Blue Eyes and Flexible Tongues

On the 11th of March, the 학co organised our second seminar: Blue Eyes and Flexible Tongues: the role of Non-Korean Actors and Foreign languages in Global Korean Media! Dr. Tilland gave us a look into her current research about foreign languages in Korean media. She showed us Korean talk shows where women were assigned particular pre-conceived roles and others where men weren’t really allowed to talk about anything deep. 

But also movies and series where Korean actors try their shot at a different language (often unsuccessfully), and foreign actors who are supposed to be a certain ethnicity but are completely incomprehensible. 

Dr. Tilland surprised us with how little effort most movie or series productions put into the accurate portrayal of other countries, ethnicities, and languages.

At the end of the seminar, there was a discussion and we were able to recommend many more Korean shows to Dr. Tilland that she could use in her research.