Korean Sociological Image #7: The Best Gillette Could Get?
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On the face of it, Park Ji-sung (박지성) is a very logical choice to endorse any given Korean company’s products or services. After all, he is easily Korea’s most popular male sports star at the moment, he (naturally) has a good body, and he is so successful that he has even published an autobiography already. Accordingly he has dozens of advertising deals to his name, and – to place his popularity into context – via his numerous Korean fans’ choices of credit cards he has more than financially compensated Manchester United for the loss of David Beckham for instance. Presumably then, Gillette Korea thought it was on to a good thing when it belatedly decided to join his bandwagon.
Nevertheless, while it’s not like I can claim to being all that photogenic myself, Park Ji-sung is actually a *cough* less than inspired choice, and at the very least advertisements like the above probably stretch consumers’ senses of disbelief just a little too far, if they don’t put off Korean men from using Gillette products altogether! If you haven’t already figured out why, then photos like this, this, this and this may help, and as Roboseyo points out, it’s not just because of her own sudden popularity that Korean companies started signing deals en masse with ice-skater Kim Yu-na (김연아) last year.
Update: Which brings up the side issue that Korean celebrities are notorious for being unconcerned about diluting their own personal brands, but so far this doesn’t appear to have been the case with either Park Ji-sung or Kim Yu-na.
Of course, photoshopping is by no means a recent phenomenon or unique to Korean advertisers, although it’s also true that extreme examples like Amore Pacific’s recent attempt to get women to aspire to a – by definition impossible – photoshopped “X-line” body ideal may well be very hard to find in other countries. With that in mind, I’m always interested in the extent to which Koreans are aware* of the level of photoshopping that occurs in advertisements and their opinions of it, but as I and many commenters have already talked about photoshopping on numerous occasions on the blog already (here’s a very small sample!), then rather than merely rehashing old points here, instead let me ask you how well you think Gillette’s ads will do, what your Korean friends, lovers and/or colleagues think of it, and what they think of photoshopping in general? Commenter Seamus Walsh’s female friends for instance, told him a little while ago that:
…they all were aware of the altering of photos that goes on…but that it is generally ignored because they know the models are attractive anyway, and that they look good after photoshopping, so that’s all that matters. Basically, despite knowing an image isn’t a true representation, they would rather have the altered image. I just wonder if this means that their ideals of beauty are based on the reality or the unnatural and unattainable?
Me too. But how representative are those opinions of average Koreans’ in turn? Please let me know!
* Not to imply that your average Korean consumer is any less intelligent than your average Western one with that statement, but having said that, on the other hand I’m not going to lie and pretend that somehow the Korean education system encourages the same level of critical thinking either.
(For all posts in the “Korean Sociological Image” series, see here)
Bandhobi: The Most Interesting Korean Movie You’ll See This Year
Well, it certainly sounds like it will be, although I admit I have some reservations about Bandhobi‘s (반두비) “crude political satire,” and especially of its portrayal of an American English teacher as an “occasional rotten apple.” Given that it otherwise aims to transcend and/or educate viewers about such issues as racism, illegal immigration, and possibly even teenage sexuality, then it would be both ironic and quite a pity if it resorted to gross stereotypes of foreign male English teachers in the process.
(In passing, as I probably won’t get to mention them otherwise then reviews of the book “The East, The West, and Sex” by Richard Bernstein here, here, here, and here may help to put those stereotypes in comparative perspective, and are interesting in their own rights)
Still, Korea Times’s movie critic Lee Hyo-won, whose excellent movie reviews I’ve sung the praises of before, has easily persuaded me to go and watch it this weekend. Here is her(?) full review below:
In “Bandhobi,” director Shin Dong-il translates to screen “uncomfortable” issues of illegal immigration, racism and social toadyism through the universal languages of ticklish humor, teenage angst and priceless friendship.
It’s a story about growing pains and the meeting point of different cultures _ the title “Bandohbi” roughly means “female friend” in Bengali. It’s an indie flick that, while comfortably feigning mainstream superficiality, is inlaid with some gem-like scenes that show why Shim was dubbed “the Korean Woody Allen” (Berlin International Film Festival, “Host & Guest,” 2005).
Teenage actress Bae Jin-hui portrays the cheeky 17-year-old Min-seo with sure-fire articulation. One of the thousands of girls who took part in political candlelit vigils, Min-seo relentlessly speaks her mind at home – “you’re just my mom’s sex partner,” she shouts at her single mother’s incompetent boyfriend (Here, the film could have made the man despicable and turned it into something more noir, but he truly wants to get a job and become part of the family).
But she isn’t entirely the hardball rebel she pretends be. Not wanting to be a burden, she even takes up an illicit part-time job to raise money for English lessons.
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One day, she decides to treat herself to the spoils of a misplaced wallet, but is caught by the owner, a migrant worker from Bangladesh. Mahbub Alam, a migrant worker-turned-documentary filmmaker who played a minor part in Shin’s “My Friend & His Wife,” shows off his fluent Korean to play the 29-year-old intellectual struggling to support his family back home.
