Women, Television, and Everyday Life
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WOMEN, TELEVISION, AND EVERYDAY LIFE KOREAN WOMEN'S REFLEXIVE EXPERIENCE OF TELEVISION MEDIATED BY GENERATION AND CLASS YOUNAKIM Department ofMedia and Communications, Goldsmiths College, University ofLondon Thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy (Ph. D.) © YOUNA KIM 2002 ABSTRACT This thesis is about how television intersects with the everyday lives of women in transitional Korea, and how the experience of television is further implicated in the formation and transformation of identities. Within the larger socio-historical context of Korean modernity, it explores how_women deal with social change and make sense of their lives and identities with the cultural experience of television in everyday life, mediated by generation and class. This empirical work overall demonstrates the reflexive workings of popular television culture in its multifold manifestations. It reveals how critical ordinary women are in their engagement with television and how reflexivity actually operates in the variegated settings of their everyday lives. The thesis therefore argues for reflexivity at work: Reflexivity is constitutive of the experience of modem television. The practice of reflexivity is a defining characteristic of the experience of television, and television culture today has become a critical condition for reflexivity. Specifically, the thesis emphasizes the social dynamics of different forms of reflexivity with which to organize the project of self-identity, and the significant role of television as a resource for reflexivity. Reflexivity is organized around the axis of generation oriented toward different directions, which are the tradition-directed, the inner-directed, and the other-directed. The dialectical nature of the reflexivities of each generation is a push-and-pull of different tendencies towards modernity. Tradition in everyday life is now under threat, beginning to dissolve by the experience of modernity. As a consequence, the reflexive organization of the self becomes an inevitable unfinishable project to be worked at, and television, as historically-situated cultural experience, is integrated into the project of the self Television is an important resource for reflexivity in modem everyday life, which stimulates ordinary women to research their own lives and identities for a journey of hope. 2 TABLE OF CONTENTS Preliminaries Title Page 1 Abstract 2 Table of Contents 3 Dedication 6 Acknowledgements 7 Chapter 1 Women, Television, and Everyday Life 8 (1) Western Literature 10 (2) Korean Literature 30 Chapter 2 Socio-Economic Position of Women in South Korea 39 (1) Confucianism 41 (2) Education 44 (3) Work 47 (4) Marriage and Family 52 (5) Sexuality 60 Chapter 3 Methodology 67 (1) An Ethnography of Researching 67 (2) TV Talk as a Method 80 (3) Emotion as an Effect 85 Chapter 4 Korean Working-Class Women in their 50s 91 (1) Misery of Everyday Life: TV, Gender and Emotion 91 (2) Power of Everyday Life: Son as a Tactic 97 (3) Reading Against Primetime Feminism 103 (4) TV Realism and Identification 111 (5) Reinvigorating Tradition 115 3 Chapter 5 Korean Working-Class Women in their 30s 123 (1) TV Rituals, Security and Intimacy 123 (2) TV and Childcare: "I try not to watch TV because of the child" 130 (3) Fantasy of Dominance 135 (4) A-ha! Emotion: Reading the Popular 144 Chapter 6 Korean Working-Class Women in their 20s 152 (1) Work, Marriage, and Feminism 152 (2) Representation of Women on Korean Television: 157 "It's always killing smart women" (3) Play in the Global Telecity: "TV is my best friend" 162 (4) Representation ofthe West in the Korean Imagination: 169 Yearning for Free Choice, Social Mobility and Change (5) Rejecting Western Sexuality 175 Chapter 7 Korean Middle-Class Women in their 50s 180 (1) TV, Emotion and Shifting Power: ''Now it's women's times!" 180 (2) Middle-Class Leisure and Television 188 (3) TV Reflexivity: Women's Work and Childcare 194 (4) Family, TV and Moral Discourse 200 Chapter 8 Korean Middle-Class Women in their 30s 209 (1) Unavailability of Husband, TV and Childcare 209 (2) Child Education and Professionalization of Motherhood 216 (3) Escape into Romance: Emotional Fantasy and "Good Feelings" 223 Chapter 9 Korean Middle-Class Women in their 20s 236 (1) Employment and Uncertainty: Whose Individualization? 236 (2) A Return to Pleasure: Entertainment and Feminist Utopia 246 (3) Talking Back to The West: But Who Will Listen? 