neomuneomuneomuneomu joahae
22 Nov 2010 04:16 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kaigouI just finished a series that retells a Korean legend and also riffs off the story of The Little Mermaid. As for the issue of feminist critique, well, the Hong sisters really hit it out of the park with this one. Like, into the next state. With bonus sparklers.
There's a lot of different places to begin, so instead I'll start with two videos. Might as well get it out of the way that GU MI-HO -- a mangling of the Korean title for "nine-tailed fox", "gumiho" -- played by Shin Mina -- slays me with the cute. Every time those dimples appear, I am down for the count. Lee Seung-gi plays opposite her, as CHA DAE-WOONG, and his dimples aren't bad, but she steals every scene and there's nothing anyone can do about it.
To quote dramabeans' comment from the ep3 recap, this specific song title is [ 여우비 ], which "means 'sudden rain' or 'sunshower' but if you take the etymological roots it literally means 'fox rain,' in keeping with the gumiho motif." Part of the gumiho legend, or a related legend, is that when it rains suddenly on an otherwise sunny day, it means a gumiho (or maybe 'the' gumiho) is crying.
(Note: the singer is Lee Sun Hee -- name spelled in several different ways from what I've seen -- and if you search for her on youtube, you'll find a handful of other clips for her. Her voice is phenomenal. I read hints here and there that she's considered the South Korean diva, and her pipes are worth the title.)
A little bit of background, again courtesy dramabeans' post on pop-culture of the gumiho:
For the Hong sisters' adaptation, the story begins with a monk telling two female tourists about the legend of the gumiho painting, housed in the little temple you see in the opening of that video. According to the story, the gumiho came down to earth and promptly entranced all the men with her beauty: the farmers stopped farming, the students stopped studying, the merchants stopped selling, etc.
Naturally this caused a great deal of consternation due to the gumiho upsetting the order of things, so the Samshin Grandmother (Three Gods Grandmother) decided the best thing to do would be to find the gumiho a husband. While the gumiho is getting ready in delight for her marriage day (and, by implication, for thus gaining access to the 'human' world as a permanent resident), the women of the town are incensed that one of their men might have to marry this unearthly beauty.
Thus, in the Hong sister's version, the tradition of the gumiho eating a man's liver isn't due to the gumiho's own actions... but in fact is malicious PR, spread by the women of the town. Warning the men that the only reason for the marriage was so the gumiho could devour their liver, the woman successfully scared off any potential suitors. The gumiho was left alone, waiting for a bridegroom who never showed up, and in the end, the Samshin Grandmother decided the only solution was to cut off the gumiho's nine tails and entrap her in a painting.
When this retelling-prologue concludes, I suspect the two women tourists are supposed to be stand-ins for the Hong sisters. One of them says to the other, "well, that's hardly fair. All she wanted was happiness, and she's the one who ends up punished?" Their disgust at the unfairness mirrors my own.
From the standpoint of a feminist critique, the original legend of the gumiho (as noted in the dramabeans' pop-culture post) is pretty freaking anti-feminist and anti-women. It casts the gumiho as voracious and cruel, interested only in consuming a man's life. The Hong sisters might not be candidates for the best-ever at satirizing and/or reversing traditional Korean gender roles, but they come pretty damn close with this one, and it starts from the opening segment with that skillful turn-around on the traditional legend.
After the prologue, we go through a series of ridiculous (and somewhat self-created, due to the male lead's irresponsibility and immaturity) events with a young man named Dae-woong. Through various hijinks, he ends up at the temple where he unwittingly releases the fox-spirit. The gumiho's sudden appearance terrifies Dae-woong, and he flees into the forest, right into a severe fall. (It's implied later that he should've died, the injuries were that bad.) Despite being free, the gumiho returns to save him by planting in him her precious spirit-bead (and thereby becoming one of the few kdrama heroines who kisses first!).
The bead's presence lends him the mystical fox-strength. In return for saving him (for saving her), she asks his help in learning how to be human. (Including mimicking everything he does, like at 1:17, which makes for some amusing gender-implications, seeing how it's a girl mimicking a boy's very boy-like gestures and words.)
I'm including this second video because it shows more of what you don't see in the first video, which is the Hong sisters' take on the legendary sex-voracity of the gumiho, and her powers of seduction. What in tradition is cast as "female seducing the male via her feminine wiles" becomes, in the Hong sisters' version, simply a self-aware young woman who owns her sexuality. She knows what she wants, and she has no compunction getting it, but she's never once shown as malicious or devious. Instead, she's possibly the most straight-up, forthright character in the entire cast.
The opening segment in this video is one of the best examples of where the Hong sisters flip around the usual kdrama (and more broadly, what seems to be general Korean) assumptions about male-female romantic interactions. The woman does her best to orchestrate contact by indirect means (so she's not seen as being a 'bad' girl for stating her sexual interest outright), and at some point the man calls her on it, being all alpha-ey. Except in this case, Mi-ho's not being coy at all about 'mating' with Dae-woong, so I guess he figures he needs to call her bluff.
Note the shoving-against-the-wall, the palm-to-wall, the forceful speaking. When this occurs, Dae-woong has already mapped it out in his head (in a little fantasy segment, not shown here): he'll bend down for a kiss, and Mi-ho will turn her head away, suddenly bashful in light of his aggressive alpha-behavior.
Except... he forgot about the fact that this is Mi-ho.
(My favorite segment? About 2:08, they're sleeping in a gymnasium. Miho kicks the upper platform of mats, dislodging Dae-woong, rolling out of the way and then merrily back up against him, so she can cuddle. She just looks so pleased with herself. Dimples again!)
(Later, when they stay at Dae-woong's grandfather's, Mi-ho kicks Dae-woong out of his room. Why does he have to sleep somewhere else, he complains, and Mi-ho says if he sleeps in the same room, she'll want to mate. He insists he's not thinking about it all the time, to which she replies that she is! Bwahaha.)
Anyway, so here we have a flip-around on an old legend. In the course of the story, there's a passage that is very much a satirical and pointed reply to love stories with powerful female characters. Dae-woong's dream is to become an action star, and Mi-ho wants to know if there are any action movies with non-humans like her. He can think of one: a movie where a young poor man falls in love with a ghost. (Acted out by the two leads with charm just this side of cheese.) Mi-ho is delighted, and says, "and then they lived happily ever after!" Dae-woong deflates, admitting, "actually, no... the ghost disappears and then the man's very sad."
Mi-ho replies in some disgust, "don't you know any stories that don't have stupid characters like that?"
Unfortunately for her, all the other examples Dae-woong can think of... have stupid (disappearing) characters as well. It's very clear to Mi-ho (and the audience, I'd say) that the overwhelming message is that if you're non-human, at the end of the story, you must go away. You don't get to live happily, hell, you don't even get to live. The movie-stories become one more reason Mi-ho wants to become human, because "being human" is clearly a prerequisite for "being happy" (in any form, with or without someone).
Before you ask, the must-get-married message of "becoming human" is also toned down, because Mi-ho experiences a number of other things that are "part of being human" that she can't do, as a gumiho. She can't work, because she doesn't have papers. That means she can't own a cell phone, which requires an address and a bank account... and you have to be human to have those. She can't even go into the college library with Dae-woong, because that requires student ID, and only humans have that. Mi-ho is surrounded constantly by things she wants and can't have, and all of them are predicated on "being human".