Update: It turns out that Matt at Gusts of Popular Feeling actually knows Mahbub Alam. See here for a little more on his work with the Migrant Workers’ Union and with Migrant Workers’ Television.
Min-seo tries to dissuade Karim from reporting her to the police by offering to grant him a favor, and reluctantly agrees to help track down his former boss that owes one year’s pay. As the unlikely pair pose as loan sharks, they find themselves transforming each other’s worlds in unexpected ways but Karim’s visa will not last forever.
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The sometimes-shaky handheld camera keeps a rather ironic distance from the characters; for Min-seo, the world is a piece of cake while for Karim it is a cruel battlefield. They slowly form a mutual understanding, with the girl asking indiscreet questions and the gentleman preaching about problems in Korean society. Yet the most affecting scenes do not involve words, but rather the simple act of crying, listening and eating.
The blatant mockery of traditionally right-wing institutions including the President Lee Myung-bak administration and the daily Chosun Ilbo are actually funny, but at times are not limited to character portrayal as they ought to, and are rather vulgarly laid into the mise en scene. Another questionable aspect of the film, which aims to highlight the foreign community in Korea, is that the American teacher was not convincing as the occasional rotten apple he was supposed to represent, let alone his “atypical” American English accent.
The crude political satire will throw some into fits of laughter while offending others, and contrived narrative elements are bound to irritate picky viewers. But just as the film’s hero Karim says, “open your mind,” and discover the film’s redeeming – and inspiring – qualities.
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It is unfortunate that the film, which could nevertheless reach out to teenagers, was rated 19 and over for some candid depictions of a girl’s sexual awakening. In theaters June 25. Distributed by Indiestory.
Moviegoers can also look forward to the Migrant Worker Film Festival, of which Allum is festival director. It will be held in July in Seoul and through September in other parts of the country. Visit www.mwff.or.kr.
I’m assuming that that “sexual awakening” involves Min-seo becoming attracted to Karim, and if so it would be quite radical for a Korean movie, as I’m at a loss to think of any portrayals of romantic relationships between Korean women and Western men in Korean cinema, let alone with men from an ‘undesirable’ country like Bangladesh (can anyone fill me in please?). Given everything that I’ve written about teenage sexuality in Korea though – in short, that Korean teenagers are having sex, but the Korean public’s unwillingness to acknowledge this is severely restricting teenagers’ access to contraception and reliable information – then that rating is indeed a pity. But on the plus side, presumably Korean teenagers will be able to find a way to watch it nevertheless, and the restrictions will make them even more inclined to do so!
Korean Gender Reader
We’re Here, We’re Queer…And We’re In Korea
Sorry, but once I remembered the catchphrase of the gay groups at my university in the mid-1990s, then I couldn’t resist that particular addition to it!
In my defense though, there’s been a relative flood of LGBT-related news in the Korean blogosphere since the 10th Korea Queer Culture Festival finished two weeks ago. To wit:
1) Expect an outing of a Korean celebrity by an angry ex-girlfriend sometime soon.
2) 3xFTM, Korea’s first ever movie about a female to male transgender experience, is currently playing in cinemas. See here for a review.
3) Ask the Expat wrote an informative post about gay culture in Korea.
4) The Wonder Girls are so popular in Thailand that a “Wonder Gays” group has been created.
5) Don’t miss Chris in South Korea’s photos of the parade and festival themselves.
6) And finally, Dramabeans reports that “Director Kim Jo Gwang-soo added an entry to the small-but-growing category of Korean queer cinema with his short film Boy Meets Boy, starring rising pretty-boy actor Kim Hye-sung. He is following that with his second film, Friends? [친구사이?], which isn’t quite feature-length but clocks in as a mid-length film at 50 minutes.”
Friends is currently in post-production, and with teenage boys kissing in it and reportedly a bed-scene too, it’ll be very interesting to see how widely it is screened and if any objections to it are raised. Unfortunately, I missed any news of Boy Meets Boy when it was released last year, so if anyone has any information about its reception then please let me know.
Update: “fuchsiathegreat” has just written a list that he(?) claims covers most if not all queer films that have ever been produced in Korea. I think that that’s an exaggeration(!), but it’s certainly a good guide to what has been produced in the last decade. Check it out at Omana They Didn’t! here.
Update 2: Although most of the films themselves are difficult to find unfortunately, check out the links provided by Pierre here for a history of queer cinema in Korea up until the late-1990s.
(By the way, if you were under the {perfectly understandable} impression that Koreans thought that there were no homosexuals in Korea, then you might find this post interesting)
Other news, in no particular order:
7) Actress Moon Geun-young participated at the 2009 Pink Ribbon Love Marathon fan meeting, with the aim of raising the awareness and need for prevention of breast cancer.
8) The Chosun Ilbo reported that Swedish husbands do 6 time more housework than their Korean counterparts.
9) The original is a little difficult to read, but Watashi to Tokyo discusses an article about why highly-educated Japanese women aspire to be housewives.
