Jurnal Ilmiah
Jurnal Ilmiah
Jurnal Ilmiah
Ilham Mubarok
Departemen Ilmu Komunikasi, Universitas Diponegoro 2013
Email: ilhammubarok02@gmail.com
ABSTRACT
South Korean film industry (Hallyuwood) is one of the most promising film industry in the world
along with Hollywood and Bollywood. This film industry is producing varieties of genre, one of
them is queer film. Queer film is a film which tells stories about people from sexual minorities
such as lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender. Ideally, queer film uses homonormativity as the
main ideology in order to convey the stories from sexual minorities well. But, one of South Korean
queer film, The Handmaiden, which tells story about lesbian women called attention because some
critics and viewers accused it for portraying lesbian women in male gaze. Male gaze would disrupt
the discourse of body, sexuality, and character development of lesbian women which is should be
portrayed in homonormativity.
The aim of this research is to describe the discourse of body, sexuality, and character development
of lesbian women in film The Handmaiden. The subject of this research is 22 scenes from the film
which are related to body, sexuality, and character development of lesbian women. This research
used critical paradigm and Sara Mills’ Discourse Analysis method which consists of: character
analysis, fragmentation analysis, focalization analysis, and schemata analysis. The research used
two main theories: Laura Mulvey’s male gaze theory and queer theory to describe the discourse of
body, sexuality, and character development of lesbian women in the film. The result of the
research showed that male gaze was found in the film but not as dominant ideology. Instead, the
film used homonormativity as the dominant ideology to describe the body, sexuality, and character
development of lesbian women.