics from race and gender

The Study of Online Danmu’s Television Use: From the Audience’s point of View

The purpose of this study is to demonstrate how audiences would feel about Danmu- a video add-on service that display audiences' comments as subtitles overlaid on the video, and Danmu's cross-platforms extension to television. The questionnaire conducted with 105 participants investigated Danmu audience's categorization, behavioral, and perceptional characteristics. The interviews were conducted to further illustration of why participants had given certain answers in the survey. The result suggested Danmu product's inherent limitations constrained its transformation to the television platform. However, Danmu showed its potentials with its user's bases. Hence, if Danmu is put on trial for television use in future, several recommendations were also given in this study. Keywords: Danmu; cross-platform; television add-onM.S., Television Management -- Drexel University, 201

Constructing cultural self and other in the internet discussion of a Korean historical TV drama: A discourse analysis of weblog messages of Hong Kong viewers of Dae Jang Geum

In this paper messages from viewers of the popular Korean historical TV drama - Dae Jang Geum (Da Chang Jin) - in a Hong Kong web-based discussion forum are analyzed to see how some Hong Kong viewers construct their Chinese cultural identities through discursive moves of positioning (Harrè and van Langenhove, 1999). Different subject positions are adopted by these forum discussion participants to draw, maintain, and shift the boundary between "self" and "other" in different storylines projected in their messages. In asserting their Chinese cultural identities they also seem to be engaged in discursive construction of cultural others (e.g. Japanese, Koreans). We problematize these constructions as double-edged in their possible consequences: while they seem to cultivate a sense of Chinese cultural solidarity (albeit only temporarily), they also show the danger of constructing a hegemonic Sino-centric discourse of Great China culturalism. The cultural identification patterns of these Hong Kong viewers also seem to be unstable, ambivalent and contradictory, perhaps reflecting Hong Kong people's general sense of ambivalence and fluidity in their negotiation of cultural identities. © John Benjamins Publishing Company.postprin

Popping (It) Up: An Exploration on Popular Culture and TV Series Supernatural

Supernatural is a TV series created in 2005 that draws inspiration from urban legends, folklore and mythological tales to tell the journey of two brothers who hunt monsters, ghosts and creatures from the underworld in an apocalyptic scenario. This article intends to explore Supernatural as a reflection of/on the present time, its main concerns and practices. First, it analyzes the show as part of a post-9/11 culture that is deeply affected by the events of 2001 and the underlying sense of terror. Even though the show privileges the horror genre as a framework to deal with 9/11-ensued fears and anxieties, it also brings into play many other genres that blur its categorization and reproduce today’s fast pace and fluidity. Second, the article looks at how the show integrates and has been integrated into contemporary pop culture. Supernatural is known for pushing the boundaries, communicating with other cultural products, self-referencing and interacting with the audience, thus fostering an active interchange between the show, pop culture products, different media, and viewers. The article therefore understands Supernatural as both a cultural manifestation and a manifestation of culture, a product that impacts popular culture and is, in turn, impacted by it. It investigates how the present social, cultural and political context in America has influenced the creation of the series and its plot, and how the use of popular culture references, which pop up regularly throughout the show and create a sublayer of meaning the viewer must decode and interpret, has become a distinctive characteristic of the show and a key factor for its success and durability

Mass Media

The way outgroup members are portrayed in the media is widely believed to have consequences for levels of prejudice and stereotyping in the mass public. The visual nature of television and its heavy viewership make it a key source of information for impressions that ingroup members may have of other social groups. However, most research to date has focused on documenting the portrayals of various groups in television content, with only a few studies documenting the causal impact of television viewing. To further understanding of this hypothesis, we outline the contributions and limitations of past work, and point to the most promising theoretical frameworks for studying media influence on outgroup attitudes

Effects of Mass Media on Prejudice

The way outgroup members are portrayed in the media is widely believed to have consequences for levels of prejudice and stereotyping in the mass public. The visual nature of television and its heavy viewership make it a key source of information for impressions that ingroup members may have of other social groups. However, most research to date has focused on documenting the portrayals of various groups in television content, with only a few studies documenting the causal impact of television viewing. To further understanding of this hypothesis, we outline the contributions and limitations of past work, and point to the most promising theoretical frameworks for studying media influence on outgroup attitudes

The political economy of Reali-TV

From the sea change in U.S. television in the 1980s emerged a programming trend variously described as infotainment, reality-based television, tabloid TV, crime-time television, trash TV, and on-scene shows. [1][open notes in new window] The welter of terms created by television critics to describe these new programs masked their underlying connection as a response to economic restructuring within the industry. This essay offers a rough categorization of these programs, sketches the industrial context from which they emerged, and points to the economic problems they were meant to solve.[2] Although my focus here is on political economy, rather than on textual or audience issues, I do not want to imply that these programs\u27 cultural significance can be reduced to their relations of production and distribution. Yet without understanding the political-economic forces which drove the spread of this genre, textual and audience studies risk reifying it as an expression of audience demand, or of their creators, or of a cultural, discursive, or ontological shift unrelated to the needs of those who run the television industry. If this genre exhibits a kind of textual excess, its emergence reflects a relative scarcity of means. I conclude with suggestions for how textual and audience studies might link the new reality of television to shifts in the larger U.S. political-economy since the mid-1980s

Seeing the unseen: Underrepresented groups in prime-time television

Television is considered America\u27s No. 1 pastime, occupying an average of four hours and 39 minutes of a person\u27s time every day (Stelter, 2008). A majority of viewers are tuned in during prime time to live vicariously through their favorite fictional characters who reflect friends, family or even themselves. However, is prime-time television really representing everyone? The purpose of this study is to discover whether a media format as influential as TV reflects the people of the United States. This will be accomplished through coding the prime-time programing on major broadcast networks ABC, NBC, CBS, Fox and the CW