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dangermousieYes, Hot Boys. Because of course, I watch doramas for the PLOT. Ahem.
This picspam is about some dorama eye candy that I haven't profiled before. I did a humongous F4 picspam a few weeks back (Jerry Yan, Vic Chou, Vannes Wu and Ken Chu) here, a hot pic of Takizawa Hideaki here, a Vic Chou centric picspam of Silence here, a Jerry Yan and Vic Chou picspam here, Wu Zun in Tokyo Juliet here, a full of pretty bous picspam of Goong here and a Rain-centric picspam of Full House here. I am definitely raiding that factory that is producing those.
The pictures range from hot to WTF, and sometimes both in the same photo.
A little taste (Joo Ji Hoon, the male lead of Goong):
Yeah, you can't see faces. I just like the pic:
No, I don't know what's up with the lipstick.
To prove that I am not completely devoid of brains all the time, I've been thinking on and off about the role of women in doramas and finally decided to write my thoughts down. No doubt this is due in part to a self-selection (I tend to pick doramas that have been recommended to me), but I am fascinated (and often pleased) by the portrayal of women in doramas as opposed to mediums like Bollywood.
Doramas obviously operate in a world of much more traditional societ(ies) than one I live in. But what is interesting to me is that the dorama world seems to be full of interesting and complicated women and men who give them their due. The societies, frex, tend to stress the woman's role as a domestic partner (women are often expected to retire upon marriage) but in doramas that is often not the case.
I am thinking here of Tokyo Juliet, where the heroine's primary dream is to be a premier fashion designer and she has a running half-joking competition with her bf as to who will be tops. What struck me most about that scenario is when she gets an award for her work, he takes time off to cook a dinner and celebrate. He is genuinely helpful and encouraging of her professional dream and her professional competition with him.
In Korean dorama Full House, not only does our heroine end up with becoming a successful screenwriter, but the male lead of the show, in spite of always calling her a dummy to her face (they are a bickering couple after all), is genuinely pleased with her success. When she gets her screenplay approved, he spends hours decorating the house and doing the dinner thing, and he is certainly taking her draft novel all over the place. And they end up both cleaning the house, too :)
Majo No Jouken deals with an older woman-younger man love story that is not condemned and in fact, love is shown to have blossomed the woman into a better professional (teacher) than she was before. And there seems to be a subset of older woman-younger man stories in jdramas where the woman is the professional, bread winner of the two (e.g. Kimi wa petto). Long Vacation adresses the issue of ageism explicitly, actually.
Or there is Mars, where both members of the couple genuinely encourage each other in their dreams. Qi-Luo isn't what I'd call a bra-burning feminist. She is actually a very retiring person by nature. But not only does having someone understand and interact with her give her a spine, Ling also encourages her drawing (she is a very good painter) and is quite proud of her skills.
Even in something like Meteor Garden/Hana Yori Dango, where the question of profession doesn't come up, the heroine wins the love of the hero by being strong and standing up to his bullying and in fact turning the tables and smacking him. And she is constantly taking care of herself. And he explicitly tells her that he loves her for that strong-mindedness.
And then we have Goong which in some ways is extremely feminist. Not just in the conventional 'warm hearted heroine changes her man' (CG doesn't let Shin boss her around and in fact bosses him a bit herself). But the Palace fight about power is in reality between the two mothers of the two potential candidates, not much by the candidates themselves. And CG's parents are the unusual couple where the mother is the ambitious go-getter with a high pressure job and her father is the house husband. And at the end, after all the fuss about who will be the next ruler, it's none of the men, it's a woman.
In fact, and connected to that, I find it interesting that doramas seem to be the only medium so far (as opposed to Hollywood and Bollywood) where a girl chasing a man (or falling for him first and he reciprocates later) is not only a common trope but is looked upon affectionately. The heroine does it and gets her man (one only has to look at the wildly successful It Started with a Kiss). Even when it's not overt chasing the woman often falls in love and confesses her feelings first (see Full House, or Goong). And it's not looked down on. Even when a third leg of a triangle does it, as in Goong or Full House, even that woman ends up being portrayed in a sympathetic light. In fact Meteor Garden/Hana Yori Dango is unusual among the doramas I've seen in the fact that it's the guy doing all the chasing (I love that and won't mind seeing more of it :P).
On the other side of the coin, some doramas like their heroines on a bit of a ditzy side. Part of it because of melodrama conventions: if everyone was bright and communicative, a lot of issues wouldn't occur. CG in Goong is adorable but she is also rather dim intellectually. Her OTP Shin is miles brighter than she is (but to be fair, CG matures a lot throughout and she is also the ditziest of the dorama heroines I've seen). The same can be said of the heroine of It Started with a Kiss.
And this brings me to the last topic of this long ramble: sex and depiction of men. It was![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
lesbiassparrow that pointed out that doramas shoot their heroes exactly the way they shoot their heroines: there is an equal fetization of male beauty. And that's true (the same is true of Bollywood). I wonder why, as both Bollywood and doramas are produced by more concervative societies. As to sex scenes, I just want to mention that the few I've seen (Mars is the only one actually, but I know there is one in Devil Beside You), the amount or lack of skin shown is equal for both genders (it bugs me to no end in HW movies that women are buck naked but men are dressed) and the sex scene in Mars (or the aftermath of on in MnJ) are both narratively necessary.
