Trans)Gender Ontologies for South Korean Namjangyeoja Television Dramas
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SHOULD WE PASS ON “PASSING WOMEN”?: THE STAKES OF (TRANS)GENDER ONTOLOGIES FOR SOUTH KOREAN NAMJANGYEOJA TELEVISION DRAMAS BY SHELBY STRONG THESIS Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in East Asian Studies in the Graduate College of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2018 Urbana, Illinois Adviser: Professor Jeffrey T. Martin ABSTRACT Scholarship has gendered the protagonists of namjangyeoja dramas, South Korean live- action television dramas that focus on the lives of female-assigned people who pass as men, as “women”. I argue that we must push back against this narrow reading of namjang characters and instead embrace ambiguity and plural possibilities in namjang gender representations. The widespread pattern of namjang characters being depicted as being coerced into “confessing” that they are “women” calls into question the idea that their “real” gender can only be read as female, static, and singular. Indeed, a deeper reading reveals how some namjang protagonists are portrayed as identifying as gender non-binary and gender fluid. I propose that using “transgender” and “namjangyeoja” in conjunction with each other can help us orient to transgender possibilities in namjang dramas and illuminate how the pervasive practice of using “namjangyeoja” to categorize performances of gender nonconformity by female-assigned people is imbricated with institutionalized forms of transphobic heteronormative familism in South Korea. Ultimately, I argue that we must be vigilant about how our choice to affirm certain ontologies (e.g., “namjangyeoja”) over others (e.g., “transgender”) enacts epistemological forms of violence that support larger, institutionalized projects of death by exclusion and illegibility. ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS First and foremost, I would like to thank my advisor, Dr. Jeffrey T. Martin and my thesis committee members, Dr. Robert Cagle and Dr. Jungmin Kwon. Their guidance and support throughout the many stages of this research project were invaluable and instrumental to its development. Thank you to the many people, from strangers in supermarkets to friends far away to colleagues in classrooms, whose brief and regular appearances in my life disrupted my orbit around perspectives I was attracted to. Your productive disruptions propelled me to collide with new ideas, travel different trajectories, and gravitate to unfamiliar spaces. My sincere appreciation goes to Dr. Toby Beauchamp and the inspiring people who collaborated in making the fall 2017 section of Transgender Studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign both a place to seek knowledge and a place to feel acknowledged and share appreciation for diversity. My deep gratitude goes to the informants and readers who shared feedback, personal stories, suggestions, encouragement, comments, and advice on various versions and aspects of this project. In particular, I would like to thank Taegyeong, Jaeseung, Anita Greenfield, YJ, Soo, and Dr. Jessica McCall for their support. Last but not least, thank you to the friends and fans who build communal spaces for “prosuming” manhwa, manga, dramas, anime, variety shows, novels, reality shows, and pop music culture. This paper is indebted to friendships and interactions with people who identify as K-drama, K-pop, manga, and anime fans. All errors and omissions in this paper are my own. iii To my family, friends, and all those who strive to nurture love for the warm and cool embraces of tolerance iv TABLE OF CONTENTS NOTE TO READERS ....................................................................................................... vi INTRODUCTION ...............................................................................................................1 GENDER AND SEXUALITY MOVEMENTS IN 21st CENTURY SOUTH KOREA .....6 “SHE’S NOT; SHE’S A WOMAN.”: PRESCRIPTIVE GENDERINGS OF NAMJANG CHARACTERS BY BROADCASTERS AND SCHOLARS ..........................................41 ILLEGIBLE LEGIBILITY: AMBIGUOUS REPRESENTATIONS OF GENDER (NON)CONFORMITY IN NAMJANG DRAMAS ...........................................................50 CONCLUSION: THE STAKES OF TRANSGENDER ONTOLOGIES FOR NAMJANG DRAMAS ..........................................................................................................................60 BIBLIOGRAPHY ..............................................................................................................70 v NOTE TO READERS All Korean language words that appear in this paper have been transliterated using the Revised Romanization of Korean system. Exceptions were made for some cases, such as for the stage names of celebrities (e.g., the late Jonghyun from SHINee) that already have officially endorsed or established spellings in roman letters. All informant names that are mentioned in this paper are nicknames or pseudonyms. References to the names of authors of online blogs and forum posts are references to the public (user)name associated with the post under discussion. Any translation and transliteration mistakes or shortcomings that occur in this paper are my own. vi INTRODUCTION “너 지금 정신이 있어? 