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Abstract
The South Korean reality-TV show The Return of Superman features celebrity Dads who take care of their children for 48 hours all by themselves, while their wives are either working or on vacation. The South Korean culture is mainly confucianistic and therefore paternalistic in its principles, making the fathers primarily the earner of the family and only secondarily the father, preventing them from spending qualitative time with their family, let alone their children. The fathers of the show however defy this traditional view of the fathers’ role and show a new and modern interpretation on how to be a good father. They spend a lot of time with their children, are both physically and emotionally close to them and transmit their increase of experience, their joy and their educational advice through the show. These contradictory ideals of fatherhood are discussed from a cultural perspective as well as contrasted with selected scenes from the show, in order to outline the genesis of serial structures of narration and its serial logic. This paper states that the living environment of ‹average› South Korean families varies extremely from the living environments of the ‹Superdads›, making them somewhat of an exotic exception, even though they may be regarded as the vanguard of a change of values in the South Korean society. When it comes to researching TV series, culture-specific structures of analysis and innovative elements of serial presentations are outlined for this TV-show, as well as the specific structure of double narration.References
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