Feminist Discourse and the Hegemonic Role of Mass Media

Abstract

There has been a notable cultural trend in which feminist concerns are conveyed through many popular culture texts in South Korea since the early 1990s. Many different social groups and organizations have been engaged in the formation of feminist discourse in popular culture, among them the mainstream media. To broadly address the role of media in incorporating feminist discourse within the dominant ideology in specific socio-economic contexts, the research sought to identify the ways in which feminist discourse was generated and/or assimilated into the dominant ideology in newspaper content about the messages in the two television dramas Lovers (1996) and The Woman Next Door (2003) and other socio-cultural phenomena surrounding the dramas. Newspaper content became more favorable to the sexually liberated female characters and acknowledged changing gender roles as a current socio-cultural trend. However, it never questioned the nuclear family system itself—which occupies the hegemonic realm in patriarchal capitalist society.

Keywords:

• popular feminism
• newspaper discourse
• hegemony
• patriarchal capitalism

Introduction

Since the early 1990s in South Korea, various social changes, including economic prosperity, political democratization, and feminist movements, have been accompanied by a notable cultural trend in which feminist concerns are delivered through many media texts. In response to popular feminism,1 many different social groups and organizations have been engaged in the formation of feminist discourse trying to define the meaning of this cultural phenomenon, among them the mainstream media. The purpose of this research is to broadly address the role of media in incorporating feminist discourse within the dominant ideology in South Korea. The main concern was particularly with news, which, as Byerly (1999, p. 384) says, has “the power to define serious topics of public interests and to identify major players in political, economic, and social processes.” Specifically, newspaper content relating to two television mini-series dramas2—Lovers and The Woman Next Door—was studied to see how dominant ideologies of traditional gender roles, female sexuality, and the capitalist patriarchal family system may be challenged or reinscribed.

Lovers, which was aired in 1996, featured self-assertive female characters who were professional career women, and the female characters refused male authority. In The Woman Next Door, which was broadcast in 2003, traditional gender roles that define domestic responsibilities of home and family as the primary role of women were reversed, and the female characters who had achieved economic power became very liberal and were never reserved about expression of their sexual desires. Although Lovers and The Woman Next Door have some common features—for example, both represented self-assertive, liberal female characters, dealt with female sexuality through extramarital affairs, and provoked social debates—they bifurcate in social contexts in which they were produced. In South Korea, popular feminism emerged in the early 1990s. The year 1997, when South Korea went into the managerial regime of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and Kim Dae-jung was elected president launching the second civilian government, marks a turning point for feminism in the country. The political rhetoric favored women, and policies favorable to women were enacted by the Kim Dae-jung administration. Alongside them, a pervasive national economic crisis facilitated the reversal of traditional gender roles and endangered the stability of the patriarchal nuclear family system. Many popular culture texts that resonated with these changes appeared after 1997.

Hall (1982, pp. 63–64) observes that media, as major ideological institutions, contribute to sustaining the dominant social order—not simply by reflecting or expressing an already existing meaning, but by constructing reality through “the active work of selecting and presenting, or structuring and shaping.” In cultural process, however, there are internal conflicts or variations that make room for subordinate groups' voices, which many times remain within the limits of central effective and dominant definitions (Hall 1977; Williams 1973). To see the dynamics of power relations inscribed in this process, Hall (1982, p. 67) and Williams (1977, p. 113) suggest a cultural analysis that can grasp dominant social relations not only in their active and formative process but also in their transformational process. Such an analysis seeks to explain what kinds of meaning get systematically constructed around particular events in a specific historical conjuncture.

According to this point of view, study of newspaper content generated about the two dramas Lovers and The Woman Next Door, which were produced before and after 1997 respectively, may yield insight into the process through which media texts contribute to making space for counter-hegemonic discourse or sustaining dominant social/gender relations, as media discourse adjusts to different socio-economic contexts. One may observe the intersection and conflict of dominant and opposite discourses with regard to gender roles, female sexuality, and the nuclear family system in newspaper content. Before discussing discourse in newspapers, it is necessary to review previous feminist media studies and the theoretical perspective guiding this study.

Hegemony and Representation of Women and Family

Feminism is not easy to define because it includes a variety of perspectives and ideas. There are, however, certain common assumptions within feminism. Feminists believe that women's experiences, concerns, and ideas are as valuable as those of men and should be treated with equal seriousness and respect. Feminist theorists aim to understand the origins and continuing nature of women's devaluation in society (Anderson 1993; Hennessy 1993; Steeves 1987). Feminist scholarship treats gender, sexuality, and the experience of women as a primary category of societal organization and focuses on the construction of gender roles in society and how it holds certain power establishments in place. One feminist concern is the media portrayal of women. It is argued that women's position as oppressed in patriarchal capitalism has been reproduced and maintained by the aid of ideological practice via media. And studies of media representation have been conducted to discover how gender portrayals in media texts function to impose the dominant ideology (Grossberg & Treichler 1987, pp. 273–280).

