In this blog post, I will explore how melodramas use narratives of sorrow and loss to make us dream of the absoluteness and fulfillment of love, examining both the genre’s appeal and its emotional structure.
An Introduction to Melodrama
Thomas Schatz, author of ‘The Structure of Hollywood Genres’, defines melodrama as “a popular love story in which a pure individual or couple is sacrificed to an oppressive and unequal social environment related to marriage, career, and nuclear family issues.” In other words, melodrama can be simply defined as a “sad love story.” There are always obstacles in the journey of anyone experiencing love. These obstacles bring oppression and hardship to those in love, and people constantly strive to overcome them. The pain and sorrow that arise when facing these obstacles are embodied in the form of the “melodrama” genre.
A “genre” can be defined as a collection of stories that share a single theme or narrative, which is repeated through various variations, thereby revealing distinct differences from stories with other themes or narratives. The characteristics that distinguish a genre from others stem from the rules and conventions that the numerous stories within that genre commonly follow. At the same time, the countless stories within that genre each reveal their own unique differences and exude their own charm.
If we examine melodrama based on this concept of genre, it must first and foremost be a story centered on love. However, genres centered on love include not only melodrama but also romantic comedy. So what is the difference between melodrama and romantic comedy? The difference lies in the emotional direction: sadness versus joy. Romantic comedies emphasize the element of “comedy,” highlighting the joy derived from the playful dynamics arising from the conflicts and friction between the male and female leads. In contrast, melodramas traditionally utilize melancholic melodies in their film scores, centering on the emotions of oppression and suffering that arise from the love between the leads and the obstacles standing in their way.
Furthermore, the difference between joy and sorrow can also be explained by the narrative’s orientation—that is, the difference between the beginning and the end. While romantic comedies primarily depict the process of a couple’s love beginning, melodramas tend to focus on the process of love facing a crisis and moving toward its conclusion. Of course, in modern cinema, there are many instances where the two genres are blended or cross boundaries, but in terms of their basic emotional structure, the two genres still exhibit clear differences.
So, as mentioned earlier, why has the melodrama—with its clichéd genre characteristics of depicting the fading love of a couple sacrificed by an oppressive and unequal social environment—continued to be loved by audiences as a form of popular cinema? Why do audiences repeatedly seek out narratives that evoke sadness and suffering? To answer this question, I will examine the genre’s appeal in this paper. As the specific subject of this inquiry, I will analyze the film *You Are My Sunshine*, which has established itself as a representative work of Korean melodrama since its release in the fall of 2005.
The Narrative and Icons of ‘You Are My Sunshine’
The film ‘You Are My Sunshine’ is a melodrama written and directed by Park Jin-pyo, starring actors Hwang Jung-min and Jeon Do-yeon in the lead roles. Upon its release in 2005, the film garnered both commercial success and critical acclaim; in particular, Jeon Do-yeon received recognition for her acting, winning the Best Actress Award at the Blue Dragon Film Awards for her performance in this film. The plot is as follows.
Seok-joong, an innocent bachelor living in the countryside, falls in love with Eun-ha, a waitress at the local “Sunjeong” coffee shop, and begins courting her in a way that is both rustic and sincere. After many twists and turns, Seok-joong and Eun-ha get married, but Seok-joong learns that Eun-ha is infected with AIDS. At the same time, Eun-ha’s ex-husband reappears, causing Seok-joong to lose his entire fortune. Eun-ha subsequently leaves Seok-joong, and he spends a period wandering in search of her. A year later, Seok-joong learns that Eun-ha has been arrested on charges of prostitution while living with AIDS. After Eun-ha completes her prison sentence of over two years, the two are reunited.
To summarize this story, it follows a structure in which Eunha—burdened by a dark past and the disease of AIDS—and Seok-joong, a naive bachelor, fall in love; however, Eunha chooses to part ways for Seok-joong’s sake, and Seok-joong sets out to find Eunha again to reclaim their love. In other words, this work can be described as a narrative with a cyclical structure of “meeting, parting, and reuniting.”
I intend to analyze *You Are My Sunshine*, which possesses this narrative structure, according to the conventions of genre cinema. To this end, I will examine the film using three criteria: “characters,” “setting,” and “events.” These three elements will serve as a key analytical framework to reveal how melodrama organizes emotions, reflects social contexts, and expands the meaning of love.
