Women enthusiastic about ‘dramas featuring heroine managing all’

A male character in the drama proclaims to a woman that he had a crush on. “I am dumping you right now. If we bump into accidentally in the future, let’s not greet each other. Even after passage of long time, let’s laugh it off and behave as if it is just memory from the past, and let’s pretend that we don’t know each other.” The woman, who loves another guy rather than him, asks, “Then, we cannot even be friends?”

This is a scene from a TV drama that is popular in Korea these days. It remains to be seen how the story will unfold, but chances are slim that the guy will completely sever relationship with her. Men call this type of soap operas “dramas featuring the main female character managing all (men).”

In such a drama, the main female character is surrounded by good looking males. She only maintains love relationship with one of them, but leaves open possibility for others by putting the bait of her attention. A guy who has crush on her continues to stay around her like a satellite, and is more than willing to make tearful sacrifice. An actor who plays this supporting character role oftentimes enjoys more popularity than the main male character. Like in the line ““Then, we cannot even be friends?” in the drama, many women seek to attract attention and love from males around them, and always keep the males by them. It is because the sense of stability of being loved by all is more important than anything to them.

But then, love of the 21st Century grows amid the desert of anxiety. In the book “Liquid Love,” Sigmund Bauman gives the following analysis on people’s relationships in modern society.

“You want and don’t want. Lonely you aspire for relationship, but you who formed relationship yearn for freedom. You put one of your legs in relationship and the other outside of it. By so doing, he replaces relationship, tie, and alliance with link. You access a network to be able to communicate immediately when you want and to non-communicate instantly if not.”

The term “human network” we often use implies that one can “instantly terminate” when he or she wants, as Bauman noted. In our society of digital nomads, stable relationship can naturally be put to the risk of being severed. Even when lovers meet each other, they actually don’t spend much time looking at each other. They either look into their own smartphone or watch the movie or musical. People who are not accustomed to looking at each other and even feel afraid of it are being produced en masse.

To women who are struggling amid competition and anxiety, the ideal refuge and haven to escape from the reality is “the amplest love possible.” While being loved, they concurrently dream about another sacrificing love that goes beyond. Through movies and dramas, women aspire, enthusiastically respond and consume such love. They get more obsessed with it because they know it is something impossible.

As such, the “type of dramas featuring the main female character managing all (men)” would not be merely their avarice or vanity. Perhaps they are seeking to console their increasingly growing anxiety in reality through consolation from imagination.