Of Swords and Parasols

1. I finally got around to watching Belle and Maleficent yesterday. These are the only two movies I've really anticipated this year, and they both lived up to expectations, though i'm late enough to the party that I think everything I'd say has been said multiple times by most who are reading this and would care. I wish Maleficent had had a little more subtlety and nuance at times, though (my one real beef with it is the characterization of the three fairies, who were largely thrown under a bus, characterization-wise, for Maleficent's arc, and unlike Stefan's characterization, I don't think doing so strengthened what the movie was doing), but it did a good job of saying and doing what it wanted to. Belle was just extra lovely, though yet another movie about a historical woman that's promoted as a romance but which has the romance as a secondary aspect.

2. Until 2 days ago, I did not know that flight rising had a piece of apparel that would let you have literal swarms of pixies floating around your dragon's head. The end result of that discovery was this:





(She has been named Kyoko. If you've read Skip-Beat, then you know it is the most perfect of all possible names for her.)

Now to resist buying pixies for ALL my dragons.

3. I am horrifyingly behind on TV. I haven't watched any of season 2 of Witches of East End or Devious Maids, or past episode 9 of season 2 of Beauty and the Beast. This is not disinterest at all, I just...haven't. I also haven't watched more of Ja Myung Go or Queen Seon Deuk since WisCon, much less any of the latest kdramas, and have only seen the first couple episodes of all the anime from this season that I intend to watch. These, at least, are mostly because I haven't felt up to subtitles the last few months, except for a couple very brief spurts.

4. Netflix now has season 9 of Bones and series 3 of Call the Midwife streaming, and Amazon Prime has season 5 of The Good Wife. I watched CtM on DVD a couple weeks ago and have been switching back and forth between the other two, both of which I still quite enjoy, despite not having much to say about them.

5. It seems there's going to be a sequel to Dae Jang Geum. This was apparently announced a while back, but I only recently heard about it. Reports seem a bit mixed about whether or not Lee Young Ae will be back as Jang Geum, though.

( spoilers )

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.)

A few brief points:

( spoilers )

( spoilers )
And sadly, that’s it for me and Dae Jang Geum until I get my hands on the next set. I hope that’s soon, actually, because I’m curious about how the envoy plotline plays out. I’ll probably start on Jumong or Hansungbyulbok soon.

Set in the Joseon era, Dae Jang Geum is about Jang Geum, mentioned in Annals of the Joseon Dynasty as the first (only?) female royal doctor in Korean history. Since there are only a few mentions of her, and nothing is known of her personal life, much of the drama is fictionalized.

Jang Geum is the daughter of a guard who was part of the group sent to assassinate the exiled Queen Yun, and who later goes into hiding when her son becomes king and declares everyone involved in his mother’s death to be a criminal, and a court lady who is framed after discovering a plot against the queen. The two live as peasants and raise their daughter as such for almost 10 years, but when Jang Geum reveals her father’s history, not knowing the danger, he’s dragged off for execution, and her mother dies as a result soon after, but only after telling her daughter to become the highest kitchen lady and record her story in the secret text that’s passed down. Later, Jang Geum has the opportunity to enter the palace after being adopted by a family who sells wine to the palace, and being asked to pass on a message that’s helps put the new king in power. Eventually, she comes under the care of Lady Han, the woman who helped her mother escape, though neither knows of the connection yet.

Hmm…that was a lot of kings. Ok, the first king is the father of the other two kings. No idea what kind of king he was. He exiled his wife and later ordered her to be assassinated, but I have no idea what led to that. I understand, though, that he’s the titular king in The King and I, which I’m sure I’ll watch eventually. The second king was his oldest son. Since he was kind of nuts and ordered oodles of people killed and their families enslaved due to a personal (but understandable) vendetta, there was a conspiracy to off him and put his bother in power. It worked, and said brother seems perfectly nice, and here for the duration. This is all pretty much background information.

A lot of the plot in the first episode could have been cut out, though I suppose it helped set up the politics of the series. The first two episodes largely serve to set up the political background of the series, and episodes 3-5 establish the kitchen politics, which are surprisingly interesting. Those episodes are also devoted to attempting to kill the audience with the cuteness of little girls in hanboks running around and holding each others hands. It’s almost at the level of Damo’s Childhood Piggyback Rides of True Love in terms of cuteness. Almost. But these little girls are probably not going to grow up and have Epic Angsty Doomed Forbidden True Love visualized by swordfights in the rain and snow. Well, I’m pretty sure they won’t anyway. Maybe. Anyway, the main story doesn’t kick off until episode 6, when Jang Geum is grown.

It isn’t as immediately engrossing for me as Damo, Emperor of the Sea, and Hwang Jin Yi were, but I like the politics and how they’re shown through kitchen life, and how seemingly mundane, everyday things are an important focus, and even convincingly dramatic. For example, the focus of episode 6 is that the golden pheasant intended for the king’s birthday feast goes missing, so Jang Geum helps her friend, Keum Young sneak out of the palace to try to find a new one. It’s illegal for court ladies to leave the palace without permission, and the two separate in their search. This is the main focus of the episode. Well, that and Jang Geum meeting the man who I assume will be her eventual love interest. He saves her from harassment and she later risks missing her chance to get back into the palace to save him from an assassin’s poison, and he gets the “Lookit my martial arts skillz!” scene. Plus, there are all the beautiful visuals (landscape, architecture, clothing…) and all the food pr0n.

So far, I like Jang Geum, but am not as interested in her as I’d like to be. I think I have the same problem as I did with Dam-Duk in Legend (who I do like, lest anyone misunderstand), which is that the character was pretty much perfect, with the flaws there largely to make them look better in the long run, as opposed to being real character flaws. Like Ho Gae in Legend, I’m more interested in Keum Young, the friend who will obviously eventually become Jang Geum’s rival due to the politics of the court, and ambitions of Keum Young’s family.

Also, I really hope that that food is as good as it looks. There are some characters, like the king’s taste testers, who only show up in scenes where they eat, and I think the king also eats in most of his scenes.

I anticipate more shounen-style cooking battles and setting aside of differences to work together and save the world prevent any kitchen disasters that risk upsetting the king, and so threatening all of Korea.