#transformativework

Wait For It

http://www.dramafever.com/drama/26/Boys_Over_Flowers/YT/ Starring Lee Min Ho, Kim Bum and Kim Hyun Joong

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Our transformative work focuses on gender and how it is portrayed in Korean TV shows (Korean dramas) and American TV shows. We created an infomercial type video where we mostly showcase some of the ways that men and women are depicted in Korean dramas as well as our own footage representing American TV shows. The Korean drama footage is from a show called “Boys Over Flowers” telling the story of an ordinary girl, Geum Jan Di, who is given a swimming scholarship to attend a prestigious school by the name of Shin Hwa High School. There she meets and is terrorized by the leader of a group called the F4, Gu Jun Pyo. The F4 are the four richest and most popular boys at the school. Eventually, love ensues between them and their struggle to be together is what the drama is about. We would like to mention that we chose this drama because it is an extremely dramatic example of the kind of Korean dramas that are available. Not all dramas are as dramatic as this one.

We have noticed that most people like to vlog about Korean dramas and showcase the many tropes that are used in these shows. We decided to go a step further because nobody has ever focused on gender. We want to invite people to try out Korean dramas so that they can have a different viewing experience. We created a flyer to accompany the video to drive home the infomercial element of the video. The main reason we enjoy Korean dramas is because women and men are portrayed differently. Main female leads are allowed to be independent and hardworking and are not immediately in love with the male lead the first moment that they lay their eyes on them. Main male leads are sometimes cold and unattached at times and slowly they break their shell and learn to see things in a different light. In American TV shows, most of the male leads are the nice ones and eventually make a mistake that tarnishes their image.  Female antagonists are more deceptive in the way that they backstab and go about their business unlike in American TV shows where everything is more upfront and direct. Second male leads are usually nice and nearly perfect, but are ultimately friend zoned. In American TV shows, second male leads are usually the ones who are bad-tempered and try to break everything and everyone up.

Our video is transformative because we use the Korean drama footage juxtaposed with our footage to show the difference between what you would expect from an American TV show and a Korean TV show. We are trying to invite and recruit other people into watching Korean dramas or at least trying them out. Our video doesn’t really fall into any specific category of transformative works. The closes it could be is a fan vid, but it is not your typical fan vid. Our flyer can be considered transformative as well because we are using a commonly known marketing tool for our own benefit in order to promote Korean dramas and increase the number of people who know about them.

 As a side note, we were not able to post our video on either YouTube or Vimeo because of copyright issues, so I will attach a trailer of the Korean drama we used.