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| Full House (2004) was probably my third kdrama ever |
Amanda's blog entry on her experience of watching Korean dramas as an American viewer was an eye-opener of sorts. It's interesting discovering the different perspectives we have on dramaland. For me, because I'm from a very heavily Western-influenced Asian country, I can relate so very much to both Western and Asian dramas.
(Note: In order to fully understand where I'm coming from in this blog entry, I suggest reading Amanda's blog post on Outside Seoul first because what follows was originally supposed to be a comment in response to her entry that became tl;dr material and so I decided to post it here instead.)
My first language was English; I'm positive I only ever read English books (save for school-required reading assignments); I grew up watching Sesame Street, Nickelodeon, and Disney; and up until the early 2000's, all I ever watched was American and British shows and movies (and the occasional Mexican telenovelas). I knew there were things that were distinctively Western, but because of the lengthy exposure to the Western culture, none of them were jarringly obvious to me.
When I finally started watching Asian dramas (it all started with Meteor Garden, the Taiwanese adaptation of Hana Yori Dango, and everything else snowballed from there), I got the same "culture shock" as I did with the Western shows - in that, there weren't a lot.
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| My favorite multi-generational household in Ojakgyo Brothers (2011) |
Multi-generational households wasn't a new thing, I myself still live at home with my parents and sisters. And when they were still alive, my great-grandparents too. And until the very end, they had a say on most big family decisions. Although I do have friends who have moved out of their parents' homes, that doesn't mean they have full autonomy of their lives. I would have to say there is no clear cut definition on what the norm is anymore. Both are widely accepted. So when I see our heroine going home to her parents' house, where her grandmother and an uncle also live, this is not weird for me.
I also live in a sprawling, yet highly-congested metropolis. Not as gorgeous or high-tech as Seoul, but not provincial or rural either. And we eat rice for almost every meal. Even for breakfast. Sure, we do cereals and cornflakes, bacon and eggs, but rice for breakfast is the local preference. And we do have dine-in tables at convenience stores. I've never eaten ramyeon there, but I do usually have the microwaveable rice meals. At 7-11, yes.
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| Tables outside convenience stores are also an option, as seen in You're Beautiful (2009) |
I guess, culturally, from my standpoint, growing up in a country that has been colonized by Spain and the US, plus the short-lived Japanese settlement, my perspective is vastly different from a lot of the other international kdrama audience. Yes, I'm Asian, but I come from a country that is far from being homogenous. To quote Stanley Karnow, my people spent "300 years in a convent, and 50 years in Hollywood." Our population is a mix of Malay, Chinese, and Spanish, not to mention the ever-growing Korean community. So in terms of dramas being relatable, both kdramas and Western dramas feel very familiar and yet very different, at the same time.
Digging deeper into the matter of relatability though, as Amanda has also pointed out in her own post, the reason we watch dramas in general is because they speak to us on the most basic level. It's not really about the who and the where, but the what and why and how. It's not really because our hero is the grandson of a chaebol who manages a coffee shop in Hongdae. We cared because when he unwittingly fell in love with someone so beyond his imagination, he threw caution to the wind and faced his inner turmoil head on. Love, friendship, family, living happily ever after - these are the common themes we look for in stories, no matter where the story can be found.
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| Still dreaming of my very own Choi Han-gyul, because Coffee Prince (2007) will forever own me |
This is super interesting. I wish everyone would share their drama biography like this :)
ReplyDeleteOh hey! Thank you so much. I love reading your blog and I really appreciate that you found this post. :)
DeleteThe whole societal hierarchy thing is more evident in Korea, for sure. But where I'm from, we still call people who are older by titles like "ate" (ah-teh) for older sisters and "kuya" (koo-yah) for older brothers, at work we would generally use ma'am and sir... Except I work at a multinational company and my direct superior is a Canadian woman based in Sydney and Westerners do prefer to be called by their first name so I just call her Linda. But the local manager, I still call him sir. Everyone else's parents are "tita" and "tito" which literally means aunt and uncle, even if they're not related. We don't have an equivalent to "-ssi" so everyone else, generally, can be referred to by name.
ReplyDeleteIt is frustrating to live with family, but at the same time, it's good that we're never alone. I can have peace in my own room when I want to, and all I have to do is go to the living room for some company. Some people say this is why we don't have serial killers, because you can't hide a secret that big for very long if you have so many other people up in your business. Hahaha.
And yes, Coffee Prince just makes my heart go all tingly. :)