10) The Dong-a Ilbo reported on the recent launching of government task force for making a “better place for procreation” to promote childbirth. Forgive my arrogance, but I suspect that I could have translated that better.
11) Netizens voted on the best kissing scene in a Korean drama.
12) The Hub of Sparkle! provides valuable information on women’s safety in Korea and on what support is available for rape victims.
13) Allkpop reports that teenage girl group Girls’ Generation is involved in a new show where they learn look after a baby for a day (see here and here). I’m sure that it’s entirely with ratings in mind, but on the plus side they are also getting involved in a campaign to help adopted children. Cue highly relevant pictures accompanying the Korean news reports.
14) Brand Confucian reports that “according to Yonhap news, Consumers Korea, a consumer advocacy group, released a report showing that several international and local Korean baby skin care product manufacturers are marketing products containing potentially harmful chemical preservatives and fragrances as ‘natural’ or even ‘organic’.”
To place that into context, 88% of products marketed as organic food in Korea are anything but, and even though 27 out of 30 Vitamin C drinks in Korea contain dangerously high levels of carcinogenic benzene, not only are the KFDA’s powers so limited that none of the companies producing them can face penalties, but it’s not allowed to publicly reveal their names. So, when I wrote about this topic in passing a year ago, guess what country’s websites I had to visit in order to learn which 3 drinks are safe? It certainly put Korean democracy into a new perspective…
In related news, I’ve just read that the government said that “7 out of 79 brands of bottled water were found to contain bromate, a suspected carcinogen, exceeding international guidelines for drinking water quality.” See here for the details, and again, which 7 are not named. And in another ominous sign, last year the KFDA’s lack of legal authority and resources inspired it to get the public to do its own job of checking health and safety standards at Korean restaurants.
15) The Korea Times reports that a professor was given a jail term for sexually harassing female students, and Korea Beat reports that: the acquittal of a professor accused of sexually assaulting a female student was affirmed; the Dong-a Ilbo was accused of sexism by portraying women memorial services for the late ex-president Roh Muh-hyun as acting only out of emotion; and, as a follow-up to the Seoul City government’s plans to increase the number of public toilets for women (see #9 here), provides some more details of what exactly will be provided and how they will be funded (and parks are to become more “women-friendly” also).
16) PopSeoul! reports that the two rumor-spreaders that contributed to Choi Jin-sil’s suicide last year are to receive…suspended sentences of 2 years and 120 hours community service. But while that may sound lenient, particularly in light of her tragic life and the ignominy of being sued after death for not hiding her husband’s beatings from the media, there are still rights to free speech involved.
17) The Wild Women’s Performing Arts Festival is set to be held in Hongdae in Seoul on June 27, and will raise funds for the Korean Women’s Association United, which tackles such issues as gender equality. See here and here for the details.
18) Despite thousands of articles about and even more photos of Lady Gaga’s recent visit to Seoul (source), only Sarah Kim at Ningin made the obvious points that “…Asian sensibilities seem to have a double standard. It’s not ok for Asian artist to dress risqué or to come off as sexy, but when Westerners do it, it’s completely ok. And why is it when Westerns idols go to Asia it’s a big deal but not the other way around.”
There are exceptions to the first point of course (Kim So-yeon’s revealing dress at the Pusan International Film Festival in 2007 instantly springs to mind), but Sarah is quite right, and I’ve made the same point frequently myself (see #1 here). Recall that Chae-yeon’s far less revealing music video was banned from Korean television recently for instance (see #1 here), which she discusses briefly in an interview here.
19) Not strictly Korean, but considering that Korea has the lowest number of working women (read: mothers) in the OECD then this post at Contexts “about the ‘motherhood penalty’: the pattern demonstrating that working mothers make less than women without children.” should be interesting. The study examined, authored by Shelley J. Correll of Stanford University, Stephen J. Benard, and In Paik also suggests that, “the mommy gap is actually bigger than the gender gap for women under 35.”
20) Korea Beat asks why Korean ghosts always appear to be female.
21) Mr World 2009 is to be held in Seoul this September.
22) In the Korea Times, Choi Yearn-hong writes about the bizarre mentality of the Korean Constitutional Court, which seems stuck in the 19th Century when it rules women’s rights. Among other things, in some cases it has adjudged that women’s inheritance rights are only half those of men.
23) Apparently, hairy legs for men are no longer in fashion in Korea, although despite living here 9 years I’ll be damned it I can recall when they ever were? Despite Korean men not exactly being well-known for their body hair though, the Korea Times reports that sales of body-hair removal products and devices to them are increasing every summer. They are also putting on cosmetics for the sake of getting an edge in the job market too.
24) And to make sure to end on a fun note, the Korea Herald reports that Korean actor Lee Byung-hun below (source) is the most desired boyfriend by Japanese women, and finally Allkpop gives a list of the hottest Korean male stars under 25 and also informs us that apparently Kim Hyun-joong is the most kissable Korean male celebrity.
Yes, that was the minimalist version. Why do you ask?
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