no one expects the chinese illuminati

[kaigou]

I finally tracked down a copy of Legend, aka The Story of the First King's Four Gods, aka The Great King and the Four Guardians. It's got every button I want pushed: major themes, intricate relationships, major politics, a solid dose of the fantastical, a little bit of humor, continuous character development, and life and death on the line. With punk rockers. (No, really. There's fusion and then there's fusion.)

It also has Ming the Merciless!

When trying to find a copy (and subs, don't forget the subs), I came across a mention somewhere that this series was banned in the PRC. Something about it had the PRC completely bonkers-mad. After the first few episodes, my theory's that it's because the PRC's argument for taking over Tibet was on the basis of some vassalage treaty from four hundred years ago (which may be an extreme gloss, as it's been awhile since I've reviewed the details). To have Korea come out with a series that reminds all viewers that once upon a time (and we're talking like 400 CE, here, so think King Arthur and you're in the same kind of legendary status), Korea controlled not just its current peninsula (of North and South), but a massive stretch of territory reaching into Mongolia and Manchuria, and I think a chunk of what's currently the northern parts of China. In other words: China's basis per Tibet could easily be Korea's basis per China.

Or maybe it's just the annoying and stereotypical assumption that China = Ming the Merciless.

No, really. Here I thought the Hollywood Fu Manchu/M. Merciless farce was, well, just Hollywood. But I swear, the guy playing Fu Manchu the Hwachun Big Bad was lifted straight out of Saturday afternoon re-runs of 30's era Flash Gordon serials. The collar! The long coats with trains! The excessive and unrelenting use of red! The long mustache and the pointy goatee! The forked eyebrows! The hair pulled back in a long braid! (And in case you miss the 'long braid' distinction -- compared to the Korean characters who wear their hair half-down, half-pulled into a top knot, the braid is always pulled around to the front to rest on the actor's chest just so you know: look! braid! chinese! bad guy!) The hands always held like claws! (No, really: the actor never holds his hands in any other position.) The slow, deliberate moves that are supposed to look sinister! The constant glaring from under the bushy eyebrows! (After hour four, all I could think was: man, he's got to have the neck-ache from hell.)



Stills don't do the character's... uhm... badness -- and I don't mean 'bad' in the sense of "ooh, that character is a scary Big Bad", I mean in the sense of "omg, the suckage, it burnsssss usssss". It's not just Ming the Merciless. It's Ming the Merciless as portrayed by a wax museum animatronic display with dying batteries. You practically expect to hear the whirring sound as the actor gears up (pun intended) for his next, too-slow, way-too-deliberate move. Whirrrrrr, whirrrrrr, whirrrrr.

If the other characters had any genre-savvy about them, they'd be all: no way are we hanging with this guy! He's totally sinister! Obviously up to no good! This can only end in tears!

(Well, of course, since it is a kdrama. Kdramas can do tears and action, or tears and rhetoric, but it can't do action and rhetoric without the tears. Tears are mandatory.)

But then the plot would probably be pretty short. And very easily solved. Possibly, however, slightly more compelling though, for not having to waste screen time on a Ming the Merciless arthritic redux.

The final capper for me was when Ming the Merciless Fu Manchu Hwachun Big Bad declares that not only is the 'Later Yan' (a Chinese state) under Hwachun rule, but that the Baekje king is on the throne due to Hwachun interference, and various other names and places I didn't catch. It's all due to Hwachun pulling strings for two thousand years and poking fingers into every pie. Hwachun is everywhere, and it is always watching you.

Me: Holy crap! It's the Chinese Illuminati!

Comments

[kaigou]

I thought the entire purpose of nationalist historians is to obscure the issues. (Saying that after through dinner and afterwards discussing the possible political bases of the Japanese creation myth/s, and the less-now-but-still Japanese anathema to ever acknowledging any kind of a Korean origin, unh-hunh.) Like I said in a comment above, history is written by winners and losers, but all history is written with a goal of getting you to sympathize with a particular version, and that version is presented because there's something to be gained, some kind of benefit in having you see history in a certain light. I place no blame for that, but it does make one rather cynical when it comes to reading history books: I'm always wondering what the author (or original source) really wanted me to conclude after reading, y'know?