It's not just some nebulous "wanting a guy" that drives her, so much (as she even states explicitly, later in the series) that she wants to be human -- and liking Dae-woong (who Mi-ho calls "Wooooooaaaaaannnng-yah" which really does make him sound even more like the beta-borderline-wimp that he is, and talk about against-the-grain for usual kdrama romantic leads) is just something that would make "being human" even better. If I recall correctly, her phrasing is translated as something like, she doesn't need Dae-woong to be human, but she likes him, so she wants him as part of her being human.
In the midst of all her other discoveries about life-as-human (alongside her constant search for COW, since as a carnivore, wouldn't a fox consider a whole cow to be an absolute delicacy? -- including, at times, licking pictures of meat when she can't get the real thing and being disgusted by the fact that the picture doesn't taste as good -- I did warn you that the cute would kill, didn't I?) -- Mi-ho begins a search for a story that will show someone like her, who doesn't "disappear" at the end. Another character recommends The Little Mermaid, and Mi-ho delightedly begins to read, savoring each page, even getting as mad at Dae-woong for possibly spoiling her as any fan might for unlabeled spoilers.
(Another paren: here's where it starts to show that Dae-woong is no longer seeing the gumiho as "some alien being" but someone with hopes and feelings. He checks the mermaid book and realizes it's the version where the mermaid disappears at the end... and to protect Mi-ho from the disappointment, he rips out the last few pages, hoping that his own insertion of a happy ending will save her from being hurt by the story.)
Side-step now into The Little Mermaid, a story I never really cared much for as a kid. I just wasn't into mermaids, really, so it was only mention in My Girlfriend is a Gumiho that made me go look up the Anderson version.
Man, that story is horrible.
Let me see if I got this right: mermaid sees prince on ship, and wants to become human because she's in love with the prince. She trades her voice for a pair of legs, meets the prince (who's in love with a human princess already), and discovers that if she wants to become human, she must kill the prince, or else she'll die. In the end, she decides to let the prince live on with his beloved, and she disappears into the sea air. (I think the version I read was she leaps into the ocean, only to become bubbles on the water's surface.)
Either way, it sucks. Royally, pun intended. First, the surface aspects: she longs for (another woman's) man, makes a devil's bargain, and then has to pay the ultimate price for impinging on a world where she doesn't belong. Underneath that, we need to remember that the mermaid's power was in her voice -- more specifically, the siren-like quality that could drive a man to cast himself into the ocean (and drown, of course). That is, when she's not singing down terrible storms that will capsize full-sized ships. Like the gumiho, the mermaid holds the power of life and death, undeniably a figure of extreme seduction/attraction, but also causing the man's death if he tries to reach her and/or contain her. Bottom line: neither the mermaid nor the gumiho, in their natural form, can be controlled by man.
It's with some synchronicity that someone on my flist linked to a post titled Sookie is a darling, but she's no Buffy Summers, by Merely (an) Academic. Very much worth reading in full, but what's particularly relevant here is this part:
The mermaid's voice and the gumiho's bead are representations of the unnatural/non-male female power, and so long as the non-male (read: non-human) creature holds this power, she's evil by definition. To gain the love of a good man, she must literally destroy herself. In the mermaid's case, she silences herself (what kind of a message is that?) and mutilates herself. In the gumiho's case, she simply hands over the source of her power into a man's hands, and then slowly destroys herself (losing her tails) in the process of becoming human. Becoming, that is, something neutered and dis-empowered and weak enough that she'll gain the label of "good" and thereby deserving of love.
I mean, that's freaking sick. Plain and simple.
That's a twisted and sick message to give any girl-children, and I don't think Disney does it any better. By changing things around so the girl gets the boy, it's not exactly an improvement. The mermaid still pays the price of losing her voice, and I for one (okay, loud introvert here, but I'm not biased, really) have major issues with the notion that winning someone's heart requires being completely silent. What's her job? Short version: sit still and look pretty.
Are these really messages I'd ever want a girl-child learning?
I think the Disney version torques the horrible-ness even further, because the prince isn't in love with someone else (a possible rival); he only sees the mermaid/girl. So instead of her silence (per the original version) rendering her unable to compete against a rival, her silence has no contrast for the reader/viewer to see the prince preferring (and loving) the girl who does talk. Disney's version actually reinforces, even more than Anderson's original, that silence equals attractiveness.
Although Disney slaps a happy ending on it (of course), it also still removes all the mermaid's power when her father makes her fully human. Now she's just a girl -- a good, obedient girl with a nice singing voice -- but all of her potential power held in her mermaid-form is gone. As Merely Academic noted, the only power the mermaid gets, in the end, is that of choosing her beloved. Her original power is evil/harmful, so her one acceptable power-format is the beloved-choosing. Once she'd done that... she's left with nothing.
Or, as in the case of the gumiho, she's not only left with nothing, she's given it all up to the man. Literally, via the fox-bead. This giving-up on the woman's part is echoed several times in different ways, like when Mi-ho and Dae-woong are discussing the plotline for a movie that Dae-woong's gotten a role in. The female character is named Full Moon; the male character's name is New Moon. The idea is that Full Moon gives everything she has to save New Moon's (empty) life, and in the end he's now full and able to live happily. But, as Mi-ho notes, again it's at the cost of someone's life, notably Full Moon, who gets chalked up as yet another disappearance.
To Dae-woong's (and the Hong sisters') credit, he starts to realize this is a valid complaint: why should it always be that the girl sacrifices everything and never gets to have happiness of her own? Just what did the guy do to deserve that much sacrifice, other than just be male? (And, as Dae-woong eventually realizes: he doesn't deserve it. His realization throws an awesome spanner into the works, at about the three-quarter mark.)
I've noticed that the Hong Sisters do tend to cast their second female leads as older women, who start out disregarding the primary male lead as a childhood friend, ie Delightful Girl Chuun-Hyang, or as inconsequential, ie My Girlfriend is a Gumiho. (I've read this pattern continues in other Hong sisters works, but I'm still working my way through the list, and Hong Gil Dong deviates from this pattern.)
This series has EUN Hye-In (Park Soo Jin) playing the role of Evil Other Woman. At first dismissive of Dae-woong, she only notices his value when a (seemingly, in this case) younger woman shows up, and after that, it's claws out, handbags at dawn. In fact, if there's any character in the drama that's a stereotypical nine-tailed fox (seductive, malicious, two-faced, temptress out to destroy a man) it would be Hye-In. She checks everything off the list and then some, while Mi-ho has almost no skills at deception, in contrast. Where Dae-woong misunderstands Mi-ho, it becomes clear (to Dae-woong and to the viewers), it's not because Mi-ho has misled him. It's been his own failure for assuming, or not asking.
In fact, the series is possibly remarkable -- if no other reason I've mentioned pings on your radar -- for the fact that it doesn't play the Suffering In Noble Silence card. (Oh, Cinderella's Sister, how you freaking suffered in silence for how many episodes? ...thank heavens for recaps, is all I can say.) As javabeans and girlfridays' recaps pointed out, the stakes in this story are life-and-death, so the usual ego-based "if I speak out, I'll get hurt" nonsense gets skipped. The issues at hand aren't the usual "does he like me or not" but are on a much more epic scale, and the script (and the characters/actors) seem to recognize that this puts the usual petty let's-keep-them-apart-a-little-longer deviations in perspective. When death and/or the rules of heaven might be what's keeping you apart, what do you have to lose by speaking honestly about whether you like vegetables?