A Pure Love Narrative
The male protagonist, Seok-joong, is a man who has never had a proper romantic relationship despite being over thirty. He has a history of attempting an international marriage abroad, which ended in failure. Even in satisfying his sexual desires, he chooses masturbation over prostitution. He is a diligent man who does not drink alcohol and quietly makes a living working in the livestock industry. In contrast, the female protagonist, Eun-ha, works as a cashier at a “pure love” café, making ends meet by working at a ticket café during the day and as a hostess at a karaoke bar at night. She has already been married and contracted AIDS through sex work.
The image that the film *You Are My Sunshine* prominently features is precisely that of “innocence.” Within the three-part narrative structure of “meeting, parting, and reuniting,” the image of innocence is repeatedly emphasized. In the first stage of their meeting, Seok-joong humbles himself to win the heart of the woman who has captivated him for the first time in his life. He cleans the tea house, delivers milk, and buys tickets so Eun-ha can rest. He nurses Eun-ha through the night after she is beaten by a customer at the ticket tea house, and when she wakes up, he even thanks her. In response to this pure and devoted courtship, Eun-ha says, “Too much purity is just stupid,” yet ultimately accepts his love.
As they reach the point of breaking up, the shadow of Eun-ha’s past reappears: her ex-husband. Seok-joong loses all his assets to her ex-husband and learns of Eun-ha’s HIV status, yet he never withdraws his love. Eun-ha leaves Seok-joong out of guilt over her past, but Seok-joong endlessly searches for her. Even when Eun-ha is arrested on charges of prostitution while living with HIV, he cries out in front of the courthouse and detention center, vowing to protect her. In a scene where he is torn between his elderly mother and a bottle of pesticide, he even goes so far as to drink the pesticide, declaring that life has no meaning without her.
In the final stage of their reunion, the two meet face-to-face for the first time in the visiting room. Eun-ha scolds Seok-joong, telling him to leave her. However, having lost his voice after drinking the pesticide, Seok-joong cries out his love with his whole body, even though he cannot speak. His anguish is conveyed not through words, but through tears and gestures. Eventually, Eun-ha also acknowledges her love for Seok-joong and sheds tears. The glass wall separating them serves as a symbolic barrier, but Seok-joong smashes the speaker and breaks through that wall. The hands of the two people touching across the glass wall form an image of love that transcends physical barriers. And on the day Eun-ha is released from prison after serving her sentence, the two meet again. Seok-joong’s joyful expression as he gazed at the sky amidst the snowy landscape at the beginning of the film overlaps with this scene, completing the image of unchanging love.
The narrative characteristics of *You Are My Sunshine* are precisely revealed in the relationship between Seok-joong and Eun-ha. Korean melodramas of the 1970s, often referred to as “tear-jerking melodramas,” typically centered on narratives where women from lower social classes—often represented by hostesses—were victimized by social oppression. Amid the tragedies of women—who had their children taken away, were abandoned by their families, and sometimes even met their deaths—men were portrayed not as loving partners, but rather as figures who inflicted pain on women or as bystanders incapable of resolving their suffering.
However, by the 1990s, male characters embodying devoted and unwavering love began to appear in earnest. In melodramas from the 1990s onward, women are portrayed as figures who receive absolute and unchanging love from men. Films such as ‘Letter’, ‘Promise’, ‘My Sassy Girl’, and ‘The Lizard’, which depict a husband’s pure love—even as he faces his own death, worrying about the wife he will leave behind—are examples of this trend. Women in this era are no longer merely socially vulnerable figures; they are portrayed as individuals with their own identities and as figures holding a queen-like status in relation to men. These films bring audiences to tears by placing unwavering love at the forefront. While 1970s melodramas were structured around women giving love to men, melodramas from the 1990s onward shifted to a structure where men give love to women.
“You Are My Sunshine” inherits this shift in melodrama that emerged after the 1990s while also carrying forward elements of 1970s hostess melodramas. Eun-ha is a character of inherently good nature, but in the course of her life, she falls into deep despair against her will. She becomes infected with AIDS against her will, suffers from the unwanted reappearance of her ex-husband, and becomes a socially stigmatized figure. The only thing she truly desires is to build a simple, happy family with her beloved Seok-joong. However, guilt over her past and societal judgment force her to leave Seok-joong, ultimately leading to her imprisonment.
