Danielle Bouman, 7-11-

2016, Thesis R&R

I haven't been able to finish my literature review yet. The text I do have written is kind of all over the place and a bit a of a mess so I

decided to just hand in this rough outline for now, with a division of which sources I am going to use in which section and in what

order. Of course in my final version the sources will be properly formatted.

Literature Review

Introduction:

Thesis question:

For my thesis, I want to analyse portrayals of gender in South Korean television. Specifically, I want to look at

how comedy is used in relation to gender portrayals and stereotypes. I will conduct a comparative analysis of

two recent, scripted popular Korean dramas that are a mix of romance, drama, and comedy. The first drama is

Secret Garden, and the second one is Coffee prince. I will focus on how the comedy in these two dramas is

influenced by ideas about gender identities, and reinforces or challenges these ideas and stereotypes. The

framework that I will use for my analysis is one of post-structural feminist discourse. I will also use

psychoanalysis. Psychoanalysis would not be useful for my thesis on its own because its theories often tend to

rely on a gender binary, which is exactly what I want to avoid for my research. However, in combination with

discourse analysis, I think it might be a useful tool.

I argue that the gendered aspect to comedy that occurs in both television dramas is used for the construction

of specific gender identities. In the case of Secret Garden mostly conservative gender identities are

constructed, but in Coffee Prince the comedy allows for a more subversive, diverse construct of gender. The

use of comedy to construct subversive gender identities that suggest less rigid and less binary ideas about

gender is a tool that can be used to help change the watchers’ views on those things in a positive way.

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 Danielle Bouman, 7-11-
2016, Thesis R&R

Short outline of Literature Review:

I have divided this literature review in to 4 sections. The first section is about the history of Korean television

dramas, and the second section is about the development of general gender theory throughout history, as

well as a look at a recent history of gender development in Korea. The third section has a critical look at the

development of texts on gender in television and other media, and the fourth is on gender and comedy in

particular, including general theory as well as theories and examples specific to Korean television.

Body:

Section 1: tv

Part 1: why tv/media is important

Gauntlett, David. “Media, Gender and Identity: An Introduction.” Abingdon: Routledge, 2008.

Chua Beng Huat, Koichi Iwabuchi. "East Asian Pop Culture: Analysing the Korean Wave.” 2008.

Part 2: Korean (comedy) drama history

Ahn Byung Sup. "Humour in Korean Cinema." 1987.

Kim, Do-Goan. “TV, culture, and audience in Korea: a reception study of Korean drama.” 1998. https://ttu-
ir.tdl.org/ttu-ir/handle/2346/19633

Chung, Sung-ill. “Four variations on Korean genre film: tears, screams, violence and laughter.” In Korean

Cinema : from Origins to Renaissance, 2007.

Section 2: gender
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 Danielle Bouman, 7-11-
2016, Thesis R&R

Freud, Sigmund. "Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality." 1905.

Beauvoir, Simone. "The Second Sex." 1949.

Stoller, Robert. "Sex and Gender: On the Development of Masculinity and Femininity." 1968.

Butler, Judith. "Performative Acts and Gender Constitution: An Essay in Phenomenology and Feminist Theory."

Theatre Journal, 40: 4. The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1988. 519-531.

Butler, Judith. “Gender Trouble.” London: Routledge, 1990.

Vladimir Tikhonov. "Masculinizing the Nation: Gender Ideologies in Traditional Korea and in the 1890s- 1900s

Korean Enlightenment Discourse." 2007.

http://www.jstor.org.ezproxy.leidenuniv.nl:2048/stable/pdf/20203240.pdf

Hyaeweol Choi "New Women in Colonial Korea: A Sourcebook." 2012.

Hoffman, Diane. “Blurred Genders: The Cultural Construction of Male and Female in South Korea.” Korean

studies, 19. University of Hawaii Press, 1995. 112-138. https://muse-jhu-

edu.ezproxy.leidenuniv.nl:2443/article/397964/pdf

Noriko O. Tsuya, Larry L. Bumpass, and Minja Kim Choe. “Gender, Employment, and Housework in Japan,

South Korea, and the United States.” Review of Population and Social Policy, No. 9, 2000. 195 220

http://websv.ipss.go.jp/publication/e/R_s_p/No.9_P195.pdf

Lee, Claire; Park, Ji. “'We need a committee for men's rights': reactions of male and female viewers to reverse

gender discrimination in Korean comedy.” Asian journal of communication, Aug 2012, Vol.22(4), pp.353-371

Section 3: gender in tv

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 Danielle Bouman, 7-11-
2016, Thesis R&R

Sarte, Jean-Paul. "Being and Nothingness: an essay on phenomenological ontology." Chapter 5: the look.

Routledge, 2003. 276-293. (orig. 1943)

Mary Ann Doane. "Film and the masquerade: theorizing the female spectator." 1982.

Mulvey, Laura. “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema.” Film Theory and Criticism : Introductory Readings.

Eds. Leo Braudy and Marshall Cohen. New York: Oxford UP, 1999. 833-44.

Gauntlett, David. “Media, Gender and Identity: An Introduction.” Abingdon: Routledge, 2008.

Rhee, Jooyeon.“Between words and images: Gender and cultural productions in colonial Korea.” ProQuest

Dissertations Publishing, 2011.

Section 4: gender and comedy (in tv)

Sarte, Jean-Paul. "Being and Nothingness: an essay on phenomenological ontology." Chapter 5: the look.

Routledge, 2003. 276-293. (orig. 1943)

Hélène Cixous. "The Laugh of the Medusa." 1976

Gina Barreca "They Used to Call Me Snow White . . . But I Drifted, Women's Strategic Use of Humor" 1991.

https://muse.jhu.edu/book/23070

Finney, Gail. “Look Who's Laughing: Gender and Comedy.” Routledge, 1994.

Hengen, Shannon. “Performing Gender and Comedy: Theories, Texts and Context.” Routledge, 1998.

Crawford, Mary. “Gender and humor in social context.” Journal of Pragmatics 35, 2003. 1413-1430.

http://www.sciencedirect.com.ezproxy.leidenuniv.nl:2048/science/article/pii/S0378216602001832

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Kotthoff, Helga. “Gender and humor: The state of the art.” Journal of Pragmatics 38, 2006. 4–25.

http://www.sciencedirect.com.ezproxy.leidenuniv.nl:2048/science/article/pii/S0378216605001256

Lee, Claire; Park, Ji. “'We need a committee for men's rights': reactions of male and female viewers to reverse

gender discrimination in Korean comedy.” Asian journal of communication, Aug 2012, Vol.22(4), pp.353-371

Park, Jane Chi Hyun. “Fighting Women in Contemporary Asian Cinema, the celebration of the inauthentic in

My Wife is a Gangster and Chocolate.” Cultural studies 27, 2013.

http://www.tandfonline.com.ezproxy.leidenuniv.nl:2048/doi/pdf/10.1080/09502386.2012.738670

Diffrient, David Scott. “The unbearable lightness of Hong Sang-soo's HaHaHa: awkward humor, nervous

laughter, and self-critique in contemporary Korean comedy.” New Review of Film and Television Studies, 2014

Vol. 12, No. 1, 37–59, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17400309.2013.857487

Conclusion/wrap up:

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