#kwwmine

[evil-writer]

#kdramawomensweek || day three: The Narrator

⤷ Woo Ah Jin (Kim Hee Sun)  ↦ Woman of Dignity (2017)

Everyone dreams of happiness. Everyone desires something they don’t have. Our lives begin with that strong assumption; we need more to be happy. But...our lives never begin, or end, the way we want them to. This is my story. But it’s also the story of her, who dreamed of being me. 

Not only does Ah Jin serve as one of two narrators of the story, the entire premise is based off of her. It starts with Bok Ja’s fascination, near-obsession with her, but even that is because of her. Ah Jin is the primary driver of the story. The plot moves according to what she does, or what is done to her. She is the one who hires Bok Ja. She is the one who gets cheated on. She is the one who decides to divorce her cheating husband. She is the one who makes the familial decisions when it comes to her in laws. She decides what her life will look like, and this drama bends to her will. Her wishes, her strengths, her weaknesses, her aspirations; that is what the story is. 

She is the titular woman of dignity, and this is, without a doubt, her story.

[evil-writer]

#kdramawomensweek || day seven: Speak

⤷ Ryu Soo Hyun (Im Soo Jung)  ↦ Chicago Typewriter (2017)

A pen is mightier than the sword, a typewriter is mightier than a gun.

She swears, she fights, she uses her femininity to further her cause. Soo Hyun was the Joseon Youth Alliance’s sniper and a driving force behind the success of their rebellion. Principled to a fault, and brilliant to boot, she snuck her way onto the team, despite her friends insistence that she not. She fought against her nation’s oppressors, she put her life at risk time and time again. And though the Joseon Youth Alliance may not have acheived all they’d set out to do, they made a difference.

Soo Hyun made a difference.

[evil-writer]

#kdramawomensweek || day one: Monster girls

⤷ Min Yoo Ra (Lee Elijah)  ↦ The Last Empress (2018)

Unapologetic in her selfishness, with no qualms about using her wiles to get what she feels she’s owed, Yoo Ra was dealt a shit hand, and she pays the world back for how it wronged her, tenfold. Single-minded and unbothered by moral quandaries, she has lied, cheated, murdered her way into the very family she’d vowed to take down. In doing so, she’s written her inevitable demise into the plot. And yet, she’s undoubtedly a winner, accomplishing what she’d set out to do. Her tormentor watches as his last hope at life is crushed in her hand.

The narrative did her so horribly wrong on so many fronts, but at the very least, she was allowed to be angry. She was allowed to be vengeful. She was allowed to wreak havoc. She was allowed to be irrational and awful and manipulative. And she, for all her crooked moral compass, was undoubtedly a key player for the labelled heroes of the drama. Their goodness goes a long way, but they don’t win the war without her sharp eye and sharper wit. 

Min Yoo Ra is not a good person, but we can’t call her a villain either. She’s flawed, her character born of awful, traumatic experiences. She’s been forced to endure the likes of which our heroes had never dreamed, let alone understood. But--she’s not misunderstood, either. She hasn’t risen above, she refuses to take the high road. Yoo Ra herself knows that she’s done unforgivable things, and though she shows little remorse, she doesn’t shy away from her culpability. 

Monster and more, good and evil, she lives in grey areas and does despicable things. And doesn’t that make her a completely fascinating character?    

[evil-writer]

#kdramawomensweek || day two: Transformations

⤷ Pyo Na Ri (Gong Hyo Jin)  ↦ Jealousy Incarnate (2017)

Chief, I can do it! Without missing one day for four years, I’m doing it for the 1029th time! I can do it in my sleep! Really, I can even do it with my eyes closed! 

Out of all the things I’ve done until now, being a weather forecaster was the most enjoyable and rewarding work.

At the start of Jealousy Incarnate, Na Ri’s dream is to sit at that news desk as the anchor. It’s the job she’d studied, practiced so hard for, only to fail in the last round of interviews. Her economic situation leads her to take a contract-based position as a weather caster, but she doesn’t forget her dream. The anchor’s seat is where she envisions herself in the future, it’s where she wants to be.

She works hard and practices harder, and her years of experience as the broadcast station’s star weather caster lands her the much coveted role of morning news anchor. This presents a whole host of new challenges, all of which she faces and overcomes. Misogynistic colleagues, habits born of her days presenting the weather, and a lack of experience in camera-facing high pressure situations are all obstacles she defeats. She treats every opportunity as a learning experience, and despite the mistakes she makes, she is a rookie anchor worthy of her colleagues’ respect.

