TV shows embrace cross-gender roles for men
Men challenging gender stereotypes in new roles
For a long time in Korean entertainment, men dressing as women have not been taken seriously.
Instances were rare in the past but if there were such characters, almost all of them were for comedy shows. With overly excessive makeup and stereotypically feminine apparel, such characters made cameo appearances for comedic effect.
These days, male actors wearing makeup and women’s clothing are increasingly appearing in TV shows, movies and theater plays, playing more nuanced and serious characters.
KBS2’s hit period drama “The Tale of Nokdu” which wrapped up its 32 episode series on Nov. 25, featured lead male character Jun Nok-du who goes into a town of widows in order to catch a predator who is trying to kill his family. He disguises himself as a woman to mingle with the widows.
“Through my role, I was able to experience what kind of social pressure those women had to go through. Yet I still feel there are remnants of injustice left in our current society, and there is a lot that needs to be changed,” Jang Dong-yoon, who played Nokdu in the show, said in an interview.
Male actors exploring more diverse roles are also common in theater plays such as “Farewell My Concubine” and “Hedwig and the Angry Inch.” In the former, K-pop singer-actor Kim Jun-su played Woo-hee, a male theater actor who plays female roles on stage and through this falls in love with his male co-star. The latter features male actor Jung Moon-sung in the role of Hedwig, a transgender woman and struggling rock singer who has a botched gender reassignment surgery.
“Even in today’s perspective, I think Hedwig is a courageous person who makes a difficult choice yet still leads their life confidently,” Jung Moon-sung said.
What is notable is that these male actors became more sincere in studying the complex characters they play, in order to deliver their characters’ intricate feelings.
Jang said: “I paid extra attention to not making my role seem humorous and tried to exaggerate my voice to make it sound like that of a woman.”
For his character Nokdu, Jang said he watched foreign films, such as “Mrs. Doubtfire” and “Farewell My Concubine” rather than Korean films as there were so few options.
“Cross-gender acting has been off limits in Korean TV shows or movies for a long time, but people have just begun to open up discussions about it. People nowadays are open-minded about cross-gender roles without limiting their performances to the gender they were born with. In my case, by taking this role, it became a turning point for me to become an actor without being trapped in the gender frame,” he said.
For Kim Jun-su, who played the role of Woo-hee in “Farewell My Concubine,” he said he had a difficult time trying to act out women considering their gestures and body line. “Beijing opera itself is a genre that has to use a lot of body and hand gestures, but when playing Woo-hee I had to be especially careful in acting out these gestures,” Kim said.
In the play his hand gestures were different according to the situation such as pointing out to the sky, looking at the moon, and at the leaves falling from the trees. After the play, Kim’s body ached from his use of these unfamiliar movements.
Jung Moon-sung, who played Hedwig, said he did not work out for days in order to reduce his muscle size, and Jang also tried to find the right pitch for a female voice.
“I tried to take extra care on the voice. Although I did try to sound more high pitched, I always reminded myself there are different voices for every woman,” Jang said.
By playing these roles from different periods, the actors said this became a huge opportunity for them to gain insight into the lives of women.
“I was able to really feel how the women had to lower themselves down in order to sustain their lives in society,” Jang said.
“Jang really showed that dressing up as female can be natural for male actors,” an official from television drama set said asking for anonymity for he was not authorized to comment on the issue.
“It’s true that we were a little bit worried about the characters because we were not sure if our audiences would accept them, but Jang did a great job and his performance helped viewers take his character seriously, not as something eccentric.”
Experts say the increase in casting men to play such roles can help to break down gender-based discrimination. “In plays, there are lot of cases in which the producers cast “gender neutral,” which is casting the actors regardless of their gender,” Won Jong-won, the professor of Soon Chun Hyang University, said. “These kind of experiments play a role in disclosing the stereotypes and discrimination of gender that people were unaware of,” he added.