If *You Are My Sunshine* had simply followed the conventions of existing hostess melodramas, the story would have ended with Eun-ha meeting a lonely death, or Seok-joong forgetting Eun-ha and starting a new family with another woman. However, this film does not repeat such conventions. While the subject matter lies in the lineage of 1970s hostess melodramas, the narrative’s direction follows the trajectory of melodramas centered on the “beloved woman” that emerged after the 1990s.
To Seok-joong, Eun-ha is someone he cares about regardless of whether she is a prostitute, a divorcee, a convict, or an AIDS carrier. He is willing to be with her even if it means abandoning his elderly mother and siblings, or even losing his own voice. This extreme devotion is directly linked to the image of pure love. Ultimately, the narrative concludes with Seok-joong and Eun-ha reuniting at the end of the story. This can be seen as a declaration of melodramatic imagination that believes in the sustainability of love, as well as an expression of the emotional completeness inherent in a narrative of pure love.
Icons and Symbols
In film, an “icon” refers to a symbolic element that conveys implicit meaning through visual or auditory expression. An icon goes beyond the surface-level representation on screen to suggest the deeper meaning hidden beneath it. For example, in Alfred Joseph Hitchcock’s film ‘Psycho’, the stuffed bird of prey hanging on the wall of the motel room is not merely a prop; through its image—eyes wide open and talons extended as if stalking prey—it symbolically reveals the psychology of a murderer with voyeuristic tendencies. In this way, icons in films hint at a character’s inner world or the direction of the narrative, even without being explicitly explained.
Icons also play a significant role in melodramas. In particular, scenes where women are placed alongside barred windows or lattice-patterned frames have frequently been used to implicitly reveal the social structures that constrain women. This is a way of visually hinting at the plight of women bound by reality. Icons that convey such implicit meanings in films also appear repeatedly in *You Are My Sunshine*.
The “snow” falling in white drifts at the beginning of the film is repeated a total of four times: as “petals” fluttering in the scene where the couple whispers their love in the orchard in the middle of the film, as “petals” fluttering in the prison where Eun-ha is incarcerated, and as “snow” falling again at the moment the two reunite toward the end. The “snow” and “petals” symbolize the joy and hope inherent in the couple’s love. In particular, the “snow” appearing at the beginning and end of the film can be interpreted as a device suggesting the same moment in time, and this repetition between the beginning and the end emphasizes the eternity of love. Furthermore, the “petals,” which create a romantic and fantastical atmosphere, serve to imply that their love transcends reality, making it somewhat unrealistic and idealized. Ultimately, within the fictional genre of melodrama, the audience is swept into fantasy as they are showered with snow, becomes intoxicated by that fantasy as they are showered with petals, and returns to reality as they are showered with snow once more.
However, icons symbolizing disconnection and despair appear more frequently in the film than those representing joy and hope. First, the icon of disconnection stands between Seok-joong and Eun-ha, blocking their communication. In the scene where the two first meet, the “railroad crossing barrier” is lowered. The scene where the train passes and the barrier rises again simultaneously implies both disconnection and its resolution. This scene, presented early in the film, can be seen as a visual device foreshadowing the structure of separation and reunion that their relationship will undergo.
Another icon of disconnection is the “glass wall and speaker in the visiting room.” In the first visiting scene, a glass wall stands between the two, and their voices are conveyed only through the speaker. When the bell rings to signal the end of the visit and Eun-ha stands up, Seok-joong presses his body against the glass wall and screams. Though he cannot shatter the glass wall with his strength, he manages to tear off the speaker attached to it. As a result, a hole the size of the speaker appears in the glass wall, and the two are able to hold hands and hear each other’s voices directly through that small opening. This scene depicts the moment when a symbol of separation transforms into a possibility for communication, revealing the power of pure love that overcomes the barriers of a relationship through active will.
Icons of despair also appear repeatedly. The first is “rain.” Rain, conventionally used in many melodramas, functions as a device to evoke emotions of sadness and loss. The rain falling on the night Eun-ha leaves Seok-joong’s side is a cliché yet effectively visualizes their despair. The second icon of despair is the “road leading to the sea.” Upon arriving in Yeosu, South Jeolla Province, to find Eun-ha, Seok-joong realizes he can no longer find her and collapses onto the road as seawater gradually rises. The water slowly submerges the road, and his clothes gradually become soaked. The road sinking into the seemingly endless sea symbolizes the uncertainty of the future and the absence of hope, while his soaking clothes serve as a metaphor for his heart, too, becoming drenched in despair.