Many feminist media studies have identified that, in diverse media texts, women have been depicted as sex objects and devoted homemakers within the bounds of “true womanhood—piety, purity, submissiveness, and domesticity” (e.g., Triece 1999; Wood 1994). Besides the representation of women, scholars have also discussed a mythical representation of the family system in media (e.g., Brunsdon 1983; Lopate 1976). Whether because of the economic interest of the television broadcasting system that must presume a “family audience” due primarily to its domestic location (Press 1991, p. 18) or because of the larger socio-political concerns about the rising divorce rate and the importance of the family to capitalism (Booth 1980), the dominant representation of family has taken a particular form that repetitively represents the stability of the nuclear family.

The appearance of popular feminism, however, indicates change in the representation of women and the patriarchal family system in media. Lately, most feminists acknowledge the presence of feminist concerns in many popular forms, and some are optimistic about popular feminism because discourses and images in media texts are open to feminist reformulation. But many scholars still say that these popular forms of feminism do not really serve to change the present social order based on gender discrimination because, in order to enter the mainstream, feminism can be appropriated into the dominant ideology; then, it loses its radical potential and becomes attached to more conservative agendas (Hollows 2000). Scholars, in fact, have documented that media representations re-contextualize feminist advances in ways that make them ultimately function to reify dominant patriarchal codes and discourses (e.g., Baehr 1980; D'Acci 1994; Shugart, Waggoner & Hallstein 2001; Vavrus 2002; White 1987). The contradictions in media representation about gender identity and the patriarchal nuclear family system may be better understood by applying the theory of hegemony to the relationship of culture and communication.

According to Hall (1977, pp. 331–332), hegemony refers to a situation in which a provisional alliance of certain social groups can exert “total social authority” over other subordinate groups only by “winning and shaping consent so that the power of the dominant class appears both legitimate and natural.” It accompanies the process through which the ruling groups negotiate subordinate groups' cultures to a cultural and ideological terrain that wins a position of leadership, and “what is consented to is a negotiated version of the ruling groups' culture and ideology at a specific historical conjuncture” (Bennett 1986, pp. xiv–xv). The hegemonic system allows space for the expression of the subordinates. Nevertheless, popular aspirations and values tend to be taken into account by dominant groups and addressed so that they are assimilated in terms compatible with the hegemonic ideology. Scholars, who have identified the sources of alternative meaning and practice, have also shown the possibility of the reinscription of alternative groups' voices into the dominant culture. For example, Gamson, Croteau, Hoynes and Sasson (1992, pp. 382–383), who assert that there are two separate realms of news media discourse, say the first is “the natural or hegemonic realm,” where certain social constructions appear as transparent descriptions of reality; they are presented as what is taken for granted via media and are unchallenged. The second realm identified by Gamson et al. is “the contested” realm in which different social groups struggle over meaning. They stress the complex character of hegemonic ideology by saying that the distinction between these two realms is not fixed but changes throughout history; but they also acknowledge that the potential for alternative meaning is still limited within the boundary determined by dominant interests.

In this sense, the messages in newspapers about the two television dramas showing popular feminist concerns can appear as resistance against dominant interests, but there is always the possibility for the symbolic resistance to be assimilated into the dominant ideology. Through the process of accommodating people's interests and drawing their attention, media texts sometimes allow space for counter-hegemonic messages. If, under the guise of resistance, however, dominant ideologies assume forms corresponding to social changes, they still may have much implication for social construction of reality. And then, questions remain about the specific ways in which messages in newspapers are constructed. Discourse in newspapers about the two television dramas Lovers and The Woman Next Door emerged entangled with various social conditions of South Korea, such as women's status in social relations and South Korean people's values or desires respectively in the late twentieth century and the early twenty-first century.

Context

With recent political, economic, and cultural shifts in South Korea, society's realities and reigning conceptions relating to gender roles, female sexuality, and the nuclear family system changed considerably—since the early 1990s in particular. In the political realm, “the election of presidents using a direct voting system” gained through the 1987 struggle for democratization gave South Koreans confidence in, and opportunities for, making their voices heard. Moreover, after the first South Korean civilian administration, that of Kim Young-sam, took office in 1993, a mood of formal democratization and freedom was diffused throughout the society (Chung 2003). With the overall economic development, economic position of women relative to men was advanced, and nowadays South Korean women acquired almost the same opportunity to receive higher education as men.3 Under these circumstances, according to Cho Han (2002, p. 20), various feminist groups were formed, and they undertook movements to gain gender equality.

