Can Western people be individuals?
Feb. 15th, 2007 11:57 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
imomusBerlin's big event right now is the Berlinale, the annual film festival famous for its golden bear awards. I'm not the world's biggest cinephile, but there have been a few things I've been keen to see. Photographer Mika Ninagawa is showing her first full-length feature, Sakuran (her first short, Cheap Trip, featured the original Momus demo for "Journey to the Centre of Me"). Sakuran features Funky Forest star Anna Tsuchiya as a Yoshiwara oiran, a high class prostitute. Alas, I wasn't able to get tickets (though I'm sure, with the music connection, I could have blagged some if I'd really tried).
Another Asian film that looks interesting is Korean movie I'm A Cyborg, But That's Okay, in which director Park Chan-wook teams up the beautiful, fringed Lim Soo Jung with K-pop star Rain. They basically play charming lunatics -- one uses her grandmother's dentures to communicate with lights and vending machines, the other dons a mask in order to transfer emotional energy between the other inmates of the asylum he's incarcerated in. It's tempting to see this quirkfest (and, again, I wasn't able to get tickets) as a light meditation on conformity versus individuality -- the first trailer begins in a factory straight out of Lang's Metropolis or Wells's The Trial:
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And the second delves more into the bizarre sanatorium hijinks of the protagonists, as they discover their (paradoxically robotic) individuality amongst the freaks on the far margins of society:
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Watching these trailers, I had two thoughts. First, this Cyborg movie just seems way fresher than anything coming out of the West, and presents characters who are much more interesting and individualistic (just as Ishii's Funky Forest does). Now, cinema is a mirror of society in the sense that it replicates but also reverses it, so it may be that this individuality is precisely what's lacking from Korean society right now. The film does imply that it can only exist amongst the mad and the marginal. But it's also worth thinking about whether we in the West aren't just a teensy bit complacent about our fully-developed individuality. Hollywood films present a much more cookie-cutter view of human personality than these Asian romantic comedies do.
Which leads to the other thought I had. Funky Forest and I'm A Cyborg, But That's Okay are mainstream products that also manage to be intelligent, stylish and quirky. And I can't help thinking that this might only be possible in societies where the majority of film consumers are bright and well-educated. And, as this BBC article covering an OECD league table of educational attainment explains, South Korea has "leapfrogged" many Western countries in the past twenty years. "Young people in South Korea's workforce are more likely to have achieved an upper secondary education than anywhere else in the developed world. They are also among the most likely to have university degrees." Surely, in this context, it should be no surprise that mainstream cultural products -- at least those directed at the young -- would be slightly more intelligent than those from nations lower down the league table?
My native Scotland was long ago overtaken, educationally, by Asian countries. One film I will see this Berlinale is David Mackenzie's Hallam Foe. Set in my hometown of Edinburgh, and employing the off-kilter graphics and cartoons of David Shrigley (yet more apotheosis for the successful scribbler), this is the tale of a boy who's "frankly, a little odd". The trailer does all it can to establish Hallam as a crank before bursting into a song that goes "I am a lone horse rider". Quirky individualism, it seems, is not yet dead. Even in the West.
Another Asian film that looks interesting is Korean movie I'm A Cyborg, But That's Okay, in which director Park Chan-wook teams up the beautiful, fringed Lim Soo Jung with K-pop star Rain. They basically play charming lunatics -- one uses her grandmother's dentures to communicate with lights and vending machines, the other dons a mask in order to transfer emotional energy between the other inmates of the asylum he's incarcerated in. It's tempting to see this quirkfest (and, again, I wasn't able to get tickets) as a light meditation on conformity versus individuality -- the first trailer begins in a factory straight out of Lang's Metropolis or Wells's The Trial:
[Error: unknown template video]
And the second delves more into the bizarre sanatorium hijinks of the protagonists, as they discover their (paradoxically robotic) individuality amongst the freaks on the far margins of society:
[Error: unknown template video]
Watching these trailers, I had two thoughts. First, this Cyborg movie just seems way fresher than anything coming out of the West, and presents characters who are much more interesting and individualistic (just as Ishii's Funky Forest does). Now, cinema is a mirror of society in the sense that it replicates but also reverses it, so it may be that this individuality is precisely what's lacking from Korean society right now. The film does imply that it can only exist amongst the mad and the marginal. But it's also worth thinking about whether we in the West aren't just a teensy bit complacent about our fully-developed individuality. Hollywood films present a much more cookie-cutter view of human personality than these Asian romantic comedies do.
