Meaning Construction of Women Through Female Characters In Thai Remake TV Drama Between 1987 – 2017

Abstract

This research aims to study 1) characteristics and characters’ development and 2) meaning construction of women through female characters in Thai remake TV drama between 1987 - 2017. This qualitative research will explore ‘Mia Luang’ by using methodologies, like content analysis, textual analysis, and in-depth interview with program directors and media scholars.

The result shows that all female characters from ‘Mia Luang’ TV programs unveil highly-varying demographic characteristics and sub-plot from the contexts of the stories. However, main-plot and psychological characteristics of those characters seem to have a low level of change. Their backgrounds, needs, conflicts, goal, and change have a high resemblance to one another—resulting in repetitive main plots which reveals long-lasting ideologies of how Thai women are inferior to their male counterparts in the last 30 years. These ideologies are 1) Knowledge and beauty. 2) Polygyny. 3) Sex and Drugs. 4) Strength and weakness. 5) Occupation, sphere and status of mother and wife. 6) Active and passive characters. Despite being remade in the modern context, the only notable changes are minor as they only altered female characters’ educations, professions and spheres.

This research has concluded that the TV drama creators produce under the rating system. The creators like to reproduce the popular rating TV drama, have resulted in reproduction of the same ideologies—in which the program directors are, in fact, the ones that weave those “ideologies” into “reality” to meet the demand from the audience. All of which are what drives this society towards patriarchy until today.