With the changes in women's socio-economic status and political context, the feminist movement spread widely from the early 1990s—centering on cultural and art areas. Popular culture was important in facilitating this feminist trend. For example, in late 1993, in various popular culture texts, young married women started to be called “Missy,” which implies a young and sophisticated married woman who voices her thoughts, and women were endowed with a new identity of activity and self-assertiveness. During the similar time period, particularly in movies, sexually liberal female characters began to be represented, and, since the late 1990s, female sexuality in popular culture has not been confined to the family sphere. The married female characters manage dual relationships without any regret or guilt, and the traditional patriarchal family is dissolving.

While there have been contradictory positions about the ways feminism becomes part of popular culture, the trend has been toward a more liberal and independent identity for women in South Korea. The year 1997 was a turning point. In 1996, the South Korean economy began to exhibit signs of weakness. Ultimately, bankruptcy of several large companies and a crisis of foreign exchange led South Korea to adopt the managerial regime of the IMF in 1997. South Korea's economic crisis caused large-scale lay-offs and led to female workers being the first victims of economic downsizing, corporate restructuring, and contracting out. The economic crisis turned out to be not only a challenge but also an opportunity for women. To cope with the unemployment of husbands laid off due to economic restructuring, many housewives took jobs. Most of the jobs were in low-pay service work, such as department store sales, insurance sales, and housemaids, and such job opportunities did not necessarily mean improved economic status for women. However, the increase in stay-at-home fathers and the growing number of female breadwinners challenged the very core of traditional social mores, which had until then strictly defined the role of women as devoted homemakers. The period when it was necessary to mobilize the female labor force—in areas where temporary, low-pay service jobs were available and where female/male economic interests, in actuality, did not so much conflict—coincided with that when the Kim Dae-jung administration adopted pro-women political discourses and policies.4 The change in the traditional nuclear family that consists of husband, wife, and their child(ren) was also accelerated by the economic crisis, which is indicated by the rapid increase of the divorce rate and single-person households and the decrease of the marriage rate to the lowest point since 1970 when the government began tracking the marriage rate.5 In this socio-political atmosphere, women's economic power made them more independent and freer to express their thoughts and desires, and media texts resonated with those changes. Newspaper content relating to the two dramas Lovers (1996) and The Woman Next Door (2003) was produced in distinct social contexts before and after the turning point year of 1997.

Method

To broadly address the role of media in incorporating feminist discourse within the dominant ideology in specific socio-economic contexts, the research sought to identify the ways in which feminist discourse was generated and/or assimilated into the dominant ideology in newspaper content about the messages in the two television dramas Lovers and The Woman Next Door and other socio-cultural phenomena surrounding those dramas. To study newspapers, three categories—gender roles, female sexuality, and the patriarchal nuclear family system—were used as guides to locating discourse because these categories are treated in feminist scholarship as primary categories that contribute to the organization of social relations (Dervin 1987, pp. 109–110).

Among theorists who define discourse as the way a subject is talked about are Fairclough (1992), Foucault (1980), and Kress (1985). They say discourse defines and delimits what is possible and impossible to say about a subject. From this perspective, ideology inheres in discourse and contributes to the sustaining hegemony. Fairclough, however, cautions that the stability of ideology should not be overstated. As an ideological and political practice of various social groups, in Fairclough's (1992, pp. 8–95) words, discourse “establishes, sustains, and further challenges significations of the world from diverse positions in power relations.” Therefore, analysis of discourse should enable one to see relationships between discourse and social change. In relation to studying media texts, van Dijk (1991, pp. 108–116) says that discourse analysis as a method assumes that media messages are specific types of text and talk. The text and talk are varied and complex and occur on interrelated levels, which have particular structures and strategies. One of those levels may be the result of choices between alternative ways of saying the same thing while constructing specific themes. Pauly (1991, p. 19) says discourse is constructed through certain recurring themes and phrases in media texts. And those choices have clear social and ideological implications because they often signal the opinions of certain groups while at the same time discrediting or silencing those of others (Jensen 1991, p. 19; van Dijk 1991, p. 116).

