A Male's Perspective: The Significance of Gender

Disclaimer: Please take no offense to anything I write which may sound controversial or potentially sexist in your eyes. Everything is strictly my personal opinion and is subject to change. If you are too lazy to read through it all, there is a TL;DR at the very bottom. Cheers :)

I have been a member of MyDramaList(MDL) for quite a while now, but for the most part, I have just been a lurker – reading through the forums, posted articles, etc. Up until now, I rarely did anything which would even leave a mark of my existence on the site. At this point in time, you are probably asking yourself ‘Why start now…?’ I just happened to recently join the editing team for MDL and with the extra exposure to the community’s work, I decided to take this opportunity to write and throw my thoughts out there. This seems to be the best chance for me to address an issue which has been on my mind over the years which I have been watching Asian dramas.

Although I do not have the exact statistics, I am almost certain the majority of the users on MDL are female, males being the minority. I am even bold enough to say this small sample size is an accurate representation of Asian drama watchers around the world, not just those on MDL. This is an interesting phenomenon by itself but I want to take a step back and go through various points which may differ between the two sexes. As a male Asian drama watcher, I am honestly curious as to what goes on in each of us as we watch these oh-so-addictive dramas. In a nutshell, I hope to lay down some of my thoughts – a male’s perspective.


Target Audience
I was first introduced to Asian dramas when the Korean drama Winter Sonata was airing on television years ago and I found myself sitting down every evening to watch it. It was not until the past few years when I really started to watch a lot more dramas that I noticed none of my male friends really had much interest in any of them. One of them just so happened to fry his PC and was more or less bored out of his mind with only his Galaxy Tab to play around with. I took this opportunity and offered him Dream High, which had just recently finished airing then, to watch in his spare time. The result? Relatively speaking, he watched the entire thing, but via a lot of fast-forwarding. I can only assume it helped him kill time but not something he would necessarily delve further into.

The case above is pretty typical among most guys I know – they show no interest. This brings me to my first point: who exactly is the target audience for all these different dramas? It’s true that each drama has a specific genre that is aimed towards a particular type of viewer, but let us look at it from the drama creation team’s point of view – viewership and ratings. The user ‘blue’ has an excellent article written up regarding the significance of viewership on the website belectricground [1]. Plainly stated, the whole goal of the drama is to attract viewers and retain them throughout the airing session. The drama in its entirety, acting performance and storyline included, needs to be able to maintain decent ratings in order to not suffer consequences (e.g. series duration cuts) which dramas like Me Too, Flower [2] and Heading to the Ground [3] experienced. In particular, the latter was penalized with several cuts resulting in an initial 20-episode series down to only 16 due to poor reception. So are drama writers specifically looking at females as their targeted demographic? Circumstantial evidence and limited sample size indicates a ‘yes,’ but I doubt this is hardly enough to convince any of us.


Cast Influence
Probably the easiest way to attract one’s attention is through the cast – the eye candy AKA the pretty boys and girls. As I browsed through MDL over the last year or so, one thing in particular which had caught my attention is the top five ‘Favorite Actors’ feature on an individual’s profile. Head to your personal MDL profile page and take note of the genders of these five people. If I had to place money on this, I would say at least 3/5 of them are the opposite sex of you.  Even I am guilty of this; 4/5 of my favorite “actors” are female.

Under the assumption that the average MDL user’s top five actors list consists mostly of members of the opposite gender, it may be plausible to infer that in a given drama, cast members of the opposite sex have a greater impact on the spectator. In my case, however, this correlation hits a brick wall. Although the majority of my top five actors list consists of females, Kang Ji Hwan, the sole male on my list, is by far my favorite among them all. In an even more extreme case, our two favorite male users on MDL, Skye-N-Rain and Ji-N, have between the two of them only one actress in their favorites.

So how influential are actors and actresses when it comes to our appeal and perception of a drama and are they cast in such a way to target a certain gender?  The drama Dream High was highly anticipated before it aired due to its huge lineup of major idols [4]. In Dream High’s case, idols such as Taecyeon and Wooyoung from 2PM and Suzy from MissA reaped in k-pop supporters and drama watchers alike. It is apparent that certain idols are used to bring in viewers, but is gender taken into account? Some recent key examples to look at would be School 2013 and Shut Up: Flower Boy Band, both of which have a large male lineup in their main cast. I thoroughly enjoyed both of these dramas, but definitely not as much as my fellow female viewers. The highly rated Boys Over Flowers is another prime example of this with Lee Min Ho and his F4. Although I can confidently say there were many factors which caused me to feel detached from this drama, the cast lineup may have shaped my opinion. Would it have been different if it was a harem-like setting? More than likely yes – the net viewership of such dramas would probably suffer. There’s a prevalence of reverse-harem simply because it works.



Relating Genre, Theme, and Stereotypes
The common stereotype is that guys are more attracted to action and violence whereas girls tend towards romance. The fact that many dramas such as Secret Garden and Boys Over Flowers are romance-driven reinforces the stereotype if the target audience is the female half of the population. However, this stereotype starts to break down when we take a look at dramas like IRIS [5] and City Hunter [6] which have been largely successful with a mix of romance and action. To add to this, dramas with little to no romance such as Vampire Prosecutor [7] and Ghost [8] have also brought in their fair share of viewers.



Somewhat related to the genre are the general themes which are used in dramas. The ‘damsel in distress’ with the male lead constantly giving her help (e.g. City Hunter, Take Care of Us, Captain, etc.) seems to be quite popular despite the cliché feel to it. Some may consider this theme to be overdone and dry, but it still seems to be bringing in plenty of viewers. The recent drama Innocent Man flips this around where the main character is a male who experiences unfortunate circumstances. However, the theme of the drama is not that of a female lead constantly handing him help throughout the drama; instead, it is a story of how he handles the angst and climbs back up onto his feet by himself. Is it because of social stereotypes that there is such a disparity in the plot between the two? It is nothing strange to speak of a knight in shining white armor coming to save the day. Although I did not specifically state the gender of this knight, more than likely most of you instantly imagined a man in said suit of armor. Such stereotypes seem to be the driving force in the development of drama storylines.

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These are just a few of my thoughts in regards to whether sex has a role in determining how a drama pans out as well as how one perceives it. I know it has been a lengthy read, and I thank you if you were able to get through it all.  Please read through the TL;DR below and let me know your thoughts in the comments! I would just like to end this with a quote from a friend [9] who has endured hours on end of my various drama rants.

I don't think less of […] because he likes dramas, which are generally considered 'girly'. To some extent, I have more respect for him because he is able to say he likes what he likes in spite of this.

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TL;DR
Please give your personal thoughts on the topic in the comments below:

1. Are you male or female?

2. Is there a gender bias among the population of drama watchers?

3. Do you feel dramas are targeted at a certain demographic? Why?

4. What’s the gender ratio on your MyDramaList’s profile favorite actors section?

5. How does the cast lineup of a drama affect you? Physical looks, performance capabilities, etc.

6. Do particular idol biases affect your perception/rating of dramas?

7. Do certain genres/themes appeal to you more than others? 

8. Do standard stereotypes shape your views for Q7?

Cheers once again :)

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Acknowledgements
Seii - my sister, for having to put up with all my drama craze despite not watching them herself :D
Serose - my editor, for brutalizing my initial drafts with comment boxes everywhere in a loving fashion xD
[9]Will - my lovely friend: add him on League of Legends, summoner name ‘bladeofwill,’ to help with the random invite spam!