No, we have not gone crazy. This is a entry for the esteemed Rejectionist's Heavy Metal Rejection Contest.
Tuesday, March 9, 2010
Friday, March 5, 2010
Ten Things I Don’t Like About Korean Drama (Cold Drill, Issue 39, 2010, p.32-34)
By Yu-Han Chao
I.
The male lead(s) always comes from an impossibly rich family that owns some Hilton-like empire or otherwise hugely successful business. Sometimes a playboy, sometimes excessively emo for no good reason, always lavish with money, he has no real job or profession and simply travels about the world and amuses himself and acts emo. He must shape up and become a dedicated human being with a purpose in life (career, starting a family with female lead) before he receives his monstrous inheritance, however.
II.
The female lead is always poor, and not just poor, but exceedingly, excruciatingly, what-am-I-going-to-eat-tomorrow poor. She has a father who loses all money as soon as it’s made by his daughter and will not stop incurring debts, to be followed by visits from loan sharks, threats from loan sharks and eventually the carrying out of such threats in the form of removal of furniture from the residence and/or removal of the family from the residence. A testimony to her poverty: the male lead, driving by in a fancy sports car or riding in the back of a chauffeured limousine, will spot her eating instant noodles standing up in a convenience store, having asked the clerk for hot water to make her $0.23 bowl of instant noodles. Rent is a problem, debt is a problem, but despite her hardships the female lead remains cheerful, cute, and quirky. This is why we (and the male lead) love her.
III.
The female lead talks to stuffed animals (or herself) in her bedroom way, way too much. This may seem a convenient way to impart information and express the female lead’s feelings/thoughts, but is pretty stupid to watch, especially when done in every other of sixteen episodes in a series. Deux ex stuffed anima. “What do you think, Big Stuffed Frog?”
IV.
How the men constantly grab a woman’s hand forcefully. This happens a lot in Taiwan, too, but shouldn’t. One is torn between physical struggle with the grabbing male and one’s unwillingness to cause a scene in public (the struggling woman will usually be perceived as spiteful and hysterical by passersby).
What are we teaching our children and teenagers, that it’s okay to manhandle and be manhandled? I’m not even talking about the supposedly romantic scene where the male lead picked up the female lead as if they were threshold-crossing newlyweds, then forcefully threw her, spine first, onto the sand. The female lead, smiling, patting sand off her back, gets up and hugs him playfully, and then they hold hands and swing each other in clockwise circles until the male lead decides to let go and send the female lead flying out again onto the sand again from centrifugal force. She is still laughing with glee, of course. Sadomasochists. Please, children, do not try this at home, or at the beach. How much do they pay the cute little Korean actress to be thrown onto the sand like that?
V.
The only non-alcoholic way male characters show their frustration is through intense playing of sports (usually racquetball) or a let’s-duke-it-out fistfight between (usually love) rivals. And then of course, there’s the alcoholic way of showing their frustration. Most male characters cannot hold their liquor.
VI.
When the female lead is frustrated/depressed/torn between two lovers, she also drinks (soju) herself under the table and becomes infantile, babbling, or unconscious, creating the necessity for some male lead or other to taxi, chauffer, and/or piggy-back her home. Usually he also takes this opportunity to go through her bag/wallet/purse and find something out about her that he did not previously know.
She never remembers what happened while she was drunk so once sober she can shrug any indiscretions such as out-of-control dancing or one night stands off as a dream and continue to act like her innocent, cute, well-rounded and balanced self.
VII.
People (even people who have lived together as boyfriend-girlfriend for seven years) don’t have sex. If they do, they promptly become pregnant and decide to keep the baby, with melodramatic & life-changing/ruining consequences. Keeping the identity/existence of the baby from its father/anyone-who-cares, at least for a few years, is also common. It’s hard enough to convince the parents of the male lead to “allow” his marriage to the female lead, so it’s drama-to-the-tenth-power if she’s an unwed mother. But in general, there are more thirty-year-old, in-a-relationship virgins than you’d expect.
