Iris

I've had a chance to watch the last quarter of Iris on KBS America. The series was popular with the viewing audience, but less so with K-drama critics here in the U.S. I'd have to agree with the critics -- it's too melodramatic, with the relationships between the characters taking center stage. This may be appropriate for a television drama, but Iris is supposed to be about spies and intelligence agents, and is not at all credible, despite all of the gunplay and action sequences. Who did they get as a technical advisor? And we're supposed to believe that the foreign mercenaries are trained? NSS is supposed to be a top secret agency, and yet the workplace dynamics are not really different from a normal company, as portrayed on Asian television. (If a show were to be realistic, it'd have to show the layers of bureaucracy, but that would be too boring.) Would a copycat of 24 have succeeded in South Korea? (I suppose it depends on the viewing demographics -- who's more likely to watch TV in the evenings, men or women? And