Annyeong! Welcome back to My OTP Watch~ Hope you’ve been welllll. It’s been a rainy but hot couple of weeks so I hope everyone is staying in and keeping warm but not too warm lol. Today, I’ve finally got my first post on queer characters/relationships in kdrama! This is coming to you a few hours into Saturday because I fell into an abyss while rewatching a bunch of dramas to write this post ahahah.
More importantly, since my analysis is going to cover the kdramas I’ve watched from 2007 to 2021, it makes sense to do this in multiple parts – so this is Part 1. Part 2 (and possibly a Part 3, depending on how much I cover in Part 2) will follow! But here’s a quick/rough overview on what these different parts will cover.
Overview
Part 1: The portrayal of ‘pseudo-homosexual’ relationships and why this term is not only inaccurate but very damaging. (I’ll be covering dramas from 2007-2010s here.)
Part 2: A look at narratives which acknowledge sexual diversity but not the true extent of what it means to be marginalised (I’m mainly looking at dramas from the 2010s)
Part 3: Narratives that veer into more insightful commentaries on the experiences of the LGBT community in a society that continues to privilege heteronormativity. (Sit tight, cos we headed straight into the 2020s for this one)
Part 1!
featuring: Coffee Prince (2007); Sungkyunkwan Scandal (2010); You’re Beautiful (2009); To The Beautiful You (2012)
“We’re men,” said the women.
All four dramas feature female leads who pretend that they are male – generally, they all do it to occupy a space in male-dominated/male-only social spaces, to gain access to male-only privileges. The pseudo-maleness (ok fine, this be the only real ‘pseudo’ in this post) of these women gave rise to the term ‘pseudo-homosexuality’ because these dramas featured leading/supporting male characters who developed romantic feelings for these women while still believing that they were men.
In Coffee Prince (the 2nd kdrama I’ve ever watched), Eun Chan (Yoon Eun Hye) wanted to get a job at Choi Han Kyeol’s (Gong Yoo) exclusively-male-staffed café while Sungkyunkwan featured Kim Yoon Hui (Park Min Young) who pretended to be her brother to enroll as a scholar in a Joseon-era male-only academy. Both narratives featured male leads (Mickey Yoo Chun played Seon Joon in Sungkyunkwan) who had no idea that these women were actually women. This meant that as the shows’ main OTPs inevitably developed feelings for each other, both men were grappling against the heteronormative assumption and suddenly found themselves in the closet, wondering about the extent to which their sexuality was fluid. To the writers’ credit, both men were portrayed as being, eventually, completely willing to pursue their romantic interests, regardless of gender and social norms. Han Kyeol’s confession makes me cry every time. He’s so earnest!!!
Likewise, YB and TTYB (I’m using acronyms cos tired. pls send halp actually no, don’t, I bought a 6-pack of canned coffee earlier today. Anyway,….back to regular programming!) both featured female leads who pretended to be their identical twin brothers to account for their brothers’ absences in a boyband (YB) and an all-boys school (TTBY). This time, the male leads were in on the secret from the start and the supporting characters who, enamoured by the charming and cutesy female leads (why they alw gotta be cutesy tho), fell for the new ‘boys’ on the block. In TTBY, Eun Gyeol (Lee Hyeon Woo) fell head over heels for Jae Hee (Sulli) and YB’s Jeremy (Lee Hong Ki) struggled against the onset of romantic feelings for Mi Nam (Park Shin Hye). Their emotional arcs, while not the focus of the overall narratives, were somewhat (Eun Gyeol more then Jeremy) similar to Han Kyeol’s and Suh Joon’s – except supporting characters didn’t achieve OTPhood at the end. These doubly-sidelined characters who also dealt with their turbulent emotions all by themselves, ended up on the sidewalk, waving, with smiles on their faces and stakes in their hearts (in Eun Gyeol’s case, at least), at the main OTPs, who were riding away into the sunset, living their best lives.