One place this shows up is in the line I used for the post's title.Now, I'm not entirely certain (Korean-speakers, correct me if I'm wrong) but it looks like what I heard each time [thanks, troisroyaumes!] This is what (or a variant of what) Mi-ho yells out, or says quietly, or just repeats to herself:
I really really really really really really really really really really like you...
Neoreul neomu neomu neomu neomu neomu neomu neomu neomu joahae...
If you're wondering what it sounds like, to American ears, that "neomu" sounds a lot like "nue-mah" or "numa" so when she reels off about eight of them, it's a long string of numanumanumanumanuma. (Which, I should add, she does possibly more about COW as anything else. Because cow? Nothing beats COW. And that makes it even funnier when Dae-woong takes her for ice cream, and orders by colors: "cow-color, pig-color, and chicken-color, with lots of extra cow-color." Afterwards Mi-ho declares that cow -- that would be chocolate -- is the absolute best. Ahahaha.)
It's even funnier when Mi-ho spontaneously hollers this long string, because the way Dae-woong reacts each time. Not in public!, his shocked expression (tinged with embarrassed pleasure) seems to say. I get the impression that such self-assertive, loud, public declarations -- let alone from a woman -- just are. Not. Done.
You could even say the mermaid's silence is about as far as you can get from Mi-ho, who doesn't hold back nor deceive. Well, I should say Mi-ho doesn't, mostly; she learns to be a little more subtle, is all, especially when it comes to getting the physical touch she desires -- Dae-woong's earliest reactions make it pretty clear that it's not socially acceptable, to Mi-ho's annoyance. Eventually, she begins mimicking other people-on-dates to use them as her guideline for what she can do, which is why she sticks her straw into a Dae-woong's cup, or yanks his arm to keep it around her neck, in the movie theater. Other couples were doing it, thus Mi-ho figures it's acceptable for humans, and since she wants to appear human, there you go!
Anyway, it's Hye-In, the human girl (who discovers, and is repulsed by, Mi-ho's status as a "monster") who is the true monster. But as the story eventually reveals, the source of Hye-In's monstrosity isn't necessarily that she's a bad person. It's more complex than this, but one major part, I think, is that she won't put herself out there, take risks. (In fact, the male second lead could be said to be making the same mistake, as he's motivated by guilt of a long-ago memory, and tries to protect himself from a second broken heart by avoiding humans as much as he can.) Hye-In won't tell a guy she likes him, but must manipulate him into liking her so she can be free to go along with it. She won't compete outright, but must scheme to make the other look bad, so she'll win by contrast.
Her actions do escalate until they reach a point of near-monstrosity, but the story doesn't condemn her, nor does it resign her to "obviously bad, and therefore never getting love" in the way of dooming evil second leads. The story doesn't quite redeem her... so much as, in the very end, offers her a chance to redeem herself. How? By speaking up and being honest about how she feels (about a guy, but it's a start). As much as I loved to hate her during the series, seeing her practice Mi-ho's little shooting-guns-of-love -- psyching herself up before she takes the leap and says "I like you" first -- was just another round of kill-me adorable.
Plus, I think it spoke to the Hong sisters' innate non-anti-women stance, that they don't go the route of "evil other woman gets what's coming to her". If there's any coming to be gotten, it's purely in not getting the primary lead. After that... well, the secondary lead is not irredeemable. The primary female lead, you could say, wins by living well, but that doesn't mean the secondary lead (after learning a few lessons) can't live well, too.
Ultimately, both stories -- the mermaid and the fox -- can be either negative or positive, depending on whether you think the goal of "becoming human" is a valid one (setting aside the additional complexity of when "becoming human" is tied inextricably to "falling in love", of course). Early in My Girlfriend is a Gumiho, the second lead asks Mi-ho why she'd want to become human: she'll lose her incredible strength, she'll grow old and die, she won't be able to leap or fly or any of so many other aspects of her non-human power. What does she gain in being human that's worth losing so much? What is worth becoming powerless?
It's not a question Mi-ho answers directly, perhaps because it's a complex question and not one that I think anyone could answer in thirty words or less. A lot of her being-human desire is tied to the modern world and the possibilities she sees, potentials denied her so long as she's not human. But I think it's also because for the vast majority of the story, she honestly believes the nail in the coffin, to mix metaphors: that humans can't love non-humans. If she wants to experience love -- a perfectly human (so to speak) desire -- then she must become human to do so.
Everything Dae-woong says and does reinforces this, from his shocked reactions to her frank admission of wanting to 'mate', from his annoyance/frustration with her naivete/ignorance about everyday things, right down to the fact that he cowers in terror when she shows her tails in the moonlight. In effect, the "good" of powerlessness has become tied to "being human".
Although Dae-woong carries the fox-bead for a good chunk of the story (first because he's healing, then because he hasn't healed fully and may lose his chance at an action role if he's re-injured, and the fox-bead could protect him), the only 'power' it gives him is that of physical healing. The rest of the time? He's almost remarkably beta, to a degree that I can't recall seeing in any other kdrama yet -- well, any kdrama not written by the Hong sisters, that is. In a way, Mi-ho losing her powers doesn't render her less than Dae-woong (although his position as grandson of a rich man might be seen as a 'prince', he hardly has legions to command, and is otherwise quite un-prince-like)... it's more that for them to have a relationship, they must be equals.
At least, that's the logic train she appears to be on, even if she never says it out loud.
Lest you think the Hong sisters do an eventual Hollywood and go with the feminist (or anti-feminist) version of heteronormatizing (anti-feminizing?) the story, I'll only say that they don't. I was holding my breath until the end -- for various reasons, mostly because winning the love, earning the happy-ever-after, doesn't come easy and an epic story requires epic prices. But I was mostly holding my breath for fear that in the last frames, they'd pull a Disney on me.
They didn't. I won't tell you how the Hong sisters tweaked the last few fox-tails of the Korean legend, but I will tell you that if you want a feminist (or proto-feminist) retelling of a horrific fairy tale that's long overdue for a serious woman-positive reworking, then you need to find yourself a copy of My Girlfriend is a Gumiho. Even if you do risk death by dimples before the first episode ends.
Trust me, you'll find it's neomu neomu neomu neomu neomu neomu neomu neomu worth it.
There's a lot of different places to begin, so instead I'll start with two videos. Might as well get it out of the way that GU MI-HO -- a mangling of the Korean title for "nine-tailed fox", "gumiho" -- played by Shin Mina -- slays me with the cute. Every time those dimples appear, I am down for the count. Lee Seung-gi plays opposite her, as CHA DAE-WOONG, and his dimples aren't bad, but she steals every scene and there's nothing anyone can do about it.
To quote dramabeans' comment from the ep3 recap, this specific song title is [ 여우비 ], which "means 'sudden rain' or 'sunshower' but if you take the etymological roots it literally means 'fox rain,' in keeping with the gumiho motif." Part of the gumiho legend, or a related legend, is that when it rains suddenly on an otherwise sunny day, it means a gumiho (or maybe 'the' gumiho) is crying.
(Note: the singer is Lee Sun Hee -- name spelled in several different ways from what I've seen -- and if you search for her on youtube, you'll find a handful of other clips for her. Her voice is phenomenal. I read hints here and there that she's considered the South Korean diva, and her pipes are worth the title.)
