It’s something everyone does. Every single day.
Perhaps one too many people take it for granted, while others conveniently commodify it at the altar of questionable motives. Food can represent different things to different people: It can be a joy they all too nonchalantly abuse, a continued journey of discovery, or even a nightmare they would rather not deal with. Some make this culinary underbelly sound, look and taste like an art, while others bastardize it into a sort of grotesque, Borg-like assimilation filled with happy meals that only look, smell and taste of corporate imperialism.
And yet, I would never question the existence of the fast-food industry, at least for what it represents for most of the people it serves: unassuming, viscerally satisfying, affordable pleasure of the moment. I wouldn’t even dare to sing the praises of the slow food industry in its current incarnation, either – what with the hypocritical veneer of status symbol it has increasingly gained, coupled with the creation of yet another hackneyed pseudo-movement with a lot of slogans but little in the way of ideas.
A world without fast food would bring about a lot of inconveniences, particularly for those who need to obtain some semblance of nutrition while having to choose between investing 60 minutes in their home-made lasagne, or in a meeting that could decide the size of their next house. And being bereft of everything that the slow food mentality stands for would rob us of the joy of discovering how much injecting love and passion into our dishes can enrich us mentally and emotionally, after it has titillated our palate.
These are two diametrically opposite conceptions of the act of eating, polarized and polarizing worlds that should organically co-exist like yin and yang in Taoism. Balance which instead is being increasingly compromised, as one end of this dichotomy continues to devour the other.
The crescendo of prosperity, industrialization and urbanization Korea experienced from the 1960’s onwards has altered the social paradigm of this country in a way that resembles the “Supersize Me-zation” of our eating habits as a people. By focusing on break-neck speed and the mantra of achieving results first and foremost – along with the ruthless competition it entails – anyone or anything not abiding by these rules cannot help but fall by the wayside, and become persona non grata. Not that difference per se would mean something the majority would not be prepared to accept, mind you. It’s just that breaking away from status quo would make a five decade-long bubble spectacularly pop, and question the way just about everyone has been living for the last half century. And who’s prepared for that?
This only means one thing. In this social system, you never represent who you are as an individual, but merely your role in the grand scheme of things. It means that no matter where you sit on the totem pole, whether it’s as the holder of a McJob or the multi-billion won cachet of a Hallyu star, people will only see the label on your forehead and what it stands for, not the soul pulsating inside. What truly defines you as an individual. No need to think of it only on a macroscopic level. It can apply to just about everything. Even the TV drama industry.
The early 1990s, right as I started watching Korean dramas, felt a little like Korea’s postwar, in a sense -- the feisty, chaotic cultural renaissance the industry began to go through during those years mirroring in many ways Myeongdong’s own fatally romantic 1950's Rinascimento. There was a sense that things were about to change in a way that would have soon completely altered the landscape, but people never forgot the fact they had to walk together towards that strange, enticing light for it to happen. It’s because of this environment where everyone had a voice, perhaps, that I picked up the name of individuals right away. Teenager crushes like Park Ji-Young and veteran actors of larger-than-life charisma like Kim Hye-Ja, Choi Bul-Am and Kim Mu-Saeng; the admiration great writers like Jung Ha-Yeon, Kim Woon-Kyung and Kim Won-Seok commanded with every sentence and character they wrote.
It’s not that everything was better back then, not by a long shot. It’s just that nearly everything felt like a labor of love created by individuals whose passion for this medium far surpassed their desire to merely make money, or survive the ruthless competition surrounding them at all cost. That diversity which found its apotheosis in the 1980’s was still carrying over, and made sure that no matter what you were watching – be it an unabashedly gloomy period piece, a campy home drama or the corniest of early trendies – the fervor the industry was approaching its artistic offspring with could only transcend the screen. You had your fast food – lots of it – alongside gourmet cuisine and slow food, and no one would dare question the reason why they existed. Some of it was so good that a mere bite would bring tears to your eyes. Other lesser instances, of course, involved barely edible material. But when that happened, it only meant the chef wasn’t up to the job. Not that an Anthony Bourdain had been forced to cook Chicken McNuggets.
