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Korean drama, or K drama as they is popularly known, are extraordinarily well made and engaging pop content from a culture that is surprisingly like ours.
Translated from the original in Hindi by the author.
In recent years, a new wave of popularity of Korean dramas found on sites such as Netflix, be it big or small, all take great interest in it. A few months ago I too started watching these shows.
I enjoyed their interesting plots, the flow of narrative, the sweet and cute romances, but especially the well etched and memorable women characters.
K dramas had begun with fragile women – so while Korean dramas were initially indistinguishable from Hindi serials in their portrayal of women fragile and naïve, with the focus on the male characters who were more complex. However, over time the narrative and portrayal of female characters have progressed, that break stereotypes.
Here are 6 K dramas I would recommend from my watch list.
If you have seen Strong Girl Do Bong-Soon, then you know that this show takes the breaking of stereotypes to a new level.
Do Bong Soon has been born with superpowers passing through generations. Every woman in her family has received this superpower.
WWW has featured the most powerful portrayal of female characters with three female protagonists.
These 3 women rule the digital world, working in different web companies. But instead of showing the women working against each other as most such stories featuring men show, here the women are shown to be friends who empower each other.
Oh Dongbeck, is a single mom who runs a bar in the fictional town of Ongsan called Camellia.
Dongbeck is portrayed as a straightforward and brave person. A resident of a small town where people know each other, Dongbeck has to face prejudices towards single mothers. But how she confronts them and rises above them and changes the mindset of fellow people, it is worth seeing.
Like Do Bang Soon, the show also portrays the concept of extremely physically strong women.
Kim Bok Joo is a talented weightlifter. She is the best in her field, but she struggles with a feeling ‘lack of femininity’ due to her strong body, but she learns to rise above it and accept herself the way she is. The show showcased a new depiction of femininity.
Typically, historical dramas set in earlier times often ignored female chieftains, but Mr. Sunshine portrayed a strong female main character, in settings of the time where male dominance prevailed.
Its main female character, Go A Shin, is the daughter of an aristocrat, who lives in a world full of powerful men and social hierarchies. Yet she is a brave fighter who does what she strongly believes in. Risking her life for her people, fighting to the end for her beliefs and demonstrating that everything a man can do she can do better.
The female character of the show, Cha Yu Ri, is still roaming the earth after her death and can seeing her husband and daughter. After being angry and cursing a deity, Yu Ri gets the chance to live once again as a human being. But she has only 49 days to remain a human being, in which she has to make her life as it was before but the problem is that her husband has remarried.
The power of Yu Ri in each episode is not only inspiring, but will make you cry.
Many more dramas such as Avengers Social Club, Doctors, Vagabond, Tell Me What You Saw, etc. have featured influential female characters in TV shows.
These female-centric Korean dramas are available for viewing on sites such as Netflix and Wiki. However, currently they are available only with English subtitles, but now many shows are also being dubbed in Hindi.
A student with a passion for languages and writing. read more...
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Dushyanta clearly remembered everything. But he didn't have any intention to accept a poor woman from a remote hermitage as his wife and her son as theirs.
Dushyanta clearly remembered everything. But he didn’t have any intention to accept a poor woman from a remote hermitage as his wife and her son as theirs.
She sat motionless on the royal bed, her knees drawn up to her chin, staring vacantly outside the palace window.
She was sheathed in exquisite scarlet red silk, shot through with golden threads forming intricate traditional patterns. Chests of gems and jewellery were strewn all over the bed. The maids were fussing over whether a diamond-studded necklace would suit their queen or a gold choker would look better. Another younger maid was arranging her tresses in a coiffeur.
Actor Siddharth sent out a distasteful tweet in response to a tweet by Saina Nehwal, in what he thought were clever words, but this slur on any woman is not acceptable.
Trust me when I say I’ve run out of patience in stopping myself from calling this ‘liberal’, self-proclaimed feminist actor out umpteen times in the past.
Let me count them out for you.
At 25 minutes, Period. End of sentence achieves a lot. It moves us, provokes us and leaves us right when we wanted more. Yet, it suffers from its tendency to combine shock value with reformist overtones.
Made solely through the fundraising and other efforts of high school students in America, the short new docu-drama on Netflix explains many things, makes meaningful connections, offers hope – all without footnoting its title anywhere. There is no disagreement possible with the point of the film, its message is clear, and we love it too. Quite simply, we need to talk about periods, irrespective of whether we are in LA or in rural India. Yet, this Oscar nominated short suffers from one drawback common to many docudramas made in India and elsewhere.
It thrives on shock value and has reformist undertones. It is yet another agitating documentary with an omniscient interviewer. For instance, the film establishes that there is ignorance about periods by asking rural women, school children and teenaged boys about it. But it doesn’t realize that there is also some knowledge in the answers. To my mind, there is ignorance, but of the scientific findings of the last x years, not of the body basics. And the ignorance that is found is because scientific education has not reached Indian villages as quickly and efficiently as it should have. One lady in response to questions such as—what are periods, do you know why they occur and so on, says, that they occur due to impure blood exiting our body. This is not an entirely useless or unscientific description. The uterine lining shedding itself causes periods—that blood has no use and should not be retained. In this sense, it is impure, and the periods are cleansing. The idea that periods are a cleansing are mentioned in the dharmashastras. These texts also deem women to be very pure because such a cleansing bodily mechanism exists.
Vishal Bhardwaj, the celebrated film director, music composer and playback singer, shared some stories from his interesting journey, with creating strong women characters in Indian Cinema.
Director Vishal Bhardwaj has given us many memorable films like Maqbool, Omkara, Haider, Kaminey, 7 Khoon Maaf – with strong plotlines and melodious music. Shakespearean tragedies have often inspired him. His adaptations of Macbeth (Maqbool), Othello (Omkara) and Hamlet (Haider) into Indian contexts are very well done.
Bharadwaj feels that his initial ignorance towards Shakespearean literature was bliss as he could fearlessly adapt ‘Macbeth’. He initiated a brand new genre in Bollywood when he successfully premiered Maqbool in 2003 at the Toronto Film Festival.