As for Hwachon being chinese... I don't know if they're supposed to be, per se. I suppose it's possible that they wanted to signal from the get-go that the guy is evuuuuuul, and how better to do that than to use a widely-accepted coding for evuuuul? If coding a character as "chinese" is shorthand for "this one's the bad guy," there you go. (This is universal, though, as I've seen foreign and domestic movies/television where a bad guy is coded as bad via some cultural stereotype of an Other. Hollywood gives 'em a Russian accent -- ooh! it's the Russian mob! -- or a kafiya -- ooh! it's an Arab terrorist! -- or the Fu Manchu mustache -- ooh! it's those Inscrutable Orientals! ... and thus, half the work of characterization is considered done, thanks, moving along now.

Though, reading between the lines and the way the show presents/describes its legendary backstory, it sounds to me (and as always, credit/blame to translators if I'm wrongly interpreting) as though the Tiger tribe -- after being evicted by the heaven-loved Bear tribe -- took its toys and headed off elsewhere. Once arriving elsewhere, it then made a base, gathered power, and, I dunno, hung out for two thousand years or something. The implication seems to be that the ruling class in northern China is heavily influenced/infiltrated by the descendants of the Tiger tribe, if they're not outright the same thing -- or an alternate reading is that a big chunk of Chinese history/families (during the Sixteen States period or whatever it's called) were grounded in and/or controlled and/or puppet-ized by what's essentially a bunch of proto-Korean refugees.

Not to mention the not-so-minor (at least when we're talking myths) issue that the Hwachon's base in northern China, and the extent of its supposed power/reach, means that a quasi-illuminati group was hanging out in China, but its entire focus remained solely on Korea. There's maybe a half-episode, come and gone real quick, where the Hwachon are implied to be tugging on the inheritance route for the Later Yan -- but even that's clearly being done as a means to manipulate Gugoryeo. So despite the heavy Chinese-style-coding on the bad guys, the bad guys are almost indifferent to China -- and seeing how China seems to be determined to see its historical self as the alpha and the omega in all things civilization-related in the Far East, well, I bet that indifference was just icing on the cake.

So maybe it's just shortcut with stereotype, but it's a pretty blatant stereotype all the same. And besides: anime hair!

[troisroyaumes]

Oh, I don't doubt your reading of it at all; I'm just baffled by how I completely missed the subtext when I was watching. Certainly, (modern) Koreans have really conflicting/mixed opinions about the Chinese, ranging from the extremely xenophobic to slavishly admiring (I have seen both extremes expressed by the same people!). So yes, I'm not surprised that they resorted to a stereotype of the Other to stand in for Evil. (I guess I'm just more used to recognizing Evil Japanese stereotypes, heh.)

Re: cynicism regarding history, yes, I don't necessarily condemn nationalist historical revisionism because the nationalism is very much a response to the contant violations of sovereignty during the last century, but it does make you take most things with a grain of salt.

On a related note, I would really like to know more about the history of the ethnic Korean communities in China--some have retained the language, others have not, but even some of the latter seem to still identify as Korean. (E.g. this one guy I met, who despite only having spoken Mandarin at home and having a Chinese name, introduced himself as Korean.)

[kaigou]

I'm just baffled by how I completely missed the subtext when I was watching.

It's possible the only reason I twigged on it was because I grew up watching old movies -- like Flash Gordon serials -- on Saturday afternoons. (And yes, I do recall being unimpressed with Ming, who seemed to always just get Flash in his clutches, and then something would happen and Flash would get away, and it just seemed to me that wouldn't Ming eventually learn, and this time, not talk about what he's up to, but just shoot Flash immediately and be done with it? But noooo, Ming never learned, the poor sap.)

Although as racial coding goes, I'd much rather have Ming the Merciless as code for "bad guy" over, say, some other Saturday afternoon b&w movie from the same era. Like, say, Shirley Temple in The Little Colonel, which would make for one seriously freaky bad guy.

I think I just hurt my brain.

Err, meant to add (on a more serious note): the flow and ebb of intercultural movements -- like Koreans in China or Japan, or the Han people in Vietnam, and so on -- is really fascinating but something I've only ever seen in the middle of references to something else. I'm sure someone has to have done their dissertation on it, though.

[aldanise]

(I have a friend doing her thesis on North Koreans in Japan, and she seems to be finding quite a bit. Mostly anthropology and sociology standpoint, rather than historical, though.)