FAMILY AND TV / An Evolution
The Chinese style divorce
(Divorced Family)
We got married
(Working Family)
By exploring successful contemporary examples of Drama, Sitcom and Reality TV it should be possible to map out where family now sits in the TV landscape. Below we take a look at what certain genres tend to focus on in the diegesis and how this may reflect the existence of TV as an arena for challenging or reaffirming notions of family and hopefully lead us closer to understanding how family has influenced TV to become what it is.
Success as a Form of Validation
We Got Married (WGM) is a South Korean reality variety show. First broadcast in 2008, the show pairs up Korean celebrities to show what life would be like if they were married. Each week, couples are assigned missions/activities to complete, with candid interviews of the participants to reveal their thoughts and feeling. This show is widely popular in East Asia including Korea, China, Japan, Singapore, Malaysia and many other countries. This year, MBC produced a global edition of the show ‘We Got Married’. They paired up couples from Korea, Japan and Taiwan, and so audiences would have a chance to see how the on-screen virtual marriages between idol celebrities from different countries work out through weekly missions and candid interviews. The global edition of We Got Married has been aired in 21 countries and areas and has been receiving a lot of attention. It has been aired for four seasons so far, and the most popular one among them was season two. Here I would take We Got Married season two as an example and analyze the reasons of how it becomes a successful show and what the producers create that hit their target audiences.
There are many reasons for the show We Got Married to be successful in East Asia. First in terms of casting, there were three popular couples in season two of WGM, and all participants of these three couples were from famous Korean ‘idol’ groups. The first couple were Gain from Brown Eyed Girls and Jo Kwon from 2AM, the second couple was Jung Yonghwa from CN Blue and Seohyun from Girls Generation, and the last couple was Nichkhun from 2PM and Victoria from F(x).
The word ‘idol’ in Korean specifically refers to artists that were debuted as pop music singers. The pop culture industry of Korea has a well developed ‘idol’ making system, and trainees of different entertainment companies are to be trained from a young age in every aspect of being an artist under the context of Korean society. This includes singing, dancing, acting, dealing with the press, dealing with the public, and they should also respect authorities and be loyal to their companies. The idea of ‘image making’ is very important in making an ‘idol’, and it can be divided into two parts. First, in terms of physical appearances, most of Korean idols are good looking; they are young, vibrant and healthy, and they have a sense of fashion. And in terms of personality, each of them has his/her unique character, and at the same time, they are polite and hard working and respect the social order of Korean society. Because of the company’s image making process, it has created a fantasy world of K-pop stars for their fans. ‘Idols’ are expected not to go out without make-up, and fashion designers would work closely with the companies to create a new image for the singer, and they are also expected to be single.
There are a few advantages of feathering ‘idols’ on this show. First, since We Got Married is a reality television show, it created a chance for fans of Korean Pop music singer-‘idols’, that is, for them to have a glance of how their ‘idols’ would be like if they were in a marriage, and also how they would be like in a casual environment under the stage. Most audiences of WGM are unmarried young woman, and all ‘idols’ who participated in season two of We Got Married were good looking young men and women between 22-24 years old. The show met the needs of their target audiences by presenting a lot of different scenarios that young married couples might face in their daily life (mostly the happy side of a marriage), and most importantly the romance between them. The show created a glamorous fantasy world of marriage life that most girls would dream of. Also, as ‘idols’ have been well trained to be obeying the social values of Korea by being polite and respecting the social order of Korean society, they would be seen as people with good manner and as well-behaved citizens. Many audiences in East Asia would find this as a good thing that they could relate themselves to since their cultures are close to the Korean culture. And some may find that these social values are good but have been lost in their own societies that they would like to pick up again. Take the Chinese fans of We Got Married for example, they enjoy the pretty physical appearance of Korean ‘idols’, and even more, they appreciate their politeness and the social order they are obeying in their society since they evokes the traditional Chinese values of Confucianism that has been slowly forgotten in today’s Chinese society.
