When I See You as Mother/Daughter: Korean Women's Visibility in When Life Gives You Tangerine
Abstract
This article takes the Korean TV drama When Life Gives You Tangerines as an example to explore the relationship among three generations of mothers and daughters in Korean society. This study selected two scenes from the film as examples for visual text analysis. By focusing on the research of the film's lighting design, I demonstrated the different value systems and emotional connections between women of different generations in terms of family and work. This study combines film theory with feminist theory to explore the hidden needs and desires of women within the family. Based on the experiences of three women from different eras, Gwang-rye Jeon, Ae-sun Oh, and Geum-myeong Yang, combined with the 30 years of changes of the women's movement in South Korea, I reflect on the visibility of mother-daughter relationships and the subjectivity of women in the family. This essay also provides new visual and textual interpretations of the mother-daughter relationship in feminism in cinema studies.
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