In my personal experience, it's more common for Korean-Americans (including myself) to be more conservative than Koreans living in Korea...
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 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.