A little bit of background, again courtesy dramabeans' post on pop-culture of the gumiho:
A gumiho [구미호] is a nine-tailed fox, a legendary creature with origins in ancient Chinese myths dating back centuries. There are versions of the figure in Chinese and Japanese folklore, although each differs slightly. The Chinese huli jing and the Japanese kitsune have more ambiguous moral compasses, in that they can be both good and bad, and are not necessarily out to get everyone. The Korean gumiho, on the other hand, is almost always a malignant figure, a carnivore who feasts on human flesh.
For the Hong sisters' adaptation, the story begins with a monk telling two female tourists about the legend of the gumiho painting, housed in the little temple you see in the opening of that video. According to the story, the gumiho came down to earth and promptly entranced all the men with her beauty: the farmers stopped farming, the students stopped studying, the merchants stopped selling, etc.
Naturally this caused a great deal of consternation due to the gumiho upsetting the order of things, so the Samshin Grandmother (Three Gods Grandmother) decided the best thing to do would be to find the gumiho a husband. While the gumiho is getting ready in delight for her marriage day (and, by implication, for thus gaining access to the 'human' world as a permanent resident), the women of the town are incensed that one of their men might have to marry this unearthly beauty.
Thus, in the Hong sister's version, the tradition of the gumiho eating a man's liver isn't due to the gumiho's own actions... but in fact is malicious PR, spread by the women of the town. Warning the men that the only reason for the marriage was so the gumiho could devour their liver, the woman successfully scared off any potential suitors. The gumiho was left alone, waiting for a bridegroom who never showed up, and in the end, the Samshin Grandmother decided the only solution was to cut off the gumiho's nine tails and entrap her in a painting.
When this retelling-prologue concludes, I suspect the two women tourists are supposed to be stand-ins for the Hong sisters. One of them says to the other, "well, that's hardly fair. All she wanted was happiness, and she's the one who ends up punished?" Their disgust at the unfairness mirrors my own.
From the standpoint of a feminist critique, the original legend of the gumiho (as noted in the dramabeans' pop-culture post) is pretty freaking anti-feminist and anti-women. It casts the gumiho as voracious and cruel, interested only in consuming a man's life. The Hong sisters might not be candidates for the best-ever at satirizing and/or reversing traditional Korean gender roles, but they come pretty damn close with this one, and it starts from the opening segment with that skillful turn-around on the traditional legend.
After the prologue, we go through a series of ridiculous (and somewhat self-created, due to the male lead's irresponsibility and immaturity) events with a young man named Dae-woong. Through various hijinks, he ends up at the temple where he unwittingly releases the fox-spirit. The gumiho's sudden appearance terrifies Dae-woong, and he flees into the forest, right into a severe fall. (It's implied later that he should've died, the injuries were that bad.) Despite being free, the gumiho returns to save him by planting in him her precious spirit-bead (and thereby becoming one of the few kdrama heroines who kisses first!).
The bead's presence lends him the mystical fox-strength. In return for saving him (for saving her), she asks his help in learning how to be human. (Including mimicking everything he does, like at 1:17, which makes for some amusing gender-implications, seeing how it's a girl mimicking a boy's very boy-like gestures and words.)
I'm including this second video because it shows more of what you don't see in the first video, which is the Hong sisters' take on the legendary sex-voracity of the gumiho, and her powers of seduction. What in tradition is cast as "female seducing the male via her feminine wiles" becomes, in the Hong sisters' version, simply a self-aware young woman who owns her sexuality. She knows what she wants, and she has no compunction getting it, but she's never once shown as malicious or devious. Instead, she's possibly the most straight-up, forthright character in the entire cast.
The opening segment in this video is one of the best examples of where the Hong sisters flip around the usual kdrama (and more broadly, what seems to be general Korean) assumptions about male-female romantic interactions. The woman does her best to orchestrate contact by indirect means (so she's not seen as being a 'bad' girl for stating her sexual interest outright), and at some point the man calls her on it, being all alpha-ey. Except in this case, Mi-ho's not being coy at all about 'mating' with Dae-woong, so I guess he figures he needs to call her bluff.
Note the shoving-against-the-wall, the palm-to-wall, the forceful speaking. When this occurs, Dae-woong has already mapped it out in his head (in a little fantasy segment, not shown here): he'll bend down for a kiss, and Mi-ho will turn her head away, suddenly bashful in light of his aggressive alpha-behavior.
Except... he forgot about the fact that this is Mi-ho.
(My favorite segment? About 2:08, they're sleeping in a gymnasium. Miho kicks the upper platform of mats, dislodging Dae-woong, rolling out of the way and then merrily back up against him, so she can cuddle. She just looks so pleased with herself. Dimples again!)
(Later, when they stay at Dae-woong's grandfather's, Mi-ho kicks Dae-woong out of his room. Why does he have to sleep somewhere else, he complains, and Mi-ho says if he sleeps in the same room, she'll want to mate. He insists he's not thinking about it all the time, to which she replies that she is! Bwahaha.)
Anyway, so here we have a flip-around on an old legend. In the course of the story, there's a passage that is very much a satirical and pointed reply to love stories with powerful female characters. Dae-woong's dream is to become an action star, and Mi-ho wants to know if there are any action movies with non-humans like her. He can think of one: a movie where a young poor man falls in love with a ghost. (Acted out by the two leads with charm just this side of cheese.) Mi-ho is delighted, and says, "and then they lived happily ever after!" Dae-woong deflates, admitting, "actually, no... the ghost disappears and then the man's very sad."
Mi-ho replies in some disgust, "don't you know any stories that don't have stupid characters like that?"
Unfortunately for her, all the other examples Dae-woong can think of... have stupid (disappearing) characters as well. It's very clear to Mi-ho (and the audience, I'd say) that the overwhelming message is that if you're non-human, at the end of the story, you must go away. You don't get to live happily, hell, you don't even get to live. The movie-stories become one more reason Mi-ho wants to become human, because "being human" is clearly a prerequisite for "being happy" (in any form, with or without someone).
Before you ask, the must-get-married message of "becoming human" is also toned down, because Mi-ho experiences a number of other things that are "part of being human" that she can't do, as a gumiho. She can't work, because she doesn't have papers. That means she can't own a cell phone, which requires an address and a bank account... and you have to be human to have those. She can't even go into the college library with Dae-woong, because that requires student ID, and only humans have that. Mi-ho is surrounded constantly by things she wants and can't have, and all of them are predicated on "being human".
It's not just some nebulous "wanting a guy" that drives her, so much (as she even states explicitly, later in the series) that she wants to be human -- and liking Dae-woong (who Mi-ho calls "Wooooooaaaaaannnng-yah" which really does make him sound even more like the beta-borderline-wimp that he is, and talk about against-the-grain for usual kdrama romantic leads) is just something that would make "being human" even better. If I recall correctly, her phrasing is translated as something like, she doesn't need Dae-woong to be human, but she likes him, so she wants him as part of her being human.
