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'Fashion '70s' tells story of broken souls in war
Escaping through grenades and gun fire, Dummy's father finds his daughter hiding in a trench. Giving her a loaf of bread to keep her focused, he makes her promise to stay put until he finds her mother and returns. A few minutes later, Dummy's father sees a bomb explode in the very spot where he left his daughter. He never sees her again, and assumes she is dead.
And, so, the soap opera begins with the tragedy of the Korean War, when families are separated and lost, and the yearning for what is lost becomes a lifetime source of pain and sorrow.
A sad story is always part of the equation in Korean soap operas, which like to draw out viewers' cathartic reactions. But "Fashion '70s," a historical drama of epic proportions dealing with the period between the 1950s and 1970s in Korea, is on a larger scale of sadness. The title is misleading: although fashion design is the profession of two of the four main characters, the scope of the drama is too wide to suggest fashion of the 1970s as its main theme.
All the characters of "Fashion `70s" are troubled souls, scarred by the Korean War.
What is it really about? Jung Sung-hee, the screenwriter, says it is about the "fundamental incompleteness of human beings, and the pain that results from what is incomplete." At first glance, the four main characters living in the upper-class society of the '70s seem to have nothing wanting. Dummy (played by Lee Yo-won) and Joon-hee (played by Kim Min-jung) are two beautiful and talented twenty-somethings studying at a fashion school under a famous designer in a period of passionate drive, energy, and revolutionary changes in the fashion industry.
The two main characters' sparking rivalry and the soap opera's title raised the curiosity of many fashion savvies.
"I had a lot of expectations for this drama, as I thought it would draw upon the history of fashion in the '70s. I wanted to see more of fashion, but there's a lot of other things in there - politics, love triangle, family relationships - I think these other elements take away from the main story of the two fashion designers," said Nam Myeong-hee, a former art teacher, who was in her early twenties during the 1970s.
Many viewers suggest that the soap opera could have done much more to emphasize the time period and dynamic changes in the fashion of the day.
"There was the first mini-skirt and the long hippie hair. There were many yangjangjums (tailors) where people tailored their clothes. For foreign clothes, people had to go all the way to Busan to the 'Yankee market,' which was a market of imported goods and clothing," said Nam, reminiscing of the colorful scenery of the 1970s, which she thinks could've made for excellent material in the soap opera.
Opinions differ on what the focus of the soap opera is. Many people had greater expectations for the novel elements of the soap opera besides the conventional love plot, for example, the story of the two women's professional career.
"I think this soap opera is not a love story, but a fashion story. A story about how two designers compete and grow together. I am really looking forward to seeing the two girls evolve into professional designers," said Lee Yoon-joo, a career woman in her twenties.
Fashion '70s also has elements with which men can identify. The two male characters provide the action and suspense. Dong-young (played by Joo Jin-mo) is a secretary of the country's president and a secret service agent, and Bin (played by Chun Sung-myung) is a diver who works for the secret service. The men embark on James Bond-like operations in Hong Kong to stop communist assassins. Consequently, the soap opera provides testosterone-filled scenes with gun-fighting and martial arts.
Despite its too-broad scope and its tendency to go off on a tangent at times, there is a unifying theme that runs beneath the extravaganza. All the characters of the soap opera are troubled souls, scarred by the Korean War.
Dummy and Joon-hee have the pain of losing their family during the war, and also losing each other, childhood friends. During the war, Dummy and Joon-hee, at age 6 or 7, had both been shot by U.S. troops while trespassing into the army base to scavenge for food. Dummy suffers from amnesia and doesn't remember what happened, nor does she remember Joon-hee when she reunites with her. Even the male characters, Dong-young and Bin, lack one parent. Dong-young has been raised without a mother under a strict and disciplined father (who beats him with a metal pole for losing his mother's ring), and Bin has a cold, unaffectionate mother who sacrifices her son for her professional career.
If the pain of lost families were not enough, every character carries the additional pain of unreturned or unrequited love. Both girls love the same man, Dong-young. Both men, Dong-young and Bin, who is Dong-young's best friend, are in love with the same girl, Dummy.
While the love triangle follows the age-old formula of conventional melodramas, viewers give this love story more credit.
"The storyline isn't much different from other dramas, but the love story seems to gain its profundity from the dramatic time period," said Lee Yoon-joo.
"I placed the drama in the '70s because it is a dramatic period, when everything started to happen. It is a period when the creation of dramatic myth was possible," said Jung.
Besides the attractiveness of the time period, what makes this love story special is the author's intended message.
"I wanted to talk about the pain that people experience when they cannot attain something. And what they do to try to fulfill that lack," said Jung.
"The irony is that no human being can be human without that incompleteness. But my question was, what is it that we can do to fill that gap, to become complete?" she asked.
Of course, Jung will not make things too easy for us. The answer to her question is for viewers to find out, she said, and there are at least 6 to 10 more episodes on the way during which to ponder the question.
(jkwon@heraldm.com)
By Kwon Ji-young |
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发表于 2005-8-28 20:18
