‘여자 되기’와 ‘애인이라는 노동’ －미디어 정동 경제에서 여자 연예인 지망생/신인의 일－

Abstract

This article springs from the question of how a new dimension of the ‘sex trade’ that the legal concept of ‘prostitution’ can not encompass may be problematized. The study examines the relations between the flow of capital, the sex trade, and the constitution of gender through ‘the late Jang, Ja-yeon incident,’ based on the awareness that the relations between the movement of capital, the sex trade, and the constitution of masculinity and femininity through personalized male and female relations should be analyzed in detail to explain the gendered sex trade. Female’s youthfulness, appearances, and sexuality have all become tradable products and a form of labor in a macroscopic flow of economic structural changes inasmuch as the boundary between ‘productive labor’ and ‘reproductive labor’ is collapsing, and all of these activities are being directly integrated into the cycle of capital reproduction. Focusing on the aspect of communication, the article examines the ways, the media are integrated into a cycle of capital reproduction, and the ways female aspiring entertainers/rookie’s emotions and sexuality are traded in the field of the "media affective economy", which includes an affective level of human contact and interaction, by considering their experiences. In the present Korean media affective economy, entertainers are required to be gendered ‘image products.’ In order to break into the industry, female aspiring entertainers and rookies must perform extensive and detailed appearance management involving the costs of ‘producing a woman,’ that is, a ‘re-feminization strategy.’ This produces women who are unable to do things that do not directly served their interests and that demand time and energy or to do work that covers their expenses in the gendered labor market. In case they have no parents who can act as sponsors, they have recourse to ‘sponsors’ approach through men willing to ‘date’ them. However, the men ‘dating’ them then, expect to take ownership of their image, youth, and appearance, and, through that of their emotions, and physical reproduction faculties, instead of having a mutual relationship. In this way, some female aspiring entertainers and rookies perform ‘labor as lovers’ in that their images and beings as represented in the media themselves become core elements of various emotional and, physical reproduction labors carried out in this type of ‘dating’ relationship. By connecting entertainment management agencies with production/investment units, this labor moves forward to reproduce the whole media economy. Thus, the task before us is to conduct a detailed analysis of the flow of capital that creates and also exploits values by producing/reproducing variations of emotions, social networks, and biopower through human contacts and interactions, and the power relations it installs in the gender/sexuality system.