In the midst of all her other discoveries about life-as-human (alongside her constant search for COW, since as a carnivore, wouldn't a fox consider a whole cow to be an absolute delicacy? -- including, at times, licking pictures of meat when she can't get the real thing and being disgusted by the fact that the picture doesn't taste as good -- I did warn you that the cute would kill, didn't I?) -- Mi-ho begins a search for a story that will show someone like her, who doesn't "disappear" at the end. Another character recommends The Little Mermaid, and Mi-ho delightedly begins to read, savoring each page, even getting as mad at Dae-woong for possibly spoiling her as any fan might for unlabeled spoilers.
(Another paren: here's where it starts to show that Dae-woong is no longer seeing the gumiho as "some alien being" but someone with hopes and feelings. He checks the mermaid book and realizes it's the version where the mermaid disappears at the end... and to protect Mi-ho from the disappointment, he rips out the last few pages, hoping that his own insertion of a happy ending will save her from being hurt by the story.)
Side-step now into The Little Mermaid, a story I never really cared much for as a kid. I just wasn't into mermaids, really, so it was only mention in My Girlfriend is a Gumiho that made me go look up the Anderson version.
Man, that story is horrible.
Let me see if I got this right: mermaid sees prince on ship, and wants to become human because she's in love with the prince. She trades her voice for a pair of legs, meets the prince (who's in love with a human princess already), and discovers that if she wants to become human, she must kill the prince, or else she'll die. In the end, she decides to let the prince live on with his beloved, and she disappears into the sea air. (I think the version I read was she leaps into the ocean, only to become bubbles on the water's surface.)
Either way, it sucks. Royally, pun intended. First, the surface aspects: she longs for (another woman's) man, makes a devil's bargain, and then has to pay the ultimate price for impinging on a world where she doesn't belong. Underneath that, we need to remember that the mermaid's power was in her voice -- more specifically, the siren-like quality that could drive a man to cast himself into the ocean (and drown, of course). That is, when she's not singing down terrible storms that will capsize full-sized ships. Like the gumiho, the mermaid holds the power of life and death, undeniably a figure of extreme seduction/attraction, but also causing the man's death if he tries to reach her and/or contain her. Bottom line: neither the mermaid nor the gumiho, in their natural form, can be controlled by man.
It's with some synchronicity that someone on my flist linked to a post titled Sookie is a darling, but she's no Buffy Summers, by Merely (an) Academic. Very much worth reading in full, but what's particularly relevant here is this part:
Women's only power, in the romance, is erotic, and it is relinquished (into the male's control) the moment she finally uses that power to choose a permanent mate. However, failing to choose a mate also constitutes the failure of the pattern. The story is disappointing if she does not ultimately mate, and also if she does. There is, in the conventional romance, no way that a woman can use her power and also keep it; either way, she is stripped, by the end of the story, of the only independent power she had. Still, women read and watch romances by the millions because romances do, at least, show women wielding power, if only temporarily, and only the only kind of power 'good' women are allowed to hold in conventional Western stories, before they give it up. We read these stories faut de mieux, because they are all we have.
[...]
Women become adults in Western conventional stories through the initiation rite of marriage... But in marriage, they submit their (erotic) power to male control. This aspect of marriage was quite conscious in, for example, ancient Greek thought, where the same word (damazo) was used of taming a wild animal, breaking a horse, and marrying a wife; and it is still implicit in Western story patterns (whether or not it is true of the actual institution of marriage). So women, in the conventional Western romance, can only become adults by relinquishing the only power they are represented as having - control over their own erotic potential - to male authority. Adult women are either subordinate to a male authority, or they are evil ...
The mermaid's voice and the gumiho's bead are representations of the unnatural/non-male female power, and so long as the non-male (read: non-human) creature holds this power, she's evil by definition. To gain the love of a good man, she must literally destroy herself. In the mermaid's case, she silences herself (what kind of a message is that?) and mutilates herself. In the gumiho's case, she simply hands over the source of her power into a man's hands, and then slowly destroys herself (losing her tails) in the process of becoming human. Becoming, that is, something neutered and dis-empowered and weak enough that she'll gain the label of "good" and thereby deserving of love.
I mean, that's freaking sick. Plain and simple.
That's a twisted and sick message to give any girl-children, and I don't think Disney does it any better. By changing things around so the girl gets the boy, it's not exactly an improvement. The mermaid still pays the price of losing her voice, and I for one (okay, loud introvert here, but I'm not biased, really) have major issues with the notion that winning someone's heart requires being completely silent. What's her job? Short version: sit still and look pretty.
Are these really messages I'd ever want a girl-child learning?
- Men prefer girls who don't speak/talk-back.
- Being powerful equals being evil.
- Being weak equals being good.
- You have to be good (powerless) to deserve love.
- Ergo, if you're powerful, no one will love you.
I think the Disney version torques the horrible-ness even further, because the prince isn't in love with someone else (a possible rival); he only sees the mermaid/girl. So instead of her silence (per the original version) rendering her unable to compete against a rival, her silence has no contrast for the reader/viewer to see the prince preferring (and loving) the girl who does talk. Disney's version actually reinforces, even more than Anderson's original, that silence equals attractiveness.
Although Disney slaps a happy ending on it (of course), it also still removes all the mermaid's power when her father makes her fully human. Now she's just a girl -- a good, obedient girl with a nice singing voice -- but all of her potential power held in her mermaid-form is gone. As Merely Academic noted, the only power the mermaid gets, in the end, is that of choosing her beloved. Her original power is evil/harmful, so her one acceptable power-format is the beloved-choosing. Once she'd done that... she's left with nothing.
Or, as in the case of the gumiho, she's not only left with nothing, she's given it all up to the man. Literally, via the fox-bead. This giving-up on the woman's part is echoed several times in different ways, like when Mi-ho and Dae-woong are discussing the plotline for a movie that Dae-woong's gotten a role in. The female character is named Full Moon; the male character's name is New Moon. The idea is that Full Moon gives everything she has to save New Moon's (empty) life, and in the end he's now full and able to live happily. But, as Mi-ho notes, again it's at the cost of someone's life, notably Full Moon, who gets chalked up as yet another disappearance.
To Dae-woong's (and the Hong sisters') credit, he starts to realize this is a valid complaint: why should it always be that the girl sacrifices everything and never gets to have happiness of her own? Just what did the guy do to deserve that much sacrifice, other than just be male? (And, as Dae-woong eventually realizes: he doesn't deserve it. His realization throws an awesome spanner into the works, at about the three-quarter mark.)
I've noticed that the Hong Sisters do tend to cast their second female leads as older women, who start out disregarding the primary male lead as a childhood friend, ie Delightful Girl Chuun-Hyang, or as inconsequential, ie My Girlfriend is a Gumiho. (I've read this pattern continues in other Hong sisters works, but I'm still working my way through the list, and Hong Gil Dong deviates from this pattern.)
This series has EUN Hye-In (Park Soo Jin) playing the role of Evil Other Woman. At first dismissive of Dae-woong, she only notices his value when a (seemingly, in this case) younger woman shows up, and after that, it's claws out, handbags at dawn. In fact, if there's any character in the drama that's a stereotypical nine-tailed fox (seductive, malicious, two-faced, temptress out to destroy a man) it would be Hye-In. She checks everything off the list and then some, while Mi-ho has almost no skills at deception, in contrast. Where Dae-woong misunderstands Mi-ho, it becomes clear (to Dae-woong and to the viewers), it's not because Mi-ho has misled him. It's been his own failure for assuming, or not asking.
