UCLA

I analyze four Korean variety programs known as “yenŭng” that air/ed on public and cable networks from 2005 to 2020. While drawing upon my ethnographic research into the production culture for these programs, I argue that the yenŭng genre articulates three distinct yet interwoven perspectives on social and familial relations within the nation:�(1) a national cosmopolitan ideology of gender equality�that�contributes to the nation’s self-image as a developed state�grounded in�democratic values, (2) hegemonic standards of patriarchy, heteronormativity, nationalism, and misogyny through the active exclusion of women as well as hyper-masculinist and militaristic production cultures on set, and (3) a consistent queering of gender “norms” that destabilizes notions of gender equality and of gender constructs. As each chapter builds on the last, this dissertation offers a socio-historical overview of the Korean television industry as a state institution and gendered infrastructure�in a moment of social crisis and transition,�proposing�yenŭng as a queer genre and cultural concept in national television.