Lovers and The Woman Next Door were two popular culture texts that relate to popular feminism in South Korea and became cultural events around which different social groups—such as the government agency the Korean Broadcasting Commission (KBC), congressmen, and the audience who reacted actively to the meaning construction of the popular culture texts—competed to make their voices heard. The examination of newspapers, which became the central force through their power to provide certain ways of signification of the situations, was expected to lead to insights into the role of media in construction of social meaning. News articles and editorials about the two dramas and other socio-cultural phenomena surrounding the two dramas—such as the KBC's regulation of the two television dramas, several congressmen's attempts to stop airing Lovers, and female audience's identifying themselves with the liberated female characters in those dramas—were selected from ten nationally circulating newspapers (Chosun Ilbo, Daehan Maeil, Donga Ilbo, Hankook Ilbo, Hankyoreh, Joongang Ilbo, Kookmin Ilbo, Kyunghang Shinmoon, Segye Ilbo & Seoul Shinmoon) published in Seoul, the capital of South Korea. A total of seventy articles and editorials (forty about Lovers and thirty about The Woman Next Door) was selected from 180 items retrieved from the news data bank, Kinds. Only newspaper content that tried to actively define the two cultural texts and situations was selected. Keywords used for the search were drama, aein (“lovers”), and apjip yeoja (“the woman next door”). The time period of newspaper coverage studied began one month before the airing of the two dramas and continued to three months after the end of the broadcasting of the two dramas.

Findings

Lovers and The Woman Next Door, in some respects, challenged dominant ideologies by representing liberal women and reversed gender roles and by dealing with a topic of extramarital affairs that opposes the current value of the nuclear family model. In South Korea, chastity has been strongly emphasized as one of the virtues of women. Divorce and remarriage have been stigmas particularly to women, and those who go through the processes are often considered and called filthy no matter what the reasons of the changes in their lives are. The topic of extramarital affair continues to be adopted for television dramas where female characters are mostly portrayed as enduring victims of their husband's behaviors. But this trend has changed since the 1990s when women began to express unbridled desires. Extramarital experimentations in popular texts have given a kind of venue through which female sexuality can be expressed and a chance that makes people rethink of female sexuality as well as the present family system.

In newspaper content relating to the two television dramas, attitudes broadly ranged from acute anxiety and reproof because of the moral damage done by the drama Lovers to praise because the characters in The Woman Next Door were seen to embody self-confident, independent, and active female figures. From September 17, 1996 to December 29, 1996, newspaper articles and editorials about Lovers suggested that South Korean society was quite at a loss about the appearance of self-assertive female characters and their active engagements in extramarital affairs. In addition to the distinctive role and image of female characters, various factors in the drama, such as elaborate visual images and sensuous background music, contributed to attracting large female audiences. They further elevated the so-called “Lovers syndrome,” which was expressed through diverse phenomena. Many housewives, for example, imitated the female lead character's hairstyle, and the bags and accessories used by her sold “like hotcakes.” Surveys about “South Korean women's consciousness” were reported in different newspapers, showing that 71 percent of married female respondents wanted boyfriends and 54.8 percent of them admitted desires for extramarital affairs. The social reverberations this drama caused seem to have brought about specific discourse in newspapers, where content defined this situation as problematic: those glorified “immoral” extramarital relations in this drama could aggravate “abnormal” relations in reality and further threaten the stability of society by causing the collapse of the family as a basic unit of society.

From July 11, 2003 to September 24, 2003, language and themes in newspaper articles and editorials about The Woman Next Door showed some change. By contrast with Lovers, about which no preview articles were found, eight out of thirty news items about The Woman Next Door were preview articles, and they informed about the appearance of female characters with abilities in handling both their jobs and extramarital affairs without failure, linking the women to such terms as “professional” and “self-confident.” Newspaper content about The Woman Next Door, in general, treated the female characters and the prevalence of extramarital affairs in this drama as the reflection of social reality of South Korea in the early twenty-first century.

Discourses in Newspaper Content about Lovers

Lovers (1996) is about a married man and a married woman meeting, having a love affair, and breaking up. It features self-assertive female characters who are professional career women: an event producer, a vice-chief of the business department, and a fashion designer who accomplish successes in their areas. They also refuse male authority, for example, when female lead character Yeo-gyung decides to leave her husband because of his self-centered, authoritarian attitude—asking her to sacrifice her career to take care of family affairs as her primary obligation and ignoring her request for a more equal and intimate relationship. This drama also portrays a DINK (Dual Income No Kids) couple and a single mom who wins custody of her son thanks to her ex-husband's financial difficulties, both of which were not very common descriptions of family lives in South Korea in those days. In newspaper content, counter-hegemonic discourse of gender equality based on changing women's social status was identified mainly in terms of the female lead character in Lovers. However, most newspaper content focused on extramarital affairs in Lovers and the danger that these would cause in society, and discourse of the preservation of the patriarchal nuclear family system was most dominant.