In fact, the series is possibly remarkable -- if no other reason I've mentioned pings on your radar -- for the fact that it doesn't play the Suffering In Noble Silence card. (Oh, Cinderella's Sister, how you freaking suffered in silence for how many episodes? ...thank heavens for recaps, is all I can say.) As javabeans and girlfridays' recaps pointed out, the stakes in this story are life-and-death, so the usual ego-based "if I speak out, I'll get hurt" nonsense gets skipped. The issues at hand aren't the usual "does he like me or not" but are on a much more epic scale, and the script (and the characters/actors) seem to recognize that this puts the usual petty let's-keep-them-apart-a-little-longer deviations in perspective. When death and/or the rules of heaven might be what's keeping you apart, what do you have to lose by speaking honestly about whether you like vegetables?
One place this shows up is in the line I used for the post's title.
troisroyaumes!] This is what (or a variant of what) Mi-ho yells out, or says quietly, or just repeats to herself: I really really really really really really really really really really like you...
Neoreul neomu neomu neomu neomu neomu neomu neomu neomu joahae...
If you're wondering what it sounds like, to American ears, that "neomu" sounds a lot like "nue-mah" or "numa" so when she reels off about eight of them, it's a long string of numanumanumanumanuma. (Which, I should add, she does possibly more about COW as anything else. Because cow? Nothing beats COW. And that makes it even funnier when Dae-woong takes her for ice cream, and orders by colors: "cow-color, pig-color, and chicken-color, with lots of extra cow-color." Afterwards Mi-ho declares that cow -- that would be chocolate -- is the absolute best. Ahahaha.)
It's even funnier when Mi-ho spontaneously hollers this long string, because the way Dae-woong reacts each time. Not in public!, his shocked expression (tinged with embarrassed pleasure) seems to say. I get the impression that such self-assertive, loud, public declarations -- let alone from a woman -- just are. Not. Done.
You could even say the mermaid's silence is about as far as you can get from Mi-ho, who doesn't hold back nor deceive. Well, I should say Mi-ho doesn't, mostly; she learns to be a little more subtle, is all, especially when it comes to getting the physical touch she desires -- Dae-woong's earliest reactions make it pretty clear that it's not socially acceptable, to Mi-ho's annoyance. Eventually, she begins mimicking other people-on-dates to use them as her guideline for what she can do, which is why she sticks her straw into a Dae-woong's cup, or yanks his arm to keep it around her neck, in the movie theater. Other couples were doing it, thus Mi-ho figures it's acceptable for humans, and since she wants to appear human, there you go!
Anyway, it's Hye-In, the human girl (who discovers, and is repulsed by, Mi-ho's status as a "monster") who is the true monster. But as the story eventually reveals, the source of Hye-In's monstrosity isn't necessarily that she's a bad person. It's more complex than this, but one major part, I think, is that she won't put herself out there, take risks. (In fact, the male second lead could be said to be making the same mistake, as he's motivated by guilt of a long-ago memory, and tries to protect himself from a second broken heart by avoiding humans as much as he can.) Hye-In won't tell a guy she likes him, but must manipulate him into liking her so she can be free to go along with it. She won't compete outright, but must scheme to make the other look bad, so she'll win by contrast.
Her actions do escalate until they reach a point of near-monstrosity, but the story doesn't condemn her, nor does it resign her to "obviously bad, and therefore never getting love" in the way of dooming evil second leads. The story doesn't quite redeem her... so much as, in the very end, offers her a chance to redeem herself. How? By speaking up and being honest about how she feels (about a guy, but it's a start). As much as I loved to hate her during the series, seeing her practice Mi-ho's little shooting-guns-of-love -- psyching herself up before she takes the leap and says "I like you" first -- was just another round of kill-me adorable.
Plus, I think it spoke to the Hong sisters' innate non-anti-women stance, that they don't go the route of "evil other woman gets what's coming to her". If there's any coming to be gotten, it's purely in not getting the primary lead. After that... well, the secondary lead is not irredeemable. The primary female lead, you could say, wins by living well, but that doesn't mean the secondary lead (after learning a few lessons) can't live well, too.
Ultimately, both stories -- the mermaid and the fox -- can be either negative or positive, depending on whether you think the goal of "becoming human" is a valid one (setting aside the additional complexity of when "becoming human" is tied inextricably to "falling in love", of course). Early in My Girlfriend is a Gumiho, the second lead asks Mi-ho why she'd want to become human: she'll lose her incredible strength, she'll grow old and die, she won't be able to leap or fly or any of so many other aspects of her non-human power. What does she gain in being human that's worth losing so much? What is worth becoming powerless?
It's not a question Mi-ho answers directly, perhaps because it's a complex question and not one that I think anyone could answer in thirty words or less. A lot of her being-human desire is tied to the modern world and the possibilities she sees, potentials denied her so long as she's not human. But I think it's also because for the vast majority of the story, she honestly believes the nail in the coffin, to mix metaphors: that humans can't love non-humans. If she wants to experience love -- a perfectly human (so to speak) desire -- then she must become human to do so.
Everything Dae-woong says and does reinforces this, from his shocked reactions to her frank admission of wanting to 'mate', from his annoyance/frustration with her naivete/ignorance about everyday things, right down to the fact that he cowers in terror when she shows her tails in the moonlight. In effect, the "good" of powerlessness has become tied to "being human".
Although Dae-woong carries the fox-bead for a good chunk of the story (first because he's healing, then because he hasn't healed fully and may lose his chance at an action role if he's re-injured, and the fox-bead could protect him), the only 'power' it gives him is that of physical healing. The rest of the time? He's almost remarkably beta, to a degree that I can't recall seeing in any other kdrama yet -- well, any kdrama not written by the Hong sisters, that is. In a way, Mi-ho losing her powers doesn't render her less than Dae-woong (although his position as grandson of a rich man might be seen as a 'prince', he hardly has legions to command, and is otherwise quite un-prince-like)... it's more that for them to have a relationship, they must be equals.
At least, that's the logic train she appears to be on, even if she never says it out loud.
Lest you think the Hong sisters do an eventual Hollywood and go with the feminist (or anti-feminist) version of heteronormatizing (anti-feminizing?) the story, I'll only say that they don't. I was holding my breath until the end -- for various reasons, mostly because winning the love, earning the happy-ever-after, doesn't come easy and an epic story requires epic prices. But I was mostly holding my breath for fear that in the last frames, they'd pull a Disney on me.
They didn't. I won't tell you how the Hong sisters tweaked the last few fox-tails of the Korean legend, but I will tell you that if you want a feminist (or proto-feminist) retelling of a horrific fairy tale that's long overdue for a serious woman-positive reworking, then you need to find yourself a copy of My Girlfriend is a Gumiho. Even if you do risk death by dimples before the first episode ends.
Trust me, you'll find it's neomu neomu neomu neomu neomu neomu neomu neomu worth it.
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Date: 23 Nov 2010 03:48 am (UTC)Yes, one of the things I like about Hong Sisters' scripts is that even if I don't especially like the secondary female lead, I always sympathize with her/see why she does what she does. (Granted, I have a tendency to like the secondary female lead to begin with; I think I was the only one who liked Yu He-yi in You're Beautiful.)
