I was talking with a friend about KPDH and shame the other day, and at some point he said something along the lines “well yeah, Gwi-Ma controls them with guilt” and I had to stop him and be like. No no no we’re talking about shame here.
And, to be fair, we generally use those words interchangeably!
But they aren’t quite the same. Guilt is the “I did a bad thing” emotion. Shame is the “I am bad” emotion. And KPop Demon Hunters is about shame.
Jinu and Rumi are not the same.
Jinu is a guy who made a selfish deal that only saved himself, spent four hundred years being a demon, proceeded to craft and enact a plan to ratchet the demonic mass murder up in scale to an insane degree (and without Gwi-Ma’s prompting!), gave his best shot at manipulating Rumi, and then added a whole other plan to reveal her most deeply held secret to the world on live television in the most traumatic way possible, including using insecurities she’d told him about in confidence and assaulting her—all so he could stop having to feel bad.
Rumi… lied to her friends some. Oh, and she said something mean when she was feeling cornered and immediately regretted it!
Jinu and Rumi are not the same.
For Rumi, shame comes from something that doesn’t actually matter. Like, okay, babygirl, you’ve got a skin condition. It still has her spiraling out, building on itself until it’s consuming her—damaging her relationships, her voice, even the Honmoon (by way of those screams).
For Jinu, shame comes from what’s probably the least bad thing he did—but it’s still pretty messed up! I too would feel some type of way if I chose to only save myself from poverty. And because he knows he’s bad and selfish, then he doesn’t try to be anything else, and he doesn’t think about how he’s harming others: yeah, mass murder plan. It only benefits him? That’s just what’s expected from selfish Jinu.
When Mira bluntly says that she can’t wait until the demons are going to be tortured with Gwi-Ma for all eternity, it’s just Rumi with her, cringing. And the first time, I cringed too: Rumi doesn’t deserve that! Rumi is attached to Jinu, and doesn’t want that for him!
And I paused: who does deserve that? What would that… help?
Like, sure, the Honmoon is useful in that it protects people from, again, mass fucking murder but are we really saying we’re into being tortured forever and ever by the guy who preyed on you as a human in a bad situation and has been pushing you to be worse since?
Jinu organizes the Takedown performance. Mira and Zoey reject Rumi, and she runs to him, and he says no we’re both going to be miserable and horrible forever and ever and we might as well fucking die and she is actively suicidal afterward.
Because Rumi is a demon. Rumi is a creature of shame. There’s no saving her.
So she goes to the last thread of a support system she has left, and she says, “Kill me?”
And Celine says, “This is why we have to hide it.”
Which is when Rumi figures it out: they’re the same. Her and Celine and Jinu, drawing from the same well long after it’s run dry, shame boiling them all from the inside out as they try to hide it, try to fight it, instead of just—
Well, as she says not long after: I don’t know why I didn’t trust you to be on my side
Rumi did bad things. Jinu did bad things. They can still get up and turn around and be something else, because they are not inherently bad people.
Pretty much everyone in this movie fucks up at some point: Celine’s scattering emotional scars all over Rumi’s flashbacks, Mira and Zoey are raising their weapons on their partner, all those other Saja Boys are totally down for soul thieving.
And they are not inherently bad people.
So we were cowards, so we were liars/So we're not heroes, we're still survivors
Celine throws away the sword. Rumi gets back up, armed with the truth. Mira and Zoey start fighting beside her again. The other Saja Boys? They go down choosing to be awful.
But Jinu, my dear walking red flag king, figures out how to be more than selfish Jinu. There is, as long as he chooses it, still hope for even a guy like him.
This is a movie that doesn’t give a fuck about guilt. It is, in its entirety, about how shame is a lying liar who lies.
And I think that’s neat :)