Gender Equality Based on Changing Women's Social Status

In newspaper content, the theme of sexual equality based on changing gender roles was identified primarily in terms of the female lead character Yeo-gyung in Lovers. Newspaper items recognized South Korean women's somewhat improved socio-economic status or desire to take significant positions in society in the mid-1990s by acknowledging Yeo-gyung's character as signifying “the appearance of Missy, who leads women's active entering into various socio-economic areas” (J-K Lee 1996, p. 14). In an interview with the Hankook Ilbo (D-S Kim 1996, p. 6), the writer of this drama said, “Dramas dealing with extramarital affairs have changed according to the times. The changes have been related to the social system and women's social status of the day … Lovers shows the way of love in the 1990s, which lets man and woman who have their own jobs develop equal relations.” In addition, in an interview with the Kyunghang Shinmoon (Oh 1996, p. 5), the director of this drama said, “Although this drama deals with extramarital affairs, what we should pay more attention to is the relationship between the two lead characters who respect the other's personality … From now on, I think, we have to consider the relationship of a married couple as equal human relations instead of defining it based on the traditional roles of men and women.”

Discourse of equal relations between men and women was extended to the issue of sexuality. For example, an item in the Hankook Ilbo (S-W Kim 1996, p. 13) said, “Our society has a dual attitude and norm of sexuality … When it comes to woman's sexuality, oppressed and passive sexuality is forced while man's sexuality is accepted very generously. The so-called Lovers syndrome may be a social phenomenon in a transitional period when women become subjects, not objects of sexuality.” According to one Donga Ilbo (S-D Kim 1996, p. 21) item, the relationship between female and male lead characters in Lovers showed “the sexual equality in extramarital relations accomplished after thirty years since the first television drama which depicted extramarital affairs and enjoyed high audience ratings was aired.”

From the viewpoint that emphasized the improvement of women's status in social relations, the panic reactions to this drama were connected with the dominant interest in sustaining the existing unequal relations of men and women. In the same interview, the director of this drama said, “The reason this drama has created a stir in our society is that this drama depicts this kind of relationship from a woman's viewpoint contrary to previous dramas that placed men at the center of the story” (Oh 1996, p. 5). A Daehan Maeil (Park 1996, p. 10) story quoted a professor who said: “Drama Lovers has caused a lot of debates. It has been told that this drama glorifies and justifies immoral relations, which can lead to the disruption of family. Those criticisms, however, seem to be a part of men's bemoaning … The controversies about Lovers may come from a sense of crisis of the patriarchy that women, who, for a long time, have endured their husband's extramarital affairs, can start to resist this situation.”

The television drama Lovers, aired in 1996, was an example of media that somewhat reflected South Korean women's improved socio-economic status6 and raised consciousness of sexual equality in the early-to-mid 1990s. The female characters had a new identity of activity and self-assertiveness and raised questions about the norm of the patriarchal nuclear family. Although extramarital affairs had not been an uncommon topic in television dramas, newspaper content defined the depiction of extramarital affairs in Lovers, in particular, as problematic.

Preservation of Family as the Mainstay of Society

With regard to Lovers, anxiety about the probable breakdown of the nuclear family system was dominant in newspaper content. Women's sexual agency, reflected through female audiences who were willing to identify themselves with the female lead character of this drama, seems to have been a catalyst for this discursive position. Women's sexual autonomy was considered a challenge to society since it conflicts with the ideology of the patriarchal nuclear family, which perpetuates the myth that family is the cornerstone of society and naturalizes the male-centered regulation of sexuality and the fixed male (active)/female (passive) roles in sexual relations. For example, with the headline, “Television drama and the collapse of family,” an editorial in the Segye Ilbo said,

Drama Lovers is about aberrant love between a married man and woman … The problem is that such a drama is deeply connected to the reality of our society. According to a survey, 58 percent of married female respondents regarded themselves as Missy, and 71 percent of them said they wanted boyfriends. It will cause a big social problem if those stylish and refined married women want extramarital lovers. (Kim-Suk Kim 1996, p. 3)

In this editorial, Lovers, said to glorify “extramarital relations of a married man and woman,” was called “a cause of the disruption of family as the mainstay of society” (K-S Kim 1996, p. 3).