없어? 어디 사나이도 아니고 기집애도 아닌 이런 물건한테!” (Are you out of your mind? How can you [like] this thing that is neither a man nor a woman?) – Sunyeong, The 1st Shop of Coffee Prince (2007) The South Korean folktale Kongjwi Patjwi (콩쥐 팥쥐) describes the travails of a beautiful young woman named Kongjwi1. In this folktale Kongjwi is depicted as submissively acquiescing to her stepmom and stepsister’s demands that she perform arduous chores. Out of sight from her stepmom and stepsister, Kongjwi works tirelessly to do her chores but despairs and weeps when she is unable to complete them. Every time Kongjwi cries magical creatures come to her rescue and help her finish her tasks. Later, when Kongjwi crosses paths with a lord he immediately falls in love with her beauty, pursues her, and proposes marriage. Contemporary adaptations of this folktale typically conclude with descriptions of how Kongjwi and the lord married and lived happily ever after. Similar to American adaptations of the tale Cinderella, Kongjwi Patjwi’s narrative paints a gender and class stratified world where women are rewarded for conforming to heteronormative and patriarchal discourses (Lori Baker-Sperry and Liz Grauerholz 2003; Linda Parsons 2004). These discourses construct being physically attract(ed/ive) to men, dependent on men, hardworking, and submissive as gender appropriate behaviors and ideal goals for women. Although its adaptations are usually set in a Joseon Dynasty-era past, Kongjwi Patjwi encapsulates ideologies that should be understood as both evolving products and influential shapers of structures that maintain inequality in current-day South Korean society. Furthermore, variations of the Kongjwi trope, the pattern of a young, socioeconomically disadvantaged woman 1 One indication of this folktale’s continued popularity is its steady inclusion in contemporary books, television programming, and websites directed at children (e.g., see Jr. Naver (쥬니어네이버) at http://jr.naver.com/). 1 being rewarded for their beauty and work ethic with a marriage to an upper-class man, are widespread throughout 21st century South Korean television dramas (Suk-Young Kim 2013, 96, 98; Jiyeun Lee & Sung-Yeon Park 2015, 403). Recognizing the ubiquity of the Kongjwi script in contemporary Korean romance dramas is critical to understanding the conspicuity and significance of the namjangyeoja drama trend in South Korea. Namjang(yeoja) dramas are South Korean live-action television dramas that focus on the lives of female-assigned people who pass as men. The expression “namjangyeoja” trivializes its referent’s performances of manhood and gender nonconformity by prescribing that they are just a “woman” (i.e., “yeoja”) who is “dressed like a man” (i.e., “namjang”). Given that the protagonists of namjang dramas often fall in love with wealthy, privileged men, namjang dramas’ outfitting of female-assigned people in menswear may seem like a superficial sartorial change to the Kongjwi script. However, I argue that the repercussions of this change are significant and manifold. The significance is that namjang drama texts are imbued with the potential to be read in ways that resist essentialist understandings of gender as an innate, immutable identity. In this essay I argue for a reading that transforms and expands the range of gender appropriate behaviors for everyone by making nonconformist people, such as gender fluid people and women who enjoy “manly” pursuits and non-feminine attire, and nonconformist men, such as men who are attracted to gender nonconforming people, visible as models. Namjang dramas go beyond reductively criticizing the Kongjwi script and other models of womanhood as good or bad. The manner in which namjang dramas revise the Kongjwi trope enables them to both reveal the shortcomings of adopting Kongjwi as a role model for navigating life and expose the collusive relationship between gender norms and mechanisms of control. By featuring protagonists who knowledgeably exploit gender systems by adopting the strategy of 2 gendered passing to achieve their goals, namjang dramas support a reading which operates through foregrounding the way that institutional practices and administrative norms are (re)producers of social inequality (see Dean Spade 2015). In this reading, namjang dramas call attention to how the Kongjwi trope encodes directives to adopt individualist strategies (e.g., pouring