Most of its target audiences are young, un-married women, and the show created an imaginative world of romantic marriage life. The show reflects some key Korean family values. For example, in Korean society it is very important for men to have a career and they are to be seen as the household of a family, and they have the reasonability to look after their family. And women in a traditional Korean household tend to be more domestic and innocent, and they are loyal to their husbands. And audiences from East Asia would find it easy to relate them. One of the most popular couples who participated in We Got Married were Nichkhun from 2PM and Victoria from F(x), and Victoria was very good-looking and doing house work and Nichkhun was a famous singer who has a successful career. And they have been seen as a perfect family that most audiences in Korea and East Asia would like to have.
The show also presents a shifting between gender relationships in today’s Asian society. First, the people who participated in this show as the ‘wives’ were working women and they were finically independent. And as we can see on the show that some of the husbands started to be more domestic by helping their wives with their cooking and doing house work. These actions were quite different from how husbands would act in the traditional Korean family where they do not do any house work and think that’s their wives duties.
The Chinese style divorce is an in-depth analysis of divorces in contemporary Chinese society through three marriages. The story focuses on three types of betrayals: the heart, the body, the body and heart.
Lin Xiaofeng and Song Jianping have been married for 10 years, and they have a son named Dangdang. Lin feels disappointed that her husband Song, a surgeon, is unable to earn enough money to improve their standard of living. Discontented with ordinary family life, Lin often quarrels with Song. They can hardly afford the expense of a key primary school for their son, so Song decides to resign from his post at a State-run hospital and start a new job in a foreign-funded hospital. Lin willingly quits her job as a primary school teacher to become a full-time housewife.
Though Song finally becomes successful in his career, the couple's relationship deteriorates due to some misunderstandings. The story also shows the problems that face the young, middle-aged and old couples, and reveals the physical and emotional betrayals of husbands and wives, offering insights about the tolerance, trust and responsibilities required for a good and lasting marriage.
The drama reflects and criticizes some important cultural and family values in China. For example: Having a good career is considered to be the most important thing for men in China. This drama criticized this idea and argued that marriage and family members should be considered to be the most important things for people in a well-developed society.
The drama addressed some common family issues of different age groups in contemporary Chinese society. For young couples it is difficult for them to keep a marriage since most children born after the 1980s are the only child in a family. In the Chinese society they are considered to be more self-focused and lack the idea of sharing and self-sacrifice. The drama was considered to be realistic about those issues and that young couples find that they can be related to the drama.
For the older generation, the drama talked about the family relationship between middle-aged men and women, and also about the relationship between parents and children in China. In the Chinese society children are being expected to finally support their old parents, which might bring conflicts into a family when one of the couple thinks that their parents should have been looked after better. And also when there is a conflict that appears in a family, Chinese parents would more likely to talk to their sons and daughters and take a part in resolving the issue, and so problems might get more complicated in this way. The Drama grasped those real issues of Chinese families and presented them in this drama. These things are ‘traditional’ issues that might appear in the Chinese family and so audiences from different generations would find themselves related to them.
The drama also criticized women being domestic and self-sacrificial, saying that they should have their own career or interests instead of putting all of their hopes on their husband and children. In this way they will be more confident and objective when facing problems in a relationship. This presents a shifting between gender relationships in today’s Chinese society. And audiences feel that they can actually learn something by watching the drama.
Ang (1985) explored the tension between ideas of active audience and the potential structuring of meaning by the text, and she found that viewers are actively involved in the production of meaning and pleasure. The audiences’ feeling for a certain product would change between involvement and distance, acceptance and protest. (Barker, p.329) By watching a drama, audiences can generate a range of responses, and to a certain degree it will become an ‘ideological effect’. And this will lead viewers to adopt different viewing positions. The Chinese style divorce was a really popular drama in China and when everyone was talking about it you just feel wrong not to watch it. And Research shows that audiences are likely to take ideology of a drama and reproduce it in regard to their family, relationships and gender.