I admit I shed a little tear as 아내의 자격 (A Wife’s Credentials)’s credits began rolling. It wasn’t as a result of being emotionally overwhelmed – I’ve perhaps become too jaded for that, although greatness can still affect me on an emotional level. Were they perhaps tears of incredulity, after witnessing quality that – at least in this genre – hadn’t graced Yeouido shores in well over a decade? Maybe. But all throughout this show, I felt the same pervading sense of confident tranquility and uncompromising zeal that characterized the highlights of this industry’s Golden Age in the 1990’s. The very soul of Korean dramas had come back to life, if only for an ever so brief moment.
It’s hard to explain this kind of feeling, particularly to younger and/or less experienced viewers so infatuated with their Hallyu stars, angsty melodramas and wacky rom-coms. It’s difficult because those who approached this world in its recent incarnation won’t have the tools to understand just what a dramatic fall from grace this industry is experiencing, despite the risible claims of people who conveniently and complacently put it on a pedestal that only hides their ulterior motives. I’m sorry, folks. It has nothing to do with elitism, not a single damn thing. If you’ve ever seen the heights this industry could reach once upon a time – the days of 여명의 눈동자 (Eyes of Dawn), 서울의 달 (The Moon of Seoul), 임꺽정 (Im Kkeok-Jeong) and 모래시계 (The Sandglass) – the praise so easily lavished upon today’s often puny offerings can only highlight how much our standards have fallen. And how a raw piece of meat not wrapped in familiarly trademarked packaging will easily appear like filet mignon, after what has been almost a decade-long Supersize Me marathon.
I’ve witnessed – both as an inquiring outsider and by observing people on the inside I’ve come into contact with over the years – what can only be described as a plague, slowly eroding the very passion that made this industry special in the first place. It’s painful and hard to admit, but the vast majority of the people populating today’s K-drama world are only doing a job. They don’t care about the legacy of this industry, the cultural power of what they produce, or its future. One by one, pillars that helped create the environment which fostered the industry’s own growth in the 80's and 90's are being dismantled right under their watch – from the short drama circuit that made sure new blood would continuously be pumped into Yeouido’s creative veins to the industry’s own funding structure, now in the hands of megalomaniacal media moguls and trigger-friendly advertisers. The slightest hint of criticism has disappeared from the realm of journalism, now transformed into a collection of hit-friendly Pavlov’s dogs all too eager to regurgitate whatever management agencies, production companies and stations feed them. It’s a mess. A gigantic, ugly mess. And yet we still got a masterpiece. A – pardon the French – fucking immense, once-in-a-decade one.
Hyperbole? Gee-here-he-goes-again-this-wasn’t-as-fun-as-Dunkin’2Nuts? Perhaps. It’s not fast food, junk that shows up on your table and shoves all its ingredients down your throat with the subtlety of explosive diarrhea. It doesn’t have lofty aspirations of securing lucrative export contracts, and it won’t even show up on any award shows. It has no Hallyu stars who will go on to pester every show on TV (and goddamnit, even during commercials), no flimsy plots written on post-its spoon-fed to K-pop starlets who spent more hours with a plastic surgeon than at an acting academy. It is just a drama. A simple but terrifically well made one. Done like dramas should be done. Like they used to be done. With brains, cojones, heart and soul.
In a recent interview with Jo Min-Joon (former editor-in-chief of the late, great Dramatique, and one of the few discerning voices left in field), PD Ahn Pan-Seok said something that struck quite the chord. Jo asked him whether today a show of this kind was only possible outside the network TV environment – as they didn’t have to deal with all the pressure ratings and competition force upon most big 3 dramas. Ahn had commented a few months ago on the subject, saying that working on jTBC was a sort of blessing in disguise, as being somewhat ignored (at the time most shows airing on the hybrids had a hard time cracking the 1%) only meant he could do whatever he wanted without risking reprisals or interference from the higher ups. But his answer this time was a lot more intriguing:
“Not at all. You certainly can’t say there aren’t forces trying to alter your path, but they’re far from insurmountable. It’s something a producer can cope with.”