It was reported that some congressmen, during the investigation of the KBC administration, called the drama Lovers a “social pollution” and urged the KBC to stop airing it “to protect the family which is the last fortress of society” (Kwon 1996, p. 47; J-K Lee 1996, p. 4). As a government agency in charge of monitoring broadcasting quality, the KBC, facing criticisms about Lovers and the request for regulating it, held a forum about “The topic of a television drama and its social effects.” A Daehan Maeil item referred to the conclusion drawn in the forum in this way:

The depiction of extramarital love is very dangerous because it can threaten the existence of family as the last fortress of our society. After family is collapsed, we cannot think of any other alternative social community. Therefore, when mass media like television raise questions about the meaning of family, they should be more cautious. (Jae-Sun Kim 1996, p. 15)

Anxiety was shown in newspaper content about the ripple effects that Lovers could have on society. One Segye Ilbo (1996, p. 1) item claimed, “Dramas, which justify immoral relations of married men and women in the name of love, are destroyers of family because they can violate the sanctity of marriage and disrupt the wholesome value of family by stimulating people's sexual curiosity and corrupting sexual morality.” News items showing this position were on the basis of various data of which exact sources, nevertheless, were not indicated, or of arguments for which foundations were not solid in many cases. Furthermore, one Chosun Ilbo item said,

Although, in Lovers, the lead characters who were involved in extramarital affairs finally came back to their homes, it should not be disregarded that this drama has dispersed a venomous idea that social morals can be broken to those drama-addicts … When dysfunctions of television dramas like this are accumulated, they can be more harmful than cancer to people. (Jung-Hun Chung 1996, p. 23)

No specific evidence was presented to support those arguments in newspapers.

Overall, about Lovers, the dominant discourse identified was associated with the preservation of the patriarchal, nuclear family. In those stories, family was said to be “the mainstay of society” or “the last fortress of society,” and the drama Lovers was talked about as a cause of the breakdown of the nuclear family system with such terms as “immoral,” “aberrant,” “abnormal,” “corrupt,” and “dangerous.” Many newspaper items suggested the regulation of this drama as a primary step for reclamation of social morals.

Discourses in Newspaper Content about The Woman Next Door

The Woman Next Door (2003) relates to married life and relationships through the lives of three female characters—Mi-yeon, Ae-gyong, and Soo-mi. While, in Lovers, career-minded professional women refuse men's authority, in The Woman Next Door, traditional gender roles are reversed through the depiction of Soo-mi as a breadwinner and her husband as a devoted stay-at-home father who requires rethinking about the importance and difficulty of housework. Female characters in The Woman Next Door are not reserved about expression of, and enjoyment in, their sexual desires and lives. In contrast to Lovers, in which just one couple is involved in an extramarital affair, in The Woman Next Door, except for two people, the other seven main characters are all engaged in extramarital relations. Contrary to the previous regulatory tone about female sexuality and the topic of extramarital affairs, newspaper content acknowledged the actuality of the sexually liberated female characters and the prevalence of extramarital affairs in The Woman Next Door. Dominant discourse, however, was still reinscribed through the ways of delimiting the boundary or use of euphemism regarding female sexuality and the nuclear family system.

Sexually Liberated Women as the Reflection of Reality

Sexual passivity has been inculcated as a virtue of women, and popular culture has contributed to maintaining this idea by investing chastity with positive significance, particularly relating to female characters in various ways. In most cases, female characters' sexuality has been disregarded or portrayed as passive. Eight preview news items about the drama The Woman Next Door, however, did not treat female sexuality as what should be oppressed. Self-employed, sexually liberated female characters were called “professional” and “self-confident,” and their engagements in extramarital affairs were regarded as realistic. Five days before the first episode of this drama was broadcast, a Chosun Ilbo (Uh 2003b, p. 53) story introduced Ae-gyong's character, who was created as having engaged in many extramarital affairs, with the headline “A chaste woman at home but a sexy woman outside the home captivating every man” and called her “a professional of love affairs.” A Donga Ilbo (Cho 2003, p. 49) story called Ae-gyong “a superwoman who is versatile and believes extramarital love affairs to be a tonic of her life,” and one Daehan Maeil (Chae 2003, p. 29) story said, “Ae-gyong, who is a professional of love affairs, also shows the image of a self-confident, active woman, who can manage everything.” Furthermore, a Chosun Ilbo (Uh 2003b, p. 53) story said, “Constructing characters clearly like Ae-gyong's is an important factor guaranteeing the success of a television drama.”