Yet as her time at the news desk wears on, she finds herself watching the weather caster’s spot in the newsroom, fondly. She’d spent so many years in that spot, she’d forgotten how she’d fought so hard for her sixty-second segments. That doing those segments in the style that was so uniquely Pyo Na Ri hadn’t brought her professional fulfillment then, but only because the grass had always been greener on the other side. It’s difficult to appreciate a job for what it is, when you’re still having to pick up dry cleaning and coffee to make ends meet.

 When she’d lived those years, she’d had her eyes fixed to the next biggest thing, that shiny desk and the bright lights. But from the point of view of that desk, she finds herself longing to stand at that green screen once more. She begins to see the work she’d done in a different light. She sees the segments she’d written off as the poor way to pay her bills as the vital work that it was. Without her announcing the weather, the people watching the news in the morning wouldn’t know how to dress, how to prepare for the day.

And so she returns--not because she couldn’t cut it as an anchor, but because she’d been to the other side and back, and it turns out her sixty seconds every day brought her more professional fulfillment than the hour long turns at the desk.  

[evil-writer]

#kdramawomensweek || day four: Favourite Daughter

⤷ Sung Na Jeong (Go Ara)  ↦ Reply 1994 (2013)

Of all days, it had to be April Fool’s Day. The death that seemed like a lie, and the confession that turned into a lie—both had to be on that day. Nobody had told a lie and so nobody had been fooled. But more than the fool who’s tricked by April Fool’s, a thousand times worse was the terrible April Fool’s Day itself. Sometimes reality is crueler than lies.

She is the youngest daughter, with a foul temper and a fouler mouth. Prone to violence when irritated, she has strong opinions and no qualms about letting the people around her, know. To her parents, she is their baby. Their little girl, and for the longest time, their only living child. Her Appa is seen yelling at her, but it’s in fondness; they’ll sit in front of the television together, his ggae-ttal tucked into his side. They are perhaps the most physically affectionate iteration of the Reply families. Na Jeong, grown up, responsible, university-attendee that she is, is seen cuddling with her Omma throughout the drama.

She is the forgotten middle daughter. An afterthought; she lost her big brother, but the plot never allows that to be about her. She cares after everyone living in her parents’ house like the mother hen she is, but she’s never seen holding her baby brother. She comes home for the first time in years, only for her parents to take her baby brother and leave her alone, to spend the holiday alone. 

She is the reliable eldest, carrying the weight of her family on her capable shoulders. When her Appa takes out a mortgage on their house, proceeds to lose that money in bad investments, and then loses his job, it’s she who steps up. It’s she who takes on that financial burden and decides to take a job in Australia. She leaves behind everything and everyone she’s ever known, and works tirelessly. She is the sole reason her parents don’t lose their home, lose everything they’ve worked for.

At the start of her life, she was the babied youngest. In the later half of her childhood and through her adolescence, and beyond, she took on the mantle of the eldest. And when her baby brother was born, she became the middle child. 

Sung Na Jeong, trapped in limbo; fitting all three categories, yet none of them at all.

[evil-writer]

#kdramawomensweek || day six: Community

⤷ Actress Chae Soo Bin/Writer Im Ye Jin

Moonlight Drawn By Clouds (2016)

If We Were a Season (2017)

[evil-writer]

#kdramawomensweek || day eight: Happy International Women’s Day

⤷ Yoo Eun Jae (Park Hye Soo), Yoon Jin Myung (Han Ye Ri), Jung Ye Eun (Han Seung Yeon) , Kang Yi Na (Ryu Hwa Young), Song Ji Won (Park Eun Bin) ↦ Age of Youth (2016)

“Others are just like me. Other people are people, just like I am. They feel as uncomfortable as I do, and hesitate, just like I do. There are plenty of people who are as nice as I am.”  - Eun Jae

“Everyone has their own circumstances to deal with. And until you know the circumstances they’re in, you can’t tell people how to live their lives. I’m sure you have something like that about you, too. Something that others can’t understand about you, but you can’t help. That’s why you can’t judge people.” - Ji Won  

“I hate you because I want to become like you, but can’t. So I can’t help but hate you. That’s why it smells. There’s a rotting smell coming from my envy.” - Yi Na

“Sometimes, I want to cry out loud. I want someone to hear me crying. I want them to hear me cry, and tell me everything will be okay. I want someone to pat me on the back, and tell me that it’s not my fault.” - Jin Myung

“Lies may be similar to makeup. Just like one puts on makeup to hide their naked face, people use lies to hide the truth. I tell more and more lies as my makeup gets thicker. Since when did I start feeling that going out with no makeup on was embarrassing? Since when did I become so ashamed of the truth?” - Ye Eun