VIII.
Not only do individual men grab individual women’s hands, what’s also popular is the male-female-lead-tug-of-war dance. One male lead grabs one hand of the female lead, tug. Second male lead grabs other hand of female lead, yank. Some back and forth. Results vary: female lead runs away in tears/anger; one male lead forfeits the prize; two males get into a fistfight; two males leave the scene, then engage separately or together in item 5 (sports to vent frustration or fistfight); female lead picks one male, resulting in utter heartbreak of remaining male, etc.
IX.
When shot in foreign countries, Korean dramas manage to make it seem like each country is practically owned by Koreans. All the Koreans in a particular city, such as Cambridge, MA, also all happen to know one another and are more often than not, related. A lot of white people tend to speak Korean, too. Rather well, one might add.
X.
The ridiculous mistakes of identity of the female lead in early episodes, lies perpetuated by their subject, only for the eventual revelation of her true identity to bring disappointment, melodrama, and tears/embarrassment/shame later on. E.g. 30 year old virgin mistaken for innocent 20 year old, Harvard medical student mistaken for professional prostitute (that was excellent, however).
For more information, many Korean dramas are available for free at www.mysoju.com
I.
The male lead(s) always comes from an impossibly rich family that owns some Hilton-like empire or otherwise hugely successful business. Sometimes a playboy, sometimes excessively emo for no good reason, always lavish with money, he has no real job or profession and simply travels about the world and amuses himself and acts emo. He must shape up and become a dedicated human being with a purpose in life (career, starting a family with female lead) before he receives his monstrous inheritance, however.
II.
The female lead is always poor, and not just poor, but exceedingly, excruciatingly, what-am-I-going-to-eat-tomorrow poor. She has a father who loses all money as soon as it’s made by his daughter and will not stop incurring debts, to be followed by visits from loan sharks, threats from loan sharks and eventually the carrying out of such threats in the form of removal of furniture from the residence and/or removal of the family from the residence. A testimony to her poverty: the male lead, driving by in a fancy sports car or riding in the back of a chauffeured limousine, will spot her eating instant noodles standing up in a convenience store, having asked the clerk for hot water to make her $0.23 bowl of instant noodles. Rent is a problem, debt is a problem, but despite her hardships the female lead remains cheerful, cute, and quirky. This is why we (and the male lead) love her.
III.
The female lead talks to stuffed animals (or herself) in her bedroom way, way too much. This may seem a convenient way to impart information and express the female lead’s feelings/thoughts, but is pretty stupid to watch, especially when done in every other of sixteen episodes in a series. Deux ex stuffed anima. “What do you think, Big Stuffed Frog?”
IV.
How the men constantly grab a woman’s hand forcefully. This happens a lot in Taiwan, too, but shouldn’t. One is torn between physical struggle with the grabbing male and one’s unwillingness to cause a scene in public (the struggling woman will usually be perceived as spiteful and hysterical by passersby).
What are we teaching our children and teenagers, that it’s okay to manhandle and be manhandled? I’m not even talking about the supposedly romantic scene where the male lead picked up the female lead as if they were threshold-crossing newlyweds, then forcefully threw her, spine first, onto the sand. The female lead, smiling, patting sand off her back, gets up and hugs him playfully, and then they hold hands and swing each other in clockwise circles until the male lead decides to let go and send the female lead flying out again onto the sand again from centrifugal force. She is still laughing with glee, of course. Sadomasochists. Please, children, do not try this at home, or at the beach. How much do they pay the cute little Korean actress to be thrown onto the sand like that?
V.
The only non-alcoholic way male characters show their frustration is through intense playing of sports (usually racquetball) or a let’s-duke-it-out fistfight between (usually love) rivals. And then of course, there’s the alcoholic way of showing their frustration. Most male characters cannot hold their liquor.
VI.