(While I mainly cover kdramas, my friend, Samseng Zhabor, has delved into female leads pretending to be men in cdramas. She also writes a political newsletter every week, which you can check out if you’re looking for her perspective on the Cabinet Reshuffle that was announced today!)
Nothing pseudo to see here.
Okay, so! Considering the social norms of the time, it might have been regarded as progressive that sexual diversity was presented on mainstream television (Sungkyunkwan did try to challenge heteronormativity but more on this and I’ll touch on this in Part 2. Focusing on the OTP arcs for now). Viewers might have liked that these narratives were possibly considered ‘safe’ (this is probably like when kdrama was full of faux-cest - oh brother, that’s a story for another time). Viewers didn’t *need* to challenge their understanding of the fundamental OTP structure since ‘at the end of the day, it’s still a love story between a man and a woman.’ Some probably said ‘oh look, he loves her even when she’s dressed as a man; that’s true, epic love!’
Really, though, this view is quite simplistic. Firstly, I wouldn’t say that sexual diversity was necessarily illustrated – it was hinted at, and then stripped away even before any of these men could reflect on their sexual orientation. Also, these views seems to imply that the epicness of the OTP is dependent on the female lead being female and therefore, not only perpetuated the dominance of heteronormative OTP arcs, they also disregarded the emotional milestones achieved by these male characters who really were on these confusing, and potentially isolating, journeys of question their sexual identities. The reason why these characters, whether they were the main OTPs or not, were epic was because these men eventually accepted that they were in love with whom they perceived to be other men and decided (at least in the case of Han Kyeol, Seon Joon and Eun Gyeol) that the unparalleled joy of being with the person you’re in love with was more important that gender constructs.
Coming Out – “I’m female” vs “I’m figuring out my sexual identity”
In all four of the narrative arcs, the narrative conflicts was focused entirely on the ‘outing’ of the female leads. After the female leads were revealed as female, the male characters’ feelings were resolved in a somewhat superficial manner. Sure, their feelings were addressed – the leading men were then handed their prized ladies and the supporting men were handed apologies. In fact, one reason why I took issue with the Sungkyunkwan OTP was that the male lead, beyond having a shocked facial expression, very readily accepted that his friend, whom he’d thought of as a man for months, was suddenly female. With Jeremy as well, Mi Nam’s gender reveal was almost immediately accepted because, because Jeremy was reduced to comic relief in the story. Han Kyeol and Eun Gyeol, on the other hand, took more time to actually process the anger and betrayal that came with being lied to. Ultimately, though, all four men expressed relief, in one way or another, that the female leads turned out to be female because it meant that there wasn’t nothing ‘wrong’ with them. Which is NOT the correct message, hello!
So you see, acknowledging their feelings and was not the same as acknowledging their sexualities. These narrative resolutions extinguished the need to address the sexual diversity embodied by these characters by simply explaining away their emotions as a simple misunderstanding. But ‘Ah, she was female so I’m not gay after all’ is not how this works? In fact, the very notion that these characters were relieved suggests that there were (and still are, as we will see in subsequent Parts) deeply-held, socially constructed, toxic beliefs and perspectives surrounding sexual diversity. The sidelining of the characters’ emotional experiences in this way essentially forced these men to re-occupy heteronormative spaces within the narratives. The closets that these male characters found themselves in disappeared, just as suddenly as they appeared. Again, that’s not how it works in real life and the insinuation that it does undermines the experiences and expectations of the wider queer community who would have been sitting at home, watching these shows, wondering, ‘when the hell am I actually gonna be represented??’
Next up on My OTP Watch:
Things do change though, as we will see in Parts 2 and 3 of this series. I will be coming back to certain other characters in Sungkyunkwan Scandal and I’ll be covering dramas from the 2010s and 2020s. In the meantime, do hit ‘Reply’ and let me know what you think of this piece (or previous pieces too) haha. I hope that you’ve enjoyed reading this piece and that you have a lovely weekend!
I’ll leave you with this OST from Coffee Prince. It’s one of my all-time favs and I come back to it every time I’m feeling wistful or nostalgic.
Stay safe, friends! See you soon~
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