a short guide to korean dramas

[kaigou]

hollywood happy ending: everything ends happily, the lovers are reunited, and any damage during the course of the show/movie is miraculously repaired, restored, or otherwise rendered null.

hollywood unhappy ending: main character dies, but everyone else gets a t-shirt and learns to love again.

bollywood-musical happy ending: same as for hollywood, but with spontaneous mass musical sequences. possibly also involving helicopters. and extra dance maneuvers performed while riding camels.

bollywood-musical unhappy ending: unhappiness and bollywood musicals are like matter and anti-matter. it's theoretically possible but would likely cause significant tears in the time-space continuum.

korean happy ending: at least two characters die*. the lovers survive. mostly. except for the dead ones.

korean unhappy ending: everyone dies*.

* alternate option: utter insanity and/or hot pokers stabbed through delicate body parts.

...by k-drama standards, Hamlet isn't a tragedy, it's just a rom-com with a higher body count than average.

Comments

[susanna]

Are you sure about Hollywood? I remember watching "Quo Vadis" with my father, and a lot of people died, and he was cynical and said: the highest paid actors will survive. (He was born before the war, and he failed to automatically identify with the heroes. He always saw the side characters. When I watched "Jane Eyre" he listened while pretending to read a newspaper in the other corner of the newspaper, and his question when he heard the happy ending was "what happened to the former wife, by the way?")

[kaigou]

Maybe I should change that second tag to "with tongue firmly in cheek".

[treesahquiche]

Your father is awesome for appreciating and caring about the side-characters.

I think the former wife died in the fire? Or maybe she was just locked up for the rest of her life. It's been a while since I've read the book/watched the movie.

[hollyberries]

re: Korean Happy endings - sometimes they let the characters off and only make them crazy!

Can't really fault their Stirring Music of Love and Death, though. :D

(frozen)

[colorblue]

bollywood unhappy ending: unhappiness and bollywood is like matter and anti-matter. the combination may exist, but would likely cause significant tears in the time-space continuum.

....its a wonder that this post hasn't been swallowed up by one, then!

[aldanise]

Nooo, nonono. Everyone dying is in the happy ending category. It's when one of the lovers dies and the last shot lingers on the one who must now go on that we get into really depressing territory.

From Maria_chan

[(Anonymous)]

This is so true on so many levels. The end part of Hamlet deserves a Metaquote lol. How are you?

[kaigou]

She dies in the fire (that she set, because she's insane). For the most part, she's really just a plot-point.

[kaigou]

I'm discovering that no one (short of maybe Russian stage-plays) can do angst half so well as k-dramas.

(frozen)

[kaigou]

I should've clarified, since I associate "bollywood" with musicals. (I'm well aware that Indian cinema has a much greater range, and can actually go an entire production without sudden dance numbers.)

[kaigou]

Hah. Yeah, true dat.

(My first introduction to this was in reading the manhwa Let Dai, which has bullying, child abuse, gang rape, drug use, sudden and extreme violence, deaths of named characters, political and academic corruption, and that's just in the first volume. It gets worse from there... but the ending? The characters end up separated, though it's implied -- very loosely -- that things might work out. The various USians on fan-forums were horrified, while the Korean fans were delighted at how happily things had turned out. I asked a Korean friend about the reactions, and her comment was: "There were actually characters alive in the last chapter? That's a happy ending, by Korean standards." Heh.)

[kaigou]

I am hanging in there! Despite my new and profound addiction to k-dramas.

(frozen)

[colorblue]

I'm also referring to Indian productions with, as you put it, sudden dance numbers.

(frozen)

[kaigou]

Gee, and here I figured if anyone missed the implication in the tags, that the last line would've made it perfectly clear this post is intended for entertainment purposes only.

If you really want to argue over perceptions and stereotypes of international cinematic cultures, I suggest you do it on a post that has more substance. I've got and write plenty, but this isn't one of 'em.

(frozen) whatthehell?

[colorblue]

Now it's my turn to clarify!

To be honest, I am quite confused as to how my previous one-line comments could be read as me wanting to argue over perceptions and stereotypes of international cinematic cultures. Trying to engage in that convo with you would be like, I dunno, trying to discuss theoretical maths with someone who thinks it is really funny that two plus two equals five (and then gets indignant when told that's not really the way it goes).

If you're so sensitive about this, perhaps you should stick to writing entertaining posts on things you have some clue about? Right now that seems to be limited to Hollywood.