I wouldn't say that it's the first attempt at a feminist reworking of the gumiho myth (there was another gumiho K-drama this summer that portrayed the gumiho in a positive light, and there have been similar reworkings in the past) but it definitely looked very cute and is on my to-watch list. (Also, okay, I loved 이승기's debut album and watched him in his debut acting role in 소문난 칠공주. ^^)
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Date: 23 Nov 2010 04:18 am (UTC)Okay, put subtitles on the bottom of your post! Hmm... really need to learn the phonetic system, WAIT, what-what, ANOTHER project!? -- do you mean Lee Seung-ki (the primary male lead) or No Min-woo (the secondary male lead, appears at the very end of the first video, and I think -- not sure, but internet rumors say -- is half of the duet singing the second song). Me, I think Lee comes across as a lightweight at first, but by the second episode, I couldn't imagine anyone but him in that role. That's one other thing I do like about the Hong sisters -- in every series I've seen of them, they have a knack for finding actors that don't seem like they'd have the chops for the role, and then whammo, the actors pull it out of somewhere and really surprise you.
I wouldn't say I liked Hye-In, though at times I could see where she was coming from. She was still pretty unlikeable, so it's to the drama's credit that I was willing to see her as redeemable at the end, and I think that's because the Hong sisters' scripts don't condemn characters but leave that kind of in the gaps, if you get what I mean.
(remember: subtitles! oi, I'm still figuring out when that series of sounds means "no" and when a way-too-similar to untrained-ears series of sounds means "hello". aaaauuuughhhh.)
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Date: 23 Nov 2010 04:50 am (UTC)이승기 = Lee Seung-gi, who was originally a light rock musician before he decided to go into acting. His first role was in the K-drama Famous Princesses (http://wiki.d-addicts.com/Famous_Princesses), where he played a spoiled but somehow still charming mama's boy of an only son, who accidentally gets his high school girlfriend pregnant. (His character's name was 황태자/Hwang Tae-ja, which basically works as a pun for "Crown Prince". All the characters in that K-drama had terrible/hilarious punning names.)
I left a comment in someone else's journal about why He-yi appealed to me as a character. The thing is, she's kind of representative of the typical modern girl, whereas Mi-nyeo is more like my parents' generation's conception of an ideal girl. (And okay, I also really did not like Mi-nyeo for this very reason.) Also, He-yi is kind of cool in her own way, even when she's being completely ridiculous? I don't know whether it's because I'm drawing on other cultural cues here, but to me, He-yi isn't characterized as the evil, selfish secondary female lead; rather, she's characterized as the spoiled brat female character whose archetype would actually be the protagonist in a lot of other K-dramas (see Queen of Housewives, Get Karl, Oh Su-yeong, Fantasy Couple, etc.). So I guess I was inclined to like her; to me, she felt very realistic in a way that I felt was meant to be relatable. But I haven't actually talked to enough of my Korean female friends to know whether they thought the same.
ETA: I only watched the first few episodes of the other gumiho K-drama, but I would be really surprised if it didn't have a feminist message--well, at least in terms of mainstream feminism--because it was definitely set up as a critique of patriarchal human society and the behavior of men towards women. Though probably problematic in its own right since Korean TV is usually mainstream conservative to begin with, which is why I'm not surprised to hear that My Girlfriend is a Gumiho does fall short in some respects. In any case, I doubt that it's your Western perspective that causes you to notice/consider the stumbles; there are Korean feminists who engage in a lot of media critique (for indeed, there is a lot that needs criticizing).
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Date: 23 Nov 2010 06:28 am (UTC)Mi-nyeo, you mean Mi-ho? (I'm guessing so.) Strange, she's both traditional -- like the way she holds the sign over Dae-woong's head so the rain doesn't fall on him -- and yet very untraditional, almost more modern than Hye-In. I think perhaps it's because Mi-ho's aware of her own power (at least for the first half, when she has it) and wields without major compunction. Hye-In has less power -- though you're right, she's not evil so much as just plain spoiled -- so Hye-In acts like a character with less power. That's not something I care for, never have, so I tend to wrinkle my nose at such characters. Just my own bias. I much prefer forthright characters like Mi-ho, who is both relatively self-aware and strong-willed in many ways, yet still charmingly childlike in other ways. The script, and the actress, struck a great balance, I thought.
I had no interest in the other kdramas in re gumihos, especially the Legend of the Gumiho's Child, I think it was. The summaries and the recaps seemed to hint at a bit too much gender constructionism for my taste (in that the child's development into a full gumiho is concurrent with adolescence, drawing way too much between "unnatural powers" and "female sexuality" for me.)
As for Western perspective... well, that's why I had to back up and say that much of western entertainment fails for me, as well... so it's possible that MGiaG would be entirely successful for less critical western eyes, who might not see the stumbles at all. Then again, there are other kdramas as well, where in reading Korean-American commentaries/recaps, there's no mention nor squick at things that make me want to start throwing things. But I figure, as long as I remind myself that there are plenty of commentaries and recaps about US-based dramas that don't have reviewers noting any kind of squick-aspects, then I'll be able to keep in mind that my critique isn't truly culture-based so much as, well, just me, for thinking too much about these things.
This is why I'm also watching Mary Stayed Out All Night, because sometimes the brain requires a major dose of constantly-lampshaded, full-on kitchen sink cliches, complete with at least one piggyback ride per episode. Two, even! And contract marriages. It's like every girls' manga and manhwa I've ever read, all rolled into the same series. Pure cotton candy. (Also, a wardrobe that makes you wonder, who the hell dresses these people.)
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Date: 23 Nov 2010 07:03 am (UTC)Hm, I think the conflation of "supernatural power" and "female sexuality" doesn't necessarily have to be problematic in and of itself. Because in a cultural backdrop of where female sexuality is denied and unacknowledged, the idea of female sexuality as power is, well, empowering, but where the story failes for me is when it gets painted as "frightening, bad, evil power". I have no idea how Legend of the Gumiho's Child handled it (huh, didn't realize that was the English version) since the acting wasn't compelling enough to keep me watching. (My mentioning it was certainly not intended as a rec!) But there have been other K-dramas as well, such as 구미호 외전/Nine-Tailed Fox (http://wiki.d-addicts.com/Nine_Tailed_Fox), as well as manhwa (I think I linked you to it before, but Miho's Story is a good example: http://comic.naver.com/webtoon/list.nhn?titleId=188197&weekday=thu).
As a footnote, one area where I think mainstream media has done a good job in reclaiming female sexuality is in the figure of the gisaeng.
In my personal experience, it's more common for Korean-Americans (including myself) to be more conservative than Koreans living in Korea, due to the whole pattern of preserving one's social and cultural mores in stasis from the time of immigration. That isn't to say there isn't a cultural element as well--certain customs that appear shocking to Western eyes because they are not norms in Western cultures--but I've generally found that it's easier to find the progressive/radical voices within Korea (possibly because they get more visibility in a Korean-language setting).
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Date: 23 Nov 2010 08:11 am (UTC)This is probably fodder for some other post, but that seems to hold true for most immigrants. I mean, you can look at the phrases I grew up with -- that are common in/around the Deep South, well, used to be -- and all of them date from British Lowlands slang of the 1700s. I don't think anyone in Britain or Scotland has used that slang in well on maybe a hundred more years, but it's still there in pockets in the South, especially when you get into the mountains. I was absolutely astonished to read linguistics books in college and discover the origins of phrases I'd always just figured were things-you-say. Ever since then, numerous times I've come across instances of immigrant populations that continue to celebrate old holidays, or recognize old recipes, or use old phrases, that the original country has long since left behind.