255 4 Chapter 10 Conclusions 266 (1) Reflexivity at Work 266 (2) Class, Generation, and Reflexivity 268 (3) Tradition / Morality / Family / Nation (Women in their 50s) 275 (4) Transition / Negotiation / Intimacy / Emotion (Women in their 30s) 278 (5) Openness / Play / Imagination / Freedom (Women in their 20s) 281 (6) The Tradition- / The Inner- / The Other-Directed 284 Culture of Everyday Life Appendix 1: List of Interviewees 286 Appendix 2: Example of Interview Transcription 292 Notes 305 Bibliography 320 5 This thesis is dedicated to Sooan OH and Jeill OH 6 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS First, I want to thank those without whom there would have been no Ph.D. research and the production of this thesis: the ORS (Overseas Research Students) scholarship from the British government for awarding me three years of tuition fee support; the Department of Media and Communications at Goldsmiths College for offering a part time teaching job; and all the women who enormously contributed to this thesis for their intimate interviews. The greatest debt is to my parents, Soonim Kim and Jonghan Kim, for their commitment to education that has enabled me to imagine different lives for women. To my Ph.D. thesis supervisor, Professor Angela McRobbie, for her intellectual support, conscientious and immediate feedback. I am most grateful to her for being tough and "more": I cherish all those good memories - the electric heater on my first Christmas in London, the stroll in Hampstead Heath, the swimming on one summer day, the night ride to London Bridge, the movie Apple. I also want to express warm thanks to a couple, Jean York and Tad Pogonowski, for providing me home away home. Thanks to Jean for the joy and laughter around the kitchen table, the unfailing friendship and solidarity that have sustained an insane life; thanks to Tad for coming (with Fu-Ping) to rescue me from the last-minute packing, moving, riding to the airport, and for influencing me to pray at the moment of crisis. To Professor James Lull, who came towards the end of this intellectual journey. I am greatly indebted to him for his cheerful encouragement and confidence when most needed, and thereafter in a constantly special way. Every journey has a start. I wish to extend gratitude to Professor Michael Tracey, my Master's thesis supervisor in America, from whom I initially learned the joy of doing research and was inspired to embark on this Ph.D. research - a truly rewarding experience in my life, both intellectually and emotionally. London, July 2002 7 Chapter 1 Women, Television, and Everyday Life This thesis is about how television intersects with the everyday lives of women in transitional Korea, and how the experience of television is further implicated in the formation and transformation of identities. This study initially evolved out of my observation and personal reflections on the historically unprecedented rate of divorce and the social fear about the dissolution of the traditional family system with the coming of modernity.1 The Korean divorce rate is rising rapidly, although it is still low as compared with Western countries. It has increased from 5.8% in 1980, to 11.1 % in 1990, 16.8% in 1995 (KWDI, 1998), and today, one out of three married couples is divorcing (KBS News, July 1, 1999). It is a dramatic indicator of the crisis of identity, both individual and social, in the push-and-pull of different influences of modernity. The identity crisis basically posed a question: How do people deal with the continuous, unsettling social transitions around them, and what kind of role does media play in this process? This question consequently arising from the social conditions of modernity prompted me to explore in detail women's changing lives and identities in relation to the impact of the most popular media culture in everyday life - television.2 Specifically, how do Korean women perceive, interpret, and use television in the course of everyday life, in the creation of identity? Does television intersect with imagining different lives and identities for women? What are the distinctive features of women's relationships to television? Are women's relationships to television significantly influenced by their age and class position? I am primarily concerned with the ways in which different generations of women relate to television, however, the dimension of class will also be considered to see if cultural patterns of television experience are determined by class differences.3 Overall, the objective of this study is to understand how Korean women deal with social change and make sense of their everyday lives and identities with the cultural experience of television mediated by generation and class. Women's experience of television in everyday life cannot be separated from its links to the larger socio-historical context in which television is received and understood. Importantly, this study therefore approaches women, 8 television, and everyday life in the historically-specific social conditions of Korean modernity. For the framework of this study I mainly refer to Western theoretical and empirical work on women as audiences. This is because, in examining relationships between women and media culture, Korean feminist television studies have been predominantly concerned with the issues of women as "representations" and women as "creators", but have not approached women as "audiences". Despite the fact that Koreans spend 4/5 of their leisure time on television consumption (KBI, 1996), hence, television is an integral part of everyday leisure life, any exploratory research on what people do with television is largely absent.