In reference to the topic of extramarital affairs, one Segye Ilbo (Yoon 2003, p. 17) item said, “The topic of married people's love affairs is controversial. However, there is much room for sympathy with this drama because those things often happen in reality.” In addition, the chief producer of this drama, in one item of the Hankook Ilbo (Y-H Kim 2003, p. 42), said, “Extramarital affairs can happen to our next door neighbors, not to just special people … Ae-gyong's character, who gets satisfaction from extramarital affairs, is very realistic in the present social situation that sexless married couples have become a social problem.” In terms of The Woman Next Door, during the preview period (from July 11 to July 15) before this drama was actually aired (on July 16), newspaper content treated the sexually liberated female characters and the depiction of extramarital affairs as a socio-cultural trend that reflected social reality of South Korea.

The Nuclear Family Remaining a Useful Social System

Liberated female sexuality demonstrated through extramarital affairs was talked about as reflecting social reality in the preview items about The Woman Next Door. As the story of this drama developed, however, the tone of newspaper content changed. More specifically, after the fourth episode was aired with as high as 23.5 percent audience ratings, newspaper content suggested female sexuality should remain within the boundary of preserving family life. For example, the Donga Ilbo interviewed the three actresses who played the three main female characters of this drama. In this interview, the actress who played the role of Ae-gyong said, “What is most important is being moderate. Although Ae-gyong has had many extramarital affairs, she tries to be moderate to keep her family steady.” In response to this, another actress whose role is Soo-mi said, “The right answer relating to reality is given by Soo-mi because she is never reserved in asking for sex but does not have extramarital relations” (Lee & Cho 2003, p. 64).

On August 19, 2003, the Chosun Ilbo reported the KBC had announced plans to take action on dramas that “depict and encourage deviant behaviors like immoral extramarital relations or dual love affairs as everyday conducts” (Uh 2003a, p. 57). And The Woman Next Door was singled out for “close scrutiny” for dealing with extramarital affairs, a topic that the KBC criticized for being too provocative. After this KBC decision, a similar discursive position appeared in newspaper content. For example, one Daehan Maeil (Huh 2003, p. 16) story said, “Women's way of thinking and the atmosphere of our society, in actuality, have changed. Extramarital affairs, however, become the topic of a conversation because they are special things … Contrary to the situations shown in television dramas or movies, extramarital affairs in reality … leave much more severe injuries with the people involved in them. Extramarital relations can never be a vitamin of our lives.” Regarding female sexuality and its display through extramarital relations, newspaper content referred to medical specialists. For example, one Kyunghang Shinmoon (J-H Chung 2003, p. 33) item cited a psychiatrist who said: “As, compared to men's extramarital affairs, women's can cause two or three times more severe mental pain to their spouses, wives' extramarital affairs can be a direct hit to the disruption of family … Husbands need to have more conversations with their wives to check them to lead loose lives.” In those news stories, medical discourse was mobilized to define the people engaged in extramarital relations as abnormal, and only women's extramarital relations were mentioned as needing to be controlled.

Newspaper content did not directly reflect the theme of needing protection for the patriarchal nuclear family system. In more circuitous ways, husband and wife as essential elements in the nuclear family were encouraged to get along well, and the value of the current marriage system was said to be reconsidered. With the end of the airing of this drama, in an interview with the Hankook Ilbo (Lee 2003, p. 24), the writer of this drama said, “I purposed to show the crises that every married couple may get through. I hope this drama can give everyone the opportunity to feel that husband and wife should embrace each other despite all the complications between them.” In a Chosun Ilbo (D-S Kim 2003, p. 31) story, a literature critic reviewed a broad cultural trend in which media texts depict such issues as a single mom, premarital co-habitation, revenge sex, and dissolution of family and said: “When I receive news that the divorce rate has gone over 30 percent, I can't but think of the end of the marriage system. When I hear the report that many divorced people want remarriage, however, I think of the rationality and economical efficiency of the current marriage system again.”

Discussion and Conclusion

Although extramarital affairs had not been an uncommon topic in South Korean television dramas, newspaper content defined the depiction of extramarital affairs in Lovers, in particular, as problematic. Women's sexual agency reflected through the female lead character of this drama and female audiences who outspokenly expressed their sexual desires seems to have triggered this discursive position. On the other hand, The Woman Next Door depicted female characters whose economic power made them more independent and freer to express their sexuality compared to Lovers. Those economically able, sexually liberated female characters in The Woman Next Door were favorably called “professional” and “self-confident” female figures, and their engagements in extramarital affairs were called realistic.