I was talking about characters from You're Beautiful with Mi-nyeo (who is the main crossdressing heroine) and He-yi (who is the pop star and secondary female lead who is in love with Jang Geun-seok's character).
AHAHAHA. okay that makes a LOT more sense ... especially since I only made about 3 eps in of YB and no matter how much I like the way the Hong sisters can torque a cliche, I couldn't get past my urge to reach into the screen and seriously slap the daylights out of the lead heroine. I mean, I could tolerate the lead heroine from HGD with only a few teeth-gritting moments, but the lead from YB... no. Just no. And knowing she was the lead -- and therefore would 'win the boy' -- gave me such a sinking feeling that nothing was gonna save me.
I suspect you're right about the gisaengs, seeing how nearly all the saeguks I've seen so far appear to treat the gisaengs as businesswomen of a certain degree, alongside being entertainers. Against the notion of nobility/yangban, it may not be much, but it's more than Hollywood ever really gives to any female entertainers-and/or-prostitutes (with the possible exception of representation of high-class courtesans). Maybe it's still shy of the best, but then again, I suppose historical revisionism has its limits.
As for the "frightening, bad, evil power" -- that's one twist I really liked in MGiaG, that Miho's power is never cast as frightening or bad. It's treated as very much just who-she-is, and it's only in Dae-woong's eyes that it's frightening; the audience is probably meant to be in on the joke as much as Miho is. That is, that she uses Dae-woong's fear against him, to get what she wants (how to pass for human, chance at life in human world), and the only one who really believes she might eat his liver is Dae-woong himself. In fact, that might be one of the most positive-women satirical-social commentary points of the series, that this "fear of strong female sexuality" exists solely in the man's own insecurity, and that a woman who has no fear/insecurity about her own sexuality is not actually the monster that the insecure man is trying so hard to see her as. It puts the burden of what's really nothing more than slut-shaming (of the gumiho/sexual woman) onto the fearful man, and takes it completely off the woman's shoulders, for once.
Thinking it over as I wrote the post, I still can't think of more than maybe one or two western television shows that went so far as to make that same maneuver. A few might imply it (that the idea that female sexuality = evil/bad is due to male insecurity in terms of the man's own powerlessness/beta-ness beside a powerful woman), but very few come right out and make it nearly textual, as MGiaG does.
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Date: 23 Nov 2010 05:19 pm (UTC)Against the notion of nobility/yangban, it may not be much
This is getting tangential, but I find it interesting that a lot of sageuk in recent years have actively criticized the yangban in favor of the jung'in (middle class) or common people. I suspect a lot of it correlates to economic problems in South Korea itself. Though it would be interesting to know how much of it is actually a recent trend; I've been reading a manhwa that was published in the late 80s-early 90s, and it has a similar critical view of the yangban.
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Date: 25 Nov 2010 10:32 am (UTC)I guess that would require someone who's done more than just passing anecdotal, but I can say I've noticed a strong trend in manhwa to not just criticize the system obliquely, but explicitly, even bluntly. After reading so much manga (which covers many topics but I can count on maybe one hand the manga that actually criticize the system, let alone advocate overthrowing it), it was somewhere between a shocker and a bit of a relief. The former because I'd gotten used to the Japanese non-critical versions, I guess, and the latter because as an American, I think it's culturally built in that "criticizing the system" is a positive, not a negative. So that second aspect makes many manhwa feel more -- well, "logical" isn't the word. Simpatico with my own perspectives, maybe?
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Date: 23 Nov 2010 08:45 am (UTC)To me, it's the ultimate not-Little-Mermaid, because it's so close to contemporary with Andersen and so similar in its set-up, yet it doesn't present loss of power over self as desirable at all.
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Date: 25 Nov 2010 10:36 am (UTC)Nope, haven't read it -- though it sounds familiar. Might've read it as a kid, but then, I read so much as a kid that sometimes now it all runs together. (I've always been one for devouring stories, very fast.) Thing is, if a story has a male protagonist, it's nearly always that loss of power over self is undesirable -- it's only women who get the trope that if you keep power for yourself, it becomes a source of evil, and that the only way to keep from being evil is to give up that power into a husband's hands.
A lot of the stories -- getting away from fairy tales -- that are supposedly about 'strong historical women' follow this same trope. Ah, she's so amazing, she sacrificed so much for her country / her children / her husband / her whatever. Always sacrifice, and seems like outside of the romance "give it to the man" routine, the other option is "destroy it for the sake of ____".
Things like this, sadly, end up making me even more cynical when it comes to stories that so many people love. I keep wanting to say, "but look at what's underneath! yeah, sure, she sacrificed for her children, but can't there be a story out there where she can be happy AND powerful (and have the audience's respect) without having to destroy herself in the process?"
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Date: 26 Nov 2010 12:53 am (UTC)Like the Little Mermaid, the Wild Thing is soulless but immortal. Like her, she hears people and falls for the idea of joining them. Like her, their society doesn't understand her and can't accept her. Like her, she is not really able to integrate into their society and must leave.
Unlike the Mermaid, she keeps her voice. Unlike the Mermaid, her kin think her plan of gaining a soul is something worth supporting as well as they can. Unlike the Mermaid, she copes in our society and is able to succeed by our measures of success, if not her own. Unlike the Mermaid, she doesn't focus her desire for acceptance in on marriage or a man. There's a guy at one point -- a young priest -- but she's not that into him really. He's a bit part.
And finally, unlike the Mermaid, she *doesn't lose in the end*. (She not only finishes the story just as well off as she started, she's also *created value*, by giving a soul to someone else.)
Dunsany manages to create a story about an inhuman thing that wants to be human, but can't quite make it, but without the inhuman losing anything in the end. It works better for me than either Andersen's Little Mermaid (or Asimov's 'I, Robot', for that matter).
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Date: 23 Nov 2010 09:56 am (UTC)The Little Mermaid is interesting because it's a fairy tale but not a folktale. Most Western fairy tales, as we know them, are serious revisions of much earlier Western folktales - revisions by the first mass publishers, as the printing press was being invented. But because they're revisions, and revisions by people who were seeing through their own strangely-colored lenses, and because there are usually multiple different such revisions floating around, we can identify both the story the way it was before and the changes that were made to make it acceptable at the beginning of the nineteenth century. The Little Mermaid was invented for the upper-class nineteenth century salon audience, not modified for it. As a result, it's generally much more problematic. Snow White and Cinderella are good examples of fairy tales with stronger female protagonists. (Until Disney got into them, at least.) I won't say those stories aren't problematic at all, but perhaps less so.
The other thing I was going to say was "Oh, look, it's Anya!" But that's probably not fair.
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Date: 24 Nov 2010 07:38 am (UTC)Andersen's fairy tales are like Oscar Wilde's and Dunsany's -- written by a highly literate person for a wealthy and literate audience.
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Date: 25 Nov 2010 10:40 am (UTC)Also: Anya?
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Date: 25 Nov 2010 12:20 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 26 Nov 2010 12:57 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 23 Nov 2010 03:57 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 25 Nov 2010 10:42 am (UTC)Plus, dimples! *slayed*
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Date: 30 Nov 2010 10:38 pm (UTC)Personally, for fairy tales to read, I much preferred The Snow Queen, The Bluebird, and The Robber's Bride when I was a kid.