And that is the end of the long ramble.
This picspam is about some dorama eye candy that I haven't profiled before. I did a humongous F4 picspam a few weeks back (Jerry Yan, Vic Chou, Vannes Wu and Ken Chu) here, a hot pic of Takizawa Hideaki here, a Vic Chou centric picspam of Silence here, a Jerry Yan and Vic Chou picspam here, Wu Zun in Tokyo Juliet here, a full of pretty bous picspam of Goong here and a Rain-centric picspam of Full House here. I am definitely raiding that factory that is producing those.
The pictures range from hot to WTF, and sometimes both in the same photo.
A little taste (Joo Ji Hoon, the male lead of Goong):
Yeah, you can't see faces. I just like the pic:
No, I don't know what's up with the lipstick.
To prove that I am not completely devoid of brains all the time, I've been thinking on and off about the role of women in doramas and finally decided to write my thoughts down. No doubt this is due in part to a self-selection (I tend to pick doramas that have been recommended to me), but I am fascinated (and often pleased) by the portrayal of women in doramas as opposed to mediums like Bollywood.
Doramas obviously operate in a world of much more traditional societ(ies) than one I live in. But what is interesting to me is that the dorama world seems to be full of interesting and complicated women and men who give them their due. The societies, frex, tend to stress the woman's role as a domestic partner (women are often expected to retire upon marriage) but in doramas that is often not the case.
I am thinking here of Tokyo Juliet, where the heroine's primary dream is to be a premier fashion designer and she has a running half-joking competition with her bf as to who will be tops. What struck me most about that scenario is when she gets an award for her work, he takes time off to cook a dinner and celebrate. He is genuinely helpful and encouraging of her professional dream and her professional competition with him.
In Korean dorama Full House, not only does our heroine end up with becoming a successful screenwriter, but the male lead of the show, in spite of always calling her a dummy to her face (they are a bickering couple after all), is genuinely pleased with her success. When she gets her screenplay approved, he spends hours decorating the house and doing the dinner thing, and he is certainly taking her draft novel all over the place. And they end up both cleaning the house, too :)
Majo No Jouken deals with an older woman-younger man love story that is not condemned and in fact, love is shown to have blossomed the woman into a better professional (teacher) than she was before. And there seems to be a subset of older woman-younger man stories in jdramas where the woman is the professional, bread winner of the two (e.g. Kimi wa petto). Long Vacation adresses the issue of ageism explicitly, actually.
Or there is Mars, where both members of the couple genuinely encourage each other in their dreams. Qi-Luo isn't what I'd call a bra-burning feminist. She is actually a very retiring person by nature. But not only does having someone understand and interact with her give her a spine, Ling also encourages her drawing (she is a very good painter) and is quite proud of her skills.
Even in something like Meteor Garden/Hana Yori Dango, where the question of profession doesn't come up, the heroine wins the love of the hero by being strong and standing up to his bullying and in fact turning the tables and smacking him. And she is constantly taking care of herself. And he explicitly tells her that he loves her for that strong-mindedness.
And then we have Goong which in some ways is extremely feminist. Not just in the conventional 'warm hearted heroine changes her man' (CG doesn't let Shin boss her around and in fact bosses him a bit herself). But the Palace fight about power is in reality between the two mothers of the two potential candidates, not much by the candidates themselves. And CG's parents are the unusual couple where the mother is the ambitious go-getter with a high pressure job and her father is the house husband. And at the end, after all the fuss about who will be the next ruler, it's none of the men, it's a woman.
In fact, and connected to that, I find it interesting that doramas seem to be the only medium so far (as opposed to Hollywood and Bollywood) where a girl chasing a man (or falling for him first and he reciprocates later) is not only a common trope but is looked upon affectionately. The heroine does it and gets her man (one only has to look at the wildly successful It Started with a Kiss). Even when it's not overt chasing the woman often falls in love and confesses her feelings first (see Full House, or Goong). And it's not looked down on. Even when a third leg of a triangle does it, as in Goong or Full House, even that woman ends up being portrayed in a sympathetic light. In fact Meteor Garden/Hana Yori Dango is unusual among the doramas I've seen in the fact that it's the guy doing all the chasing (I love that and won't mind seeing more of it :P).
On the other side of the coin, some doramas like their heroines on a bit of a ditzy side. Part of it because of melodrama conventions: if everyone was bright and communicative, a lot of issues wouldn't occur. CG in Goong is adorable but she is also rather dim intellectually. Her OTP Shin is miles brighter than she is (but to be fair, CG matures a lot throughout and she is also the ditziest of the dorama heroines I've seen). The same can be said of the heroine of It Started with a Kiss.
And this brings me to the last topic of this long ramble: sex and depiction of men. It was
lesbiassparrow that pointed out that doramas shoot their heroes exactly the way they shoot their heroines: there is an equal fetization of male beauty. And that's true (the same is true of Bollywood). I wonder why, as both Bollywood and doramas are produced by more concervative societies. As to sex scenes, I just want to mention that the few I've seen (Mars is the only one actually, but I know there is one in Devil Beside You), the amount or lack of skin shown is equal for both genders (it bugs me to no end in HW movies that women are buck naked but men are dressed) and the sex scene in Mars (or the aftermath of on in MnJ) are both narratively necessary.And that is the end of the long ramble.
