kdrama: Dae Jang Geum eps 46-54 (end)

[meganbmoore]

A few spoilery comments on the end:

I’m disappointed that the king fell in love with Jang Geum at the end, but at least (in the grand scheme of things) it was a fairly minor part of the series, and there was no huge, drawn out triangle, or jealousy from the queen. (Maybe some worry about her position, but that’s different.) Also, I’m thrilled that she kept Yeun Seuk with her after his death, and they became friends.

I’m also very pleased that both Jang Geum and Yeun Seuk had daughters, especially given the precedence of and importance given to male offspring in this type of story. Actually, in Jang Geum’s case, I find it extremely significant, as her story is very much an adaptation of traditional male heroic patterns (and her daughter views her as a hero), and the success of a hero is often marked by a son to carry on the heroic bloodline. (Wuxia is pretty big on daughters-but usually motherless daughters-but Korea seems to still be mostly sons.)

Also, making Jang Geum/Sir Min/daughter have scenes almost exactly like Jang Geum’s childhood was blatant emotional manipulation. But sometimes, that’s ok. Like here.

And I’m thrilled that Lady Min became Head Kitchen Lady, and that that pretty much signified the end of the corruption in the kitchen, and people using it for their own vendettas and schemes.

Non-spoilery: The beginning of this series was slow (I remember watching the first episode and being bored and wondering why it was all about the king from Goong running around and angsting, when I was told it was about palace cooking ladies and Korea’s first female royal physician. But it was important background information. Boring, but important.) and later slow-paced (in the good way) but the second half, with a few caveats, was pure awesome. Jang Geum herself can be a little too perfect at times (especially the first half) but I became very fond of her throughout the series. And if she doesn’t suit you, by the end, there’s a major female character of almost every character type (ok, no Warrior Women, but there are very few action scenes to start with), most of whom are uniformly awesome, and have their own plotlines and backstories. I think all but a few episodes also fail a reverse Bechdel test (that is, contained scenes in which [1] there are at least two men, [2] and no women, and [3] they do not discuss a woman). It also has what is possibly the best-written (if slow moving…it literally takes years and years, with convenient years-long separations) romance I’ve seen in a kdrama, and what is probably the best kdrama boyfriend ever.

Also, it pleases me that Korea had a woman-centric product in a genre that was male-dominated and, when it became a huge huge hit, went “Hmm…you know, women seem to like this, and we made tons more money this way. Maybe we should look into making more sageuks about women, and giving women in the series with male leads more prominent roles and plots.” Unlike Hollywood, who goes “This could not possibly have made money because it was popular with women. Obviously, a butterfly in Tibet flapped its wings which caused the Earth to temporarily tilt off the axis creating this total fluke and we should ignore it.” (This is the oldest sageuk I’ve seen, and so I can only go by rumor/internet reports as far as it’s influence goes, but it’s popularity alone thrills me.)

Comments

[anime_babble]

While I never made it through this series (Jang Geum was too Mary Sue for me, and the slow pace of the beginning killed me), my family LOVES this show. LOVES it. I really do agree with you regarding the effects of the show on future kdramas, giving rise to more shows about women; it was that huge a hit in Asia.

Also I'm not claiming causation here, but apparently South Korea is the only asian country so far to turn the tide against the preference for male children (for awhile they were like the other countries with more boys born than girls). I'm thinking that the rise of women centric stories in their media may at least help with the issue.

[troisroyaumes]

Suspect the main reason for the change in preference for male children actually had to do with the surge of women entering the workforce (if women can earn money then they can support parents in their old age too, and as my elders often say, daughters are usually more reliable at that than sons), but having women-centric stories probably doesn't hurt either. ^^ Even before Dae Jang Geum, there we're a lot of K-dramas that were women-centric (I did a picspam here of K-drama heroines from pre-Hallyu series, and I'd say most of the series I named there would be considered female-centric), though Dae Jang Geum was ground-breaking in that it had a female protagonist in the male-dominated, male-targeted sageuk genre.

[meganbmoore]

Korean television is probably the most female-centric media I've encountered (though I'm not always thrilled with how the centricity plays out) outside of romance novels.

[troisroyaumes]

No, you're quite right: I watched a lot of sageuk before Dae Jang Geum, and they were all focused on men. Not only that, they were also focused on royal/aristocratic families rather than on the servants--that was the other ground-breaking aspect of the series. Before then, the audience for sageuk was mostly middle-aged men (i.e. my father's demographic), but Dae Jang Geum completely turned the tables and made producers realized that they could make sageuk that appealed to all audiences. It was a bit of a zeitgeist, I think, because I think there were other women-centric historical dramas being released around the same time, but Dae Jang Geum certainly marked the turning point.

[meganbmoore]

I think part of it with DJG essentially taking most aspects of traditionally male oriented plotlines and paths and roles and completely inverting them. I wasn't sure abnout the servants aspect, but I suspected though. As I understand it, Emperor of the Sea and Damo, both of which were influenced by and came out just after DJG, were also hugely popular and somewhat influential, and both featured main characters who were either born slaves or peasants, or who were nobles who became slaves.