Which leads to the other thought I had. Funky Forest and I'm A Cyborg, But That's Okay are mainstream products that also manage to be intelligent, stylish and quirky. And I can't help thinking that this might only be possible in societies where the majority of film consumers are bright and well-educated. And, as this BBC article covering an OECD league table of educational attainment explains, South Korea has "leapfrogged" many Western countries in the past twenty years. "Young people in South Korea's workforce are more likely to have achieved an upper secondary education than anywhere else in the developed world. They are also among the most likely to have university degrees." Surely, in this context, it should be no surprise that mainstream cultural products -- at least those directed at the young -- would be slightly more intelligent than those from nations lower down the league table?
My native Scotland was long ago overtaken, educationally, by Asian countries. One film I will see this Berlinale is David Mackenzie's Hallam Foe. Set in my hometown of Edinburgh, and employing the off-kilter graphics and cartoons of David Shrigley (yet more apotheosis for the successful scribbler), this is the tale of a boy who's "frankly, a little odd". The trailer does all it can to establish Hallam as a crank before bursting into a song that goes "I am a lone horse rider". Quirky individualism, it seems, is not yet dead. Even in the West.
Re: My Korean boyfriend's too busy playing his MMORPG...
Date: 2007-02-21 01:29 pm (UTC)I find all these opinions about Korea so shockingly generalized, simple, and obvious. Wait, I lied. I don't even find them so shocking anymore.
1) 'Korea has produced some brilliant films in recent years...that's largely due to political protectionism'
First, the screen quota has existed long before the boom. It's been a safety net for the industry, but not the direct cause of its renaissance. Second, the screen quota has been recently reduced to 73 days, and those who agreed with it argued that the screen quota encouraged low-quality productions (protection -> less competition -> relaxed standard)
2) "It's all a bit confusing though - one minute Koreans are cursing the Japanese/Americans, the next they're copying gangster rap and playing Japanese videogames. There's a large divide between the older and younger generations there."
Leonard Bernstein conducted Richard Strauss's Don Quixote in his debut in 1943.
I don't think the division is so large, because for some things, regardless of age, most people don't make strong connection in between - such as certain historic events 60+ years ago and the brand of your digital camera. That said, I won't say that there won't be a boycott movement if some conflict happens between Korea and another country in the future. But for most cases, it is either the country's products and culture are too much integrated into Korea's own, or their presence is insignificant, that such movement will be limited in its size, impact, and durability. We'll see how FTA goes though.
3)"In Korea's case however,...(strong in maths and science, not exactly focused on the arts). All you can surmise from that, is that the average Korean is better at mathematics than the average European."
Comparing hundreds of Koreans and non-Koreans that I've met, I find that overall Koreans are more knowledgeable in the arts also. Most of them have read the classics, learned the world history, political ideas and whatnot. What is considered "basic, common knowledge" is not here, and I think Canadian education system doesn't fare too badly among OECDs, either.
But it's just that the education system forces kids to study and the society requires you to obtain post-secondary education because otherwise you are considered to be a failure. I doubt that kind of forced education will have much benefit in a long run other than providing an impressive spec and the public having more of general but shallow knowledge and skills in math. I will stop here on Korean education before it becomes a emotionally over-charged essay.
4) "As for happiness... Seoul is the most depressing developed city in Asia."
I am sorry that you felt that way, but the vast majority of Seoulians wouldn't agree with you, including myself. In fact, this is my first time hearing such remark. Seoul is the busiest, liveliest city that I've ever been both in Asia and North America.
NK Attack & weather: everybody is simply too busy to think about North Korea even for half a day out of entire year. It might sound weird considering Seoul is within an hour's reach from the 36th line, but the situation between SK and NK is rather complex, as you might expect. And think about it - we've been living with them for 57 years now, and if we were in such constant fear, we would have become freakin lunatics by now. About the weather, it's rainy and grey 10 times more so here in Vancouver than in Seoul, and I don't find myself or my friends struggling with depression.
And lastly about the chauvinism remark: please don't underrate + generalize + simplify Korean society and especially us Korean females so! Korea is a relatively chauvinistic society compared to the Western world, but please, "Saudi Arabia for its treatment of women"? Not even close.
Re: My Korean boyfriend's too busy playing his MMORPG...
Date: 2007-02-22 06:04 am (UTC)