I write this blog as sort of a conversation. In an isolated existence, one has to have someone to confide in, and since I don't even have my cat anymore (Russell got removed rather roguishly by Rosa Mimosa), I speak to the blog. "Blog," I say, "Remember when we only watched comedies?" Blog listens. "Years of Richard Dreyfus and Dan Akroyd and Dudley Moore. And then we transitioned to thrillers, spy movies, Russell Crowe and Michael Caine..." Blog is attentive. "Alias was great...then the supernatural took over. I guess it went from Alias to Lost, and from Lost I went koo koo over anything supernatural. I still think LOST is the best television show in history to date. Every actor was sublime. Every phrase, every spoken word was memorable. Every character was to die for... Not just Jack and Charlie and Sawyer but Hugo and Jin and the adorable grumpy Korean guy who I can't remember his name, he might have been the best of all. And his father! And all the women. Lost is unbeatable. But after several years of constant supernatural, I drifted. It wasn't intentional..." Blog remains silent when I say this... "You don't believe me? I tell you, it was a natural occurrence. Oh wait, I forgot Jewish historical movies and documentaries. Yes yes! That's when it happened! It was the Korean guy in Lost, then watching every documentary on world war two Jews (like Resistance, the Bielsky Brothers...)that I could find until I came upon "Sugihara", the Avatar Hero who saved 3 thousand Jews from the death camps by giving them visas to Japan. OK, so Japanese is not Korean. But it's close. When I lived in Europe everyone called me Canadian. I didn't mind. I don't speak French and I am not Canadian but it was close enough, right? And I was already following Miles, aah yes, Miles was his name in Lost. I was already following his acting, and drinking up PERSON OF INTEREST because he was in it with the ASTOUNDING actor Michael somebody who played Ben Linus on LOST. Drift drift.... I just have to say this Michael guy speaks with the grace and depth of old fashioned royalty. Despite playing beside the whispering dark superman guy, Michael is the one my daughter and I swoon over. His presence is electric. I'm way too old to swoon but my 28 year old daughter is a testament to his adorableness. I even loved him as Ben. Michael Emerson is his name. So anyway, I am hooked on Korean drama." I stop typing for a moment to let all this information sink in. Then I say, "Where was I? Oh, yes, Padam Padam, the onomatopoeia title that means "the beating of two hearts as one", a 20 episode K Drama with DramaFever subtitles, about a rough guy who is dying of cancer and a girl out of his class. I don't see the class difference, frankly. The upper class girl has a total thug for a father who beats young boys at the drop of a hat and spits on everyone he doesn't like... he's a really gross character and if he is supposed to be the upper crust then gee whiz... The main girl is chilly, almost without character, but the dying guys mother is INCREDIBLE. She dresses and looks poor. Korean drama is SO realistic in some ways. The characters really do look like what they should look like... the rough guy dresses in rough lower class clothes, the mother is chubby and without grace... It makes for a much more compelling show when the people look the part. May I just say in the USA movies the poor people are never really poor looking, they never behave without hope, they just don't seem poor. In Padam Padam the mother sells fish on the sidewalk with her competitive neighbor. At night, she talks with her dying son about how impossible their lives are. OK so the mother shouts everything, you might want to turn the sound down, she shouts so much, but the poignant moments between mother and son, when they cry and cry and cry over his terminal illness and his unfair prison term and their inability to fix any of the wrongs in their lives, those moments are academy award winning raw honest insights into the lives of most of the world living on the edge of despair. Wait, is the Academy for movies and Oscar for TV? or is Oscar for Broadway? anyway, I am not saying that every moment of this new genre I have discovered is brilliant... it is soap opera, and often tediously repetitive in the storyline. There are inconsistencies... the mother says to the doctor that she can't read. But later she is texting GookSu. But the REALNESS that comes through with average looking people, not instantly-beautiful main stars (they become beautiful as you grow to love them...) hilarious remarks making fun of themselves/the show, (The guy who is part Angel in Padam Padam says in dismay when the feathers fall off his wings, "What will my father say? I've become a mutant featherless chicken.") these are what draw me again and again. (BTW, the most endearing sweet, sad little baby is a bright star on this show.)
Yes, I wept when the dying young man and the veterinarian girl he's in love with have a brief argument which fills the dying young man with anguish and regret, and she soothes him by saying "You're attractive when you're being mean to me.." it is both hilarious and heartbreaking at once, and she pats him while he shakes from the pain of cancer, and her patting is the same as when he lay in his mothers bed and his mother patted his back while he sobbed all night, not wanting to die. Despite their over-the-top storylines, Korean dramas strike at the deepest issues of the day; The anguish of living and dying, the unfairness of life and the inability of one human being to fully know the pain of another. It contains the ugly and the everyday. It is a venue for the modern times when we are all on electronic equipment skyping with those we love rather than sitting together singing and playing guitar under the night sky. This is a new kind of entertainment...different from the old soaps where murder and affairs and secrets strung us along, the glue being more about deceit and falsehood than anything else. These Korean shows are dramas for a world wide generation that does not get close enough to others to begin to express their loneliness and confusion. In a world where we long to be appreciated and loved, money is not the medicine. What these dramas convey is the anguish and hurt of a generation lost in the very big crowd, a generation who needs to feel and to express their darker feelings, but living in the flat screen of FaceBooks superficial friendships they do not dare do more than yearn for more "likes" and "comments" to assuage their starvation for a humankind existence. We live in and through machines. For the young, this is all they have ever known, and for that we should all weep."
Blog doesn't answer. Blog fell asleep.
Yes, I wept when the dying young man and the veterinarian girl he's in love with have a brief argument which fills the dying young man with anguish and regret, and she soothes him by saying "You're attractive when you're being mean to me.." it is both hilarious and heartbreaking at once, and she pats him while he shakes from the pain of cancer, and her patting is the same as when he lay in his mothers bed and his mother patted his back while he sobbed all night, not wanting to die. Despite their over-the-top storylines, Korean dramas strike at the deepest issues of the day; The anguish of living and dying, the unfairness of life and the inability of one human being to fully know the pain of another. It contains the ugly and the everyday. It is a venue for the modern times when we are all on electronic equipment skyping with those we love rather than sitting together singing and playing guitar under the night sky. This is a new kind of entertainment...different from the old soaps where murder and affairs and secrets strung us along, the glue being more about deceit and falsehood than anything else. These Korean shows are dramas for a world wide generation that does not get close enough to others to begin to express their loneliness and confusion. In a world where we long to be appreciated and loved, money is not the medicine. What these dramas convey is the anguish and hurt of a generation lost in the very big crowd, a generation who needs to feel and to express their darker feelings, but living in the flat screen of FaceBooks superficial friendships they do not dare do more than yearn for more "likes" and "comments" to assuage their starvation for a humankind existence. We live in and through machines. For the young, this is all they have ever known, and for that we should all weep."
Blog doesn't answer. Blog fell asleep.
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