When surviving the world isn’t enough
For this post I’m going to be completely myself and therefore extremely reductive.
I’ve said once before that the difference between Western and Asian narratives is that Western ones tell stories of changing the world, Asian ones tell stories of finding people with which to survive it. It’s not an original thought, nor even an original expression of it. And yet if you wanted a truly reductionist reason for why these two narrative traditions are different, here it is.
‘Western’ narratives are stories of doing. ‘Asian’ narratives are stories of being.
The quote marks are stories of generalising.
With the sudden, unexpected global phenomenon that was Squid Game this year, a lot of questions have been raised as to why it resonated so strongly outside of Korea. Many theories were given – usually around violence and sex and therefore showing an unfortunate lack of knowledge about the broad scope of Korean media generally.
Timing mattered, the pandemic mattered, Parasite mattered, Netflix mattered, climate change mattered, widening socioeconomic disparity mattered. All these things contributed. But if I had to posit a new theory, it is this: it was both a story of being and a story of doing.
A story in fact about trying your best to just be and in the end being forced to do. Because the alternative is watching injustice from afar and refusing to do anything about it. The alternative is living with a rapidly deteriorating status quo. You can try your best to just be but in the end you are going to have to do. Not to avoid getting shot by a giant doll in pigtails. But to help others avoid that metaphorical fate.
Korea, it seems, is ready for their protagonists to do rather than just be. And it’s something that international audiences find familiar.
The past few years have shown a definite shift toward stories where characters try to change things, rather than just survive or endure them.
Korean writers and producers are tired of writing stories about the unchanging (and unchangeable) status quo. They’re ready for things to be different, to be better.
Squid Game is not the only example for 2021, of course (although it is the most high profile). We have D.P.: a thoroughly Korean story written for a domestic audience about how things must change.
D.P. is devastating and pulls no punches. It doesn’t soften its blow for a second. If you want things to get better, it said, then things must be different. Not for a person or for an institution but for an entire system, even an entire culture. Things, they said, must be done.
In some cases, this call for action was brutal and violent and celebrated vigilantism and was even disturbing in its cynical use of violence against women (Taxi Driver) and in other cases it pulled its punches and didn’t land the necessary blow (Devil Judge).
But the trend is there as local writers clearly grapple with a world they believe is distorted and wrong – and a world that seems to be ending (Happiness, Hellbound).
This year saw the requisite number of romances and Makjangs and a big uptick in the number of both fusion and classic Sageuks. But in the midst of that, also, a considerable rise in stories of action, of fighting back. And not against an evil Chaebol or a single family or a corporation. Not against an individual who is betraying the principles of the system.
Fighting to change the system itself.
Even Beyond Evil had the courage to point its fingers at the interconnected, communal nature of corruption and concluded that social harmony was not worth the cost of buried atrocities.
As Squid Game told us – you can try your best to just be in an unjust system, you can try not to play the game at all. But in the end, if you can – if you have the means to change the rules of the game itself – then you must. You must do. Otherwise you’re complicit in a system that’s gone wrong. Surviving is no longer enough.
Like most drama watchers, I feel a certain wistful loss for the classic stories of being: of a rich and multidimensional discussion of life and how we can survive it together. But those stories are also conservative and even apologias for a status quo that can be brutal and unfair.
If Korean writers think that it is time to tell these new stories, these stories of standing up and changing things, these stories of doing and not just of being, then it’s a change that’s certainly resonates across the globe.
Surviving isn’t enough. It is time for change.
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