There you go. Something a producer can cope with, if he’s got the balls and passion to do it. If you’re not in it for a mere paycheck, and respect the legacy and prestige of your profession, then you’ll find a way. You won’t pander to the lowest visceral instincts of an audience which has been trained for years to accept mindless tripe as commonplace; you won’t let a JYP, SM or YG do the casting for you, or write the songs your music director (paid by the aforementioned gentlemen and not the production company) is forced to use on the show. You won’t need to risk the health and lives of your staff and crew by wrapping up insane shoots just hours before air-time, jostled around from timeslot to timeslot by broadcasters who have lost every notion of long-term planning they ever had, just for the sake of mindlessly making it to the top. I shed a tear because A Wife’s Credentials had none of that inglorious parade of familiar oddities. It was a normally shot, familiarly written, ordinarily structured drama. A glimmer of sanity in a world of perennial derangement. A glorious one.
This is a the labor of love of man who went all the way to staging auditions for someone – formidable theater mainstay Gil Hae-Yeon – whose role amounted to watering flower pots and casually commenting about her “keepers’” monumental bout of delusion – a sort of extension of Won Mi-Kyung’s character in his 2001 weekend drama 아줌마 (Ajumma). Someone who willingly moved away from studio shots because the lighting wasn’t natural enough, and that actually reduced his camera’s presence for a very simple reason: Kim Hee-Ae and the rest of the amazing cast were so good, he didn’t need any gimmick to emphasize their performances. So, you know, he just let them act?
Remember the last time you got scenes of 5-6 minutes where the camera doesn’t move an inch, actors are left to breathe fire into their characters for incensed one-take diatribes, and there isn’t a whisper of music interfering with it all? Scenes of such utterly perfect simplicity, you’d want to get on your knees and beg all the blingmeisters a la Kim Byung-Soo and Kim Hong-Seon to sit down and take notice of how you direct a drama. It’s not just the realism of it all, which is quite frankly astounding. It’s the intelligence with which every situation and character was approached.
Just because the increased onslaught of makjang has turned divorces and marital disputes into nothing more than a lazy narrative gimmick, it doesn’t mean you can’t use them as part of a compelling discourse on much bigger themes and social trends. And the idea of being a serious, realistic drama doesn’t force you to omit scenes of disarming hilarity which earn laughter through rock-solid characterization and an enveloping atmosphere that becomes a character of its own.
Nothing here is all that different from the great dramas of yore, and that's maybe why. It’s not a complex show, although it deals with terribly complex themes. It asks you to pay attention, yes, but it’s not the kind of cerebral tour-de-force that tires you out in the long run. No. It’s a charming journey into the contradictions so painfully ingrained in Korean society. And by continuously stressing the charms and often painful pitfalls that diversity entails, it ends up respecting all the individuals that define it, even those part of the problem – like the epitome of the 386 generation alpha male Han Sang-Jin, what with his selective bouts of pinko guilt mixed with Kimchi-flavored chauvinism. Is Seo-Rae’s and Tae-oh’s answer the solution? Maybe it is, maybe not, as that gloriously ambiguous finale suggests.
But this kind of attention to detail, the love for the medium that transpires from every painstakingly researched angle and musical piece (Lee Nam-Yeon’s soundtrack is magnificent both in subtlety and diversity), every minute exchange the characters have is something that had been absent in shows of this kind for way too long. It all looks so effortless, so confident of its strengths and aware of the genre’s pitfalls. So respectful of its audience’s ability to wait for a payoff, while at the same time respecting itself enough not to ever let them directly or indirectly dictate the course of the story.
Hindsight would write history a lot better than my intuition, but as it stands, A Wife’s Credentials might become to jTBC whatThe Sandglass meant to SBS: the first killer application that puts you on the map. Just like the 1995 masterpiece turned SBS from a budding station whose signal couldn’t even reach the entire nation to a major player, this show scored ratings that not only were never expected from a hybrid born only a few months ago (3% average, peaks of 6% on the last episode), but something that even cable channels with a decade-long history would have a hard time scoring. All while receiving praise from critics and public at that.
Knowing the state this industry is in, it likely won’t mean all that much in the grand scheme of things. Just like 한성별곡-正 (Conspiracy in the Court) became the swan song of a dying genre, it might only end up being one of the last great bursts of greatness this increasingly decaying bucket of dreams will serve us. But at least it has earned its place in history, as one of the finest examples of what this genre and this industry can truly offer. Brains, guts, heart and soul. It's all there is to it.
So thank you.
Goodbye.
http://dramatic.weebly.com/wife03.html |
发表于 2012-4-26 23:55