(frozen)

[kaigou]

That's how it came across, that you wanted me to take what had been just a flippant set of remarks (about every example, I might add) and badger me into retracting the humor in favor of a full-on treatise. I don't mind doing full-on treatises -- and I daresay I know quite a bit more than you're giving me credit for -- but this is hyperbole, and as such, it would always fall short of whatever it is you're wanting me to post, instead. It's exaggeration for the purposes of humor. That's kinda a big part of how humor works. Your analogy works better if it's rephrased as this: telling a joke in which one adds two plus two and gets five works because we're all aware this is at most only four-fifths truth and the remaining fifth is sheer exaggeration.

Clearly, you don't welcome humorous comments about a specific topic -- and I say "specific" because clearly you didn't rankle at the hyperbolic treatments of the rest of the examples. That's a signal to me that you've got a bone to pick. I don't mind bone-picking and would normally welcome it, but when a post is just meant to be amusement and nothing more, the testy note in your response indicates you've got a hot button -- and your second response confirms it. But it doesn't make it my problem, and I was simply trying to suggest that if you do prefer to debate, that perhaps some other post with more substance would be more appropriate.

[(Anonymous)]

So, I know you had a specific subset in mind, but I think http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Devdas_%282002_film%29 could give korean romances good competition for operatically depressing.

Also, not totally relevant, but http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swades was freaking awesome because it contains allusions to the Ramayana during location filming at a NASA base. And the thing keeping the requisite lovers apart is mutual dedication to their life's work.

[aldanise]

Yeah. I get someone to spoil me for everything that I watch/read from Korea, since I can't handle the rocks fall, everyone dies endings without preparation. But, really, I do that for most media I consume; Korea just adds a ... particular importance to the practice.

[kaigou]

Korea just adds a ... particular importance to the practice.

I think the theory is that the bitterness makes the sweet just that much sweeter. And sometimes, that fits the mood... but it's not something you can really count on, like you can usually with Hollywood -- where if it's billed as a romantic comedy, you can be fairly certain it'll be romance (or Hollywood's version of it, at least, which means a lot of heteronormativity and locked-in-stone gender roles, but hey, who's counting?) and try for comedy... but I'm finding that the label "romantic comedy" for k-dramas means a requisite amount of angst along the way, sprinkled with tragedy in between the comedic elements.

Curious, now that I think of it: western genres don't tend to mix up quite like asian fare (Korean, Japanese, even Chinese, and plenty of Indian, from what I've seen). The humor tends to get blacker and darker as you go east from Europe, then past a certain point it becomes light-hearted again, but it's light-hearted in the midst of some of the worst tragic scenarios. Even anime/manga shows the same traits, of having unexpected (to Western eyes) comedic deformation humor riding almost on the tails of intense emotion.

[kaigou]

If we step away from the hyperbole, then just about every culture I can name -- well, make that "any culture anyone can name", really -- probably has some major doozies. I don't think tragedy (or comedy, or any genre) is cultural -- although humor definitely is, especially when you get into situational humor -- but that instead our appetite or tolerance for tragic elements is just part of being human.

My favorite retelling of the Ramayana story is actually Fire -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fire_%281996_film%29 -- a 1996 film by Deepa Mehta. Unsurprisingly, it caused a furor of controversy in India, but taken in light of other gay-content films I've seen, I think the director speaks with some accuracy when she says it's not a lesbian film, but a film about the choices we make. Placed against that statement, the retelling/remix of the Rama/Sita love story works really well, because it gives Sita (Nita, in the film) the chance to make her own choice/s.

Thing is, my appreciation for musicals just about begins and ends with Porgy and Bess -- any other (American) musical or operetta you can name, I hear four notes and think, man, this is boring. That puts my finger on the fast-forward button during Bollywood productions, but it's not a slam on Bollywood, just a recognition of my tastes when it comes to how music and dance are incorporated into storytelling. The exception might (since it's not a true Bollywood production, in terms of the genre, I'm told) be Monsoon Wedding, which did have song-and-dance but in a very organic and realistic way. With no sudden appearances of camels or helicopters or even lead female protagonists bathing under scenic waterfalls while fully dressed.

Not that I'm against any of the above, it's just... Bollywood is, like a lot of niche-genre filmic cultures, very much an acquired taste.

[(Anonymous)]

I just meant that in the specific category of bollywood = 'lavish, musical spectacle', there are plenty of operatic tragedies. Though I think it is fair to say they are less in fashion now, and don't get nearly the exposure in the US markets as the happy endings.

Re Swades: I just found the musical aeronautical engineer getting compared to Rama to be absolute crack. Having the movie alternate between dance numbers and MacGyver-like engineering solutions hit the geek centers of my brain pretty squarely. Then to top it off, his love interest insists on staying in the boonies to use her degree to help the poor, because that is way more important than some guy. Made me happy, and I highly recommend. S'all.

[adpuchalski]

I have no plans to ever illustrate Hamlet again, but it would almost be worth it now that I can associate it mentally with Korean dramas.