The different discursive positions in newspapers about the two television dramas are also seen in where news items about the two dramas appeared. Of news items about Lovers, 32.5 percent (thirteen out of forty) were editorials or columns in contrast to 6.7 percent editorials about The Woman Next Door. In the case of Lovers, 27.5 percent (eleven out of forty) of news items appeared in the “politics” or “society” pages, while no news items about The Woman Next Door were found in those pages. Newspaper content, in most cases (twenty-four out of thirty), dealt with The Woman Next Door in “culture” or “media” sections. That is, newspaper content about Lovers paid much attention to the topic of extramarital affairs and emphasized its negative socio-political implication while it presented the sexually liberated female characters and the prevalence of extramarital affairs in The Woman Next Door as a cultural trend that reflected social reality of South Korea.

Nevertheless, as Gamson et al. (1992, pp. 382–383) assert, even when there was the potential for alternative meanings in news media discourse, that potential was limited within boundaries determined by dominant interests. Although newspaper content somewhat acknowledged those phenomena of liberated female sexuality or changing gender roles as a current socio-cultural trend, it never questioned the nuclear family system itself. When the discursive position about The Woman Next Door changed from acknowledging prevailing extramarital affairs as social reality to differentiating “immoral” relations in drama texts from their implications in reality, the resemblance to the discursive position taken by the KBC was clear. Newspaper content suggested drawing the line in relation to the expression of female sexuality and, in more circuitous ways, reflected the discourse of “the protection of the patriarchal nuclear family system.” With regard to discourse changes, it is important to note that press content at a specific moment in time does not directly express ideological positions. Said (1981, p. 45) says that, despite the variety of viewpoints in the media, there is a qualitative and a quantitative tendency to favor certain views and representations of reality over others. This is done within a political context made active and effective by a “common-sense” ideology, which media disseminate without facing serious reservations or opposition. Although newspaper content about The Woman Next Door acknowledged liberated female sexuality demonstrated through extramarital relations, it suggested that the expression of female sexuality be limited to preserve the patriarchal nuclear family life—which occupies the hegemonic realm in patriarchal capitalist society.

Despite the counter-hegemonic meanings, the messages embedded in the two dramas also supported the dominant discursive themes and attitudes expressed in the newspaper coverage. Mostly when female characters were disloyal to the traditional patriarchal family pattern, they were given deviant images and their personalities were devalued. Husband, wife, and their child(ren) were portrayed as essentials of a happy family, and any rupture in this “exemplary family” was finally sutured by the characters' re-recognition of their love or responsibilities for their families in Lovers. Even when the breakdown of family was allowed in The Woman Next Door, the narrative structure implied that the lives of those families would go on without much change despite their conflicts. The implicit message was that the breakup in a marriage is not definitive or permanent. This representation of family and marriage coincides with what Lopate (1976, pp. 75–78) calls the “mythic portrayals of family life,” which depict the family as the sole place of love, compassion, and sexuality and where we should stay.

Research here highlighted discourses in newspapers regarding feminism in South Korea. Locating the discourses within specific socio-economic contexts provides insight into the ways that economic and political structures relate to feminist discourse in at least some popular media texts and newspapers in South Korea in a recent period. Media texts accommodate and reflect social changes. But it seems fair to say the hegemonic ideology of patriarchal capitalism is constantly reinscribed through such strategies as delimiting the boundary or use of euphemism.

Acknowledgements

The author gratefully acknowledges Professor Hazel Dicken-Garcia who provided boundless guidance for this study and thanks the two anonymous reviewers for their very helpful comments.

Notes

1. While there is little consensus about what popular feminism is, in this study, popular feminism means “the entry of feminism into the popular culture texts and the popularization of the images of liberation, freedom, and independence for women in many media forms” as defined by Hollows (2000, p. 198).

2. A mini-series drama is usually composed of twelve to sixteen episodes and aired two times in a week approximately from 10 to 11 p.m.

3. In 2002, the ratio of women and men who had earned bachelor's degrees was 49.0 to 51.0 (Ministry of Education 2002).

4. The Kim Dae-jung administration announced the twenty-first century as the “women's century” and declared ten clear-cut principles South Korea had to pursue, one of which was “Moving from a male-dominated society to a society where men and women are given equal opportunities” (Lee 1998).

5. The crude marriage rate fell to 6.4 cases in 2002, the lowest since 9.2 cases in 1970. The crude divorce rate rose rapidly—from 0.4 cases in 1970 to 1.1 cases in 1990 and to 3.0 cases in 2002. The number of single-person households increased notably—from 0.66 million in 1985 to 2.22 million in 2000, almost tripling in 15 years (National Statistical Office 2003).

6. As of 1996, the economic participation rate of women reached 48.7 percent, and the ratio of women who engaged in professional—technical, administrative, managing—occupations from 1965 to 1995 grew more than sixfold, from 1.5 percent to 9.6 percent (Yoon 1998).