Dear my beanies,

When we decided to take these topics on, we weren’t 100% sure exactly how we were going to tackle them, what we would end up talking about, or even at what personal cost it would come. We only knew that we had to call out the wrong that we saw, and we had to contextualise it so that even someone with no exposure to the race and identity conversation could understand where the distress came from, and how it has a real-life impact that can’t be underestimated.

In case you missed it, here is our opening essay on the topic: Diversity in Dramaland: K-dramas and Racial Stereotypes.

Here are detailed and extended shownotes for the podcast episode, which include all our references, links to further reading, and additional thoughts: Representation in Dramaland: Race and Identity

A lot of times, I feel like the friends who engage with my posts are the choir – you already feel how I feel. But what we hope even more is for this conversation to reach beyond us, to people who haven’t thought about it before, who perhaps haven’t been personally affected by it, or who’ve stood on the other side of the argument. We hear you, and we know it’s hard to accept flaws in things you love, but we want you to know that we love them too. We wouldn’t spend weeks and hours writing, planning, producing, recording, editing, and publicising something if it didn’t mean a great deal to us – and if this community didn’t mean a great deal to us.

Please listen. Share. Talk to each other about it. Talk to us. Please be willing to be a bit uncomfortable.

We’re here for good-faith conversations.

And finally and most importantly, we’re here to support our brothers and sisters in the fandom who want and need this discussion to happen. This is dedicated to you.

Love,
Saya, Anisa (@laica), and Paroma (@festerfaster)

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    Timestamps:

    Part 1: RACE REPRESENTATION
    00:01:32 Introduction
    00:05:45 Why does representation matter?
    00:12:14 Contemporary cultural context and the migrant demographic shift
    00:16:55 History of blackface
    00:28:05 History of blackface in Korea, and the history of American imperialism
    00:39:32 Marcia’s voice note: Man to Man, Father I’ll Take Care of You, Backstreet Rookie, and how we deal with bad rep as members of marginalised groups
    01:03:55 Indian representation: Strong Woman Do Bong-soon’s fake yogi; Park Hae-jin in Kkondae Intern; Axone as good rep of Indians from NE states
    01:17:53 How white people are represented in K-drama and English as a marker of social status (Dramas: Search WWW; CLOY; A moment At Eighteen)
    01:24:33 Itaewon Class and Chris Lyon

    Part 2: LGBTQ+ REPRESENTATION
    01:30:34 Itaewon Class and trans rep with Lee Joo-young
    01:35:12 Graceful Family, Strong Woman Do Bong-soon, and trans villainy
    01:40:11 Personal Taste and “gayface”
    01:43:23 Accessing private spaces and gender-bending dramas
    01:46:12 Coffee Prince and the “gay for you” trope
    01:51:29 Secret Boutique
    01:54:28 My Unfamiliar Family
    01:57:28 Reply 1997
    01:59:08 Her Private Life and obligatory tragedy
    02:03:34 Where Your Eyes Linger
    02:04:42 Her Private Life, again. HELLO RYAN GOLD
    02:06:29 Conclusion

    Find us:
    Twitter: dramasoverflow
    Instagram: dramasoverflowers_podcast
    Email: dramasoverflowers [at] gmail [dot] com

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      I’ve already listened to and thoroughly enjoyed this episode. Being from the US, I’ve noticed dramas with clothing that has a confederate flag or other confederate symbols. It’s hard to know if the costumers understood the connections to racism those details contain.

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        That’s a really interesting observation! I think sometimes people are so used to seeing certain things that they sort of stop seeing them at all. And that I think is actually important, because that tells us what we need to do.

        Thank you (AS ALWAYS) for your support <3 <3

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