When the female lead is frustrated/depressed/torn between two lovers, she also drinks (soju) herself under the table and becomes infantile, babbling, or unconscious, creating the necessity for some male lead or other to taxi, chauffer, and/or piggy-back her home. Usually he also takes this opportunity to go through her bag/wallet/purse and find something out about her that he did not previously know.
She never remembers what happened while she was drunk so once sober she can shrug any indiscretions such as out-of-control dancing or one night stands off as a dream and continue to act like her innocent, cute, well-rounded and balanced self.
VII.
People (even people who have lived together as boyfriend-girlfriend for seven years) don’t have sex. If they do, they promptly become pregnant and decide to keep the baby, with melodramatic & life-changing/ruining consequences. Keeping the identity/existence of the baby from its father/anyone-who-cares, at least for a few years, is also common. It’s hard enough to convince the parents of the male lead to “allow” his marriage to the female lead, so it’s drama-to-the-tenth-power if she’s an unwed mother. But in general, there are more thirty-year-old, in-a-relationship virgins than you’d expect.
VIII.
Not only do individual men grab individual women’s hands, what’s also popular is the male-female-lead-tug-of-war dance. One male lead grabs one hand of the female lead, tug. Second male lead grabs other hand of female lead, yank. Some back and forth. Results vary: female lead runs away in tears/anger; one male lead forfeits the prize; two males get into a fistfight; two males leave the scene, then engage separately or together in item 5 (sports to vent frustration or fistfight); female lead picks one male, resulting in utter heartbreak of remaining male, etc.
IX.
When shot in foreign countries, Korean dramas manage to make it seem like each country is practically owned by Koreans. All the Koreans in a particular city, such as Cambridge, MA, also all happen to know one another and are more often than not, related. A lot of white people tend to speak Korean, too. Rather well, one might add.
X.
The ridiculous mistakes of identity of the female lead in early episodes, lies perpetuated by their subject, only for the eventual revelation of her true identity to bring disappointment, melodrama, and tears/embarrassment/shame later on. E.g. 30 year old virgin mistaken for innocent 20 year old, Harvard medical student mistaken for professional prostitute (that was excellent, however).
For more information, many Korean dramas are available for free at www.mysoju.com
Tuesday, March 2, 2010
Library Organ Removal Dream
I'm in the newly built library with J; there are chemicals on the second floor that make me cry every time I pass by on the staircase or am on that floor. Next thing I know I am suffocating, near death, in the bathroom. With great effort I try to breathe in a little air at a time, until finally I am strong enough to crawl to the crack in the door and breathe in more air. I open the door and emerge from the bathroom, glad that I had the willpower to bring myself back to the living world.
I am eating a chocolate covered vanilla popsicle. I eat one with an old man every day; it's kind of a ritual or tradition of ours. I am his wife, I think, as I am quite old, also. Today he refuses to eat his popsicle, however. He is scared of the procedures we will be undergoing today. He doesn't think he will survive.
"I'm scared, too," I tell him.
I coax him into eating his popsicle together with me, and I make sure to give him most of the chocolate casing, his favorite.
It is time for the medical procedure, which involves me taking out all of my own organs myself and dumping them into a wet, steel basin. Some of the organs are round, some are gray, wrinkly intestines, some bulbous, grape-like and red, some smooth and brown. They need to be connected properly in order for me to be cured.
I am eating a chocolate covered vanilla popsicle. I eat one with an old man every day; it's kind of a ritual or tradition of ours. I am his wife, I think, as I am quite old, also. Today he refuses to eat his popsicle, however. He is scared of the procedures we will be undergoing today. He doesn't think he will survive.
"I'm scared, too," I tell him.
I coax him into eating his popsicle together with me, and I make sure to give him most of the chocolate casing, his favorite.
It is time for the medical procedure, which involves me taking out all of my own organs myself and dumping them into a wet, steel basin. Some of the organs are round, some are gray, wrinkly intestines, some bulbous, grape-like and red, some smooth and brown. They need to be connected properly in order for me to be cured.
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