The third icon of despair is the “soju bottle” Seok-joong throws in front of the detention center. Seok-joong, who originally did not drink, turns to alcohol after losing Eun-ha. When he meets Eun-ha again after a year, she has become a criminal, and sensing another impending separation, Seok-joong throws the soju bottle he is holding, shattering it into pieces. The shattered bottle symbolizes his heart being brutally broken. This scene reveals the reality that no matter how hard he throws it, the world does not change; instead, he is the only one who gets hurt. Though he cries out that he will save Eun-ha, the forces of the system and reality overpower him and knock him to the ground.
Nevertheless, ‘You Are My Sunshine’ never lets go of the icon of pure love. The milk in the bottle, the contract promising eternal love, the kimbap on the dining table, and the photos of the two together—these are not grand gestures, but symbols of pure love woven into everyday life. These small objects serve as a force that sustains their relationship just as much as the dramatic scenes do. And the spotted calf that briefly appears in the final scene hints at an image of new life and hope. With this icon of hope as its conclusion, the film quietly wraps up its story of pure love and hope.
The Allure of a Similar Love: A Dual Ending
“This film is a love story dramatized based on a true story.”
‘You Are My Sunshine’ makes this declaration at the beginning of the film. As a melodrama faithful to genre conventions, the film presents a story that might seem somewhat clichéd and unrealistic, yet it meticulously constructs and presents it while identifying itself as a “story based on a true story.”
Why does it insist on emphasizing that it is a “true story” when it unfolds a tumultuous narrative that the general audience would find difficult to imagine in reality? The reason lies in the emotional persuasiveness and allure inherent in the phrase “true story.”
Ordinary people do not easily believe that love with an HIV-positive person is possible. Nor do they readily imagine that attempting suicide for love, or giving up everything for love, is possible. Yet at the same time, it is a form of extreme love that everyone has imagined in their hearts at least once. Recalling their first love or a past failed romance, people blame themselves for not trying harder or resent the lover who left them with emotional scars. However, the majority of people—that is, the general audience—merely dream, and can only imagine what it would be like if that dream became reality.
Genre films operate precisely at this point. They bring to life on screen the romantic endings that ordinary people could only complete in their imaginations. In films, any trial can be overcome, and lovers ultimately reach eternal love. Many people in reality experience similar loves and endure similar breakups. While those unresolved memories linger as lingering regrets, films provide a scene of resolution that can temporarily alleviate those regrets. Genre films can be seen as a mechanism that fulfills the endings audiences longed for in their past experiences. This is likely the greatest appeal of genre films, particularly melodramas. For the brief duration between the film’s beginning and end, the audience becomes the protagonist, experiencing the conclusion of eternal love.
However, that ending is ultimately just a cinematic device—it is not reality itself. Just as scenes emphasizing love and hope in *You Are My Sunshine* were accompanied by icons suggesting fantasy, the happy endings of genre films also belong to the realm of fantasy. Directors of genre films must present the ending the audience desires while simultaneously incorporating devices that subtly reveal it is, after all, a fantasy. In other words, they must present a structure of a sort of “dual ending” that implies the fact that not all love stories necessarily reach a happy conclusion. Showing a love story that appears complete on the surface while leaving a crack that hints at the limitations of reality beneath—this can be considered the aesthetic strategy of genre films.
In Conclusion
Through the melodrama *You Are My Sunshine*, I have examined the narrative, icons, and genre appeal of melodramas. The defining characteristic and appeal of melodramas, as seen through this work, can be summed up as “a genre that fulfills unfulfilled love.” However, this fulfillment is an ending possible only within the fictional space of cinema, not in reality; it is, after all, a story completed solely in the imagination.
The truth clearly exists outside the film. And that truth is not something to be ignored, but a challenge we must seriously confront and overcome. Therefore, when watching genre films, we must not simply rest content with a happy ending. We must be aware of the gap between the aspirations we hold and the reality we face in actual life, and strive to narrow that distance, even if only slightly, through a conscious will.
Furthermore, filmmakers also bear the responsibility of helping audiences reach this awareness. Genre films should not be mere machines of comfort, but rather a medium that prompts reflection on the distance between fantasy and reality. Allowing audiences to find momentary solace through the love depicted in the film, while simultaneously prompting them to reconsider love in reality—that is likely the healthiest genre-specific role a melodrama can fulfill.