Each of the Belle Epoque girls is meant to play some sort of female archetype. Eun Jae is the painfully shy introvert, who would sooner walk over hot coals than willingly enter into conflict with someone. Ji Won is her near-perfect opposite, loud and bubbly, the perennial friend. Yi Na is the femme fatale, dangerous and seductive. Jin Myung is the Good Daughter, putting herself through college while paying off her mother’s debts, incurred while her brother lays comatose in a hospital bed. Ye Eun is the quintessential girl. The one who dresses just as she’s supposed to, the one with the frat boy boyfriend, with equally perfectly-dressed girlfriends to link arms with and walk around campus, giggling over the latest gossip. 

Yet, they’re so much more than these skeletal stereotypes might’ve forced them to be. 

Eun Jae swallows her anger until she can’t anymore, until she boils over. She tosses Ye Eun’s designer handbag out the window and screams at her housemates. When we dig a little deeper, we see that she has nightmares. That she’d been brave enough to protect her mother when she’d suspected that her father might kill her.

Ji Won knows everyone, making friends is as easy for her as breathing. She is the glue that holds the Belle Epoque girls together. And she’s a pathological liar. Falsehoods slip out for her as easily as the truth does. She tells tall tales, spinning them until she can no longer take it back. Yet, even as she spins her web of lies (with the ghost inside the apartment), she holds the girls together. Though her “ghost” is a made-up story, each of her roommates has heaps of baggage. That little lie in the end allows them to come to terms with their pasts and face their problems. She is the anchor; without her, they drift.

Yi Na suffers from a serious case of survivors guilt, to the extent that she carries the little girl who died when she lived, around with her like baggage. She looks after her housemates like a mama bear, protecting them (see: Ye Eun) even when they don’t wish to be. She carries heaps of self-loathing along with her designer bags, flashes her luxuries at her friends even as she envies them. 

Jin Myung stretches herself fifty different ways trying to do it all. And she wishes her brother would die, and put them all out of their misery. She wishes her mother would choose her, for once. She wishes she would stop having to be the one to sacrifice. She provides for them still. But she resents and she loathes, and it tears her apart.

Ye Eun shows off her perfect life, her perfect love life, while suffering through an abusive relationship. Through a petty, small, excuse of a man who puts her down at every opportunity. He is her captor, and though she knows what he does is wrong, she can’t help but crave his affection. She let’s go, eventually. She begins to overcome the abuse, one day. She’ll carry on with her life, because it’s what they do.

Every single one of these incredibly special girls has a spine of steel.

The media, society has a horrible track record when it comes to forcing women into boxes, restricting our actions. Yet Age of Youth takes hold of these archetypes and shows us all that there is no “one size fits all”. That one shoe fitting doesn’t mean it’s the only one you can wear.

Happy International Women’s Day, everyone!

[evil-writer]

#kdramawomensweek || day five: femininity + her

⤷ Sung Deok Sun (Lee Hye Ri) ↦ Reply 1988 (2015)

“I could not return to my youth or that street either. Time always flows. Everything passes by and ages. That might be why youth is beautiful. Because it shines, blindingly bright at a brilliant short moment. But you can never go back.”

She is the frequent butt of her friends’ jokes; neither “smart” by their skewed standards, nor “pretty enough” to “deserve” verbal praise. At home, she is the forgotten middle child, overshadowed by her older sister’s brilliance and her younger brother’s neediness. In the total absence of validation, Deok Sun finds comfort in playing with makeup and hair spray, in arranging pretty outfits. Still, she--like so many of us--seeks the acknowledgement of the people around her. She craves affection and seeks reciprocation. It’s what prompts her first crushes. One of the standout moments of her and Sun Woo’s short, ill-fated romance is of Deok Sun running to her room just as Sun Woo comes to pick her up and slathering on foundation (top row, right). Makeup is how she finds confidence. She wears it like warpaint. 

Her femininity is her pride. It is what she has, when even her mother gives up on her dreams of Deok Sun gaining admission to a university.

Fast forward five years, and we see Deok Sun beautiful and grown up, with long hair and makeup done to perfection. We see her in heels and in skirts. She’s a flight attendant, a profession (in that time) known for its beautiful women. She is successful, she takes care of her parents, she has fulfilled nearly every dream she has had for herself. But most importantly, she has learned to love herself. She has learned to harness the femininity that had been her last bit of pride and she has turned it into a career. And that, I think is her true love story. Deok Sun’s is the story of how she stops pinning her worth on others’ opinions of her, and learns that at the end of the day it only matters that she is happy with who she is.