Growing Pains is an American television sitcom about an affluent family, living in New York with a working mother and a stay-at-home psychiatrist father raising three children together, which aired on ABC from 1985 to 1992.
The sitcome Growing Pains was really popular in the 1980s and 1990s in the US and many other places around the world, but I do not think it would be as popular if put on show now. Here are some reasons. First, it was successful in the old days because it was a functional, loving, amusing and somewhat relatable family that everyone wishes they could have been a part of. It was aired in the 1980s and 1990s, and it was a different time from now, when we are faced with all of those new wars in the 21st century and with the craziness of the economy. They didn’t have to present or deal with those things on TV. Everything could be wrapped up in 22 minutes. Everybody was safe, nobody got hurt, nobody died, and they all loved each other in the end. And it’s just a different world on TV now. The sitcom felt very real, and at the end there was always a takeaway, and audiences would find that they’ve learned a kind of a soft and gentle lesson. So the sitcom was perfect for the whole family to sit together and watch.
The sitcom has been exported to many other countries in the 1990s and was very popular in most of the places. I think this is because texts in the Gorwing Pains can be interpreted in alternative ways. Audiences as individuals are situated in different social positions with different cultural backgrounds, and they are able to understand programmes in different ways within the same framework. People who are encoding and decoding would usually accept the ‘preferred meanings’ of the text, but there are times when audiences understand the preferred encoding but reject it and decode it in the opposite ways under certain circumstances. According to Gadamer (1976) and Iser (1978) the relationship between the text and the audience is an interactive one (Barker, p.328). And the authorial intent is not necessarily reflected in audience reception. And the meaning of a text can only be revived with audiences’ imagination and reproductions. Back then, audiences from some other countries, take China for example, tended to take only the good side of the show, thinking that the family presented in the Growing Pains was a perfect American family model and as America was a developed country, they should learn from them and educate their children as the way the American parents do. So there is something about watching people who lived in a different time and a different era, and in a different set of values, which is really appealing. Although the show was successful in the 1980s and 1990s, I don’t think it would be successful nowadays. Back then, people could sit down with their brothers and sisters, mom, dad, everybody, and watch something together, and this is unlikely to happen now. First, Bureau of Labor Statistics Report (2000) show that 3 from 5 of women participated in the labor force. This result is higher than the result on 1950 that shows only 1 out of 3 women participate in the labor force. We could imagine that it can be quite difficult for a whole family to watch TV together especially when mothers need to find time to prepare meal after coming back from their work.
Modern Family is an American comedy series that aired on ABC on September 23, 2009. Presented in documentary style, the fictional characters frequently talk directly into the camera. It tells of Jay Pritchett, his second wife, baby son and stepson, and his two children and their families. Christopher Lloyd and Steven Levitan conceived the series while sharing stories of their own "modern families".
In this drama, they brought up the idea of homosexual marriage and gay parents and validated it to us without discrimination or sympathy.
This show wouldn’t work as good if it’s been showed 30 years earlier. There had been a handful of gay or gay-coded characters on TV before Crystal’s 1977-81 run on “Soap,” but nearly all had been presented as tormented figures, victims at best and predators at worst. When things really began to change is when the social culture changes.
As LGBT activists have pushed for equality and visibility, and political realities on the ground have shifted, media representations of gay people have both responded to those changes and also helped to nudge them along. Personally, I have no doubt that the biggest single factor that has driven social change on this issue is that almost all the straight people in America have gotten to know someone gay over the last 20 or 30 years, and have not found them fundamentally alien. This show was aired in America, and it might not work as good in many other countries depending on the different level of how the social culture towards gay marriage.
The show represented gay parents in a way that is quite close to reality so it is easier for audience to accept the idea of homosexual marriage and also understand it better.
Growing Pains
(Nuclear Family)
Modern Family
(Same Sex Parenting)
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