Life is beautiful: gay representation, moral panics, and South Korean television drama beyond Hallyu

Article


Glynn, B. and Kim, J. 2017. Life is beautiful: gay representation, moral panics, and South Korean television drama beyond Hallyu. Quarterly Review of Film and Video. 34 (4), pp. 333-347. https://doi.org/10.1080/10509208.2016.1241615
TypeArticle
TitleLife is beautiful: gay representation, moral panics, and South Korean television drama beyond Hallyu
AuthorsGlynn, B. and Kim, J.
Abstract

Critical attention on Korean popular culture, particularly outside of Korea, has focused upon the Hallyu cultural phenomenon at the expense of sectors of the Korean creative industries that have sought to actively engage with their social and cultural environment and challenge the status quo. Politically charged, countercultural or just distinctive and/or original, non-Hallyu cultural artifacts have been and continue to be born out of a desire to be creative, to comment on or to create social change. This article focuses upon one such critically overlooked South Korean cultural artifact, the audacious and genuinely groundbreaking television drama "Life is Beautiful" (SBS 2010), which motivated an immense amount of critical and social reaction within Korea and yet has barely featured in English language analysis of Korean drama because it has not been classified as Hallyu. This is in spite of it being a finely produced and performed series and one written by the most prolific, longest serving and commercially successful of all Korean writers of Hallyu drama, Kim Soo-hyeon. In addition to its impressive production credentials, "Life is Beautiful" is also notable for being hugely controversial at the time of its broadcast due to its boldness in tackling the subject of Korean prejudice towards homosexuality.

PublisherRoutledge
JournalQuarterly Review of Film and Video
ISSN1050-9208
Publication dates
Online16 Nov 2016
Print19 May 2017
Publication process dates
Deposited29 Sep 2016
Accepted19 Jun 2016
Submitted18 Sep 2016
Output statusPublished
Accepted author manuscript
Copyright Statement

This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Quarterly Review of Film and Video on 16/11/2017, available online: http://www.tandfonline.com/10.1080/10509208.2016.1241615

Digital Object Identifier (DOI)https://doi.org/10.1080/10509208.2016.1241615
LanguageEnglish
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