Female-Centered Projects Emerge As Pop Culture Trend Along With MZ Viewers’ Dominance

Female-centered narratives are gaining attention in various forms of pop culture, including dramas, films, and musicals, and are even considered a key to success as the MZ generation has emerged as the main consumer of pop culture.

According to the content industry on December 22nd, stories focusing on narratives of female characters were very popular among dramas, musicals and movies released this year. In the case of dramas, tvN’s “Jeongnyeon: The Star Is Born”, SBS’s “Good Partner”, and JTBC’s “A Virtuous Business” are projects with female character narratives that were extremely successful.

In particular, “Good Partner” and “Jeongnyeon: The Star Is Born” gained huge popularity by surpassing 17.5% and 16.5% in viewership, respectively. “Good Partner” tells about female lawyers, while “Jeongnyeon: The Star Is Born” is set in a national theater troupe consisting of female performers. In addition, “A Virtuous Business” depicts the story of middle-aged women looking for who make door-to-door sales of adult products in a time when sex was still considered a taboo.

In the case of movies and musicals, “Moana 2” tells the journey of Moana as a female leader, not a hero, while “Wicked” was about the friendship and growth of rivals Elphana and Glinda. Meanwhile, “Substance” is a horror film based on women’s obsession with appearance. Musicals with similar content about women also received keen support and love from the audience.

Notably, instead of focusing on rivalry and conflicts, these projects highlighted the solidarity and growth of women and their relationships.

However, as female narratives and sisterhood content became a trend, unexpected issues have also arisen. For example, the Netflix series “The Trunk” failed to maintain its popularity due to criticism over the content about a one-year marriage contract reminding viewers of prostitution.

With the rising trend of female-centered narratives, the pop culture industry is pouring efforts to discover more aspects of women while actively monitoring gender insensitivity issues. An insider commented, “The key to success is to find female-centered narratives and gender-sensitive works that the MZ generation, the primary audience of pop culture, can resonate with”. Another insider shared, “Situations that might not have been problematic in the past are now considered sensitive issues. It would be difficult to manage risks if we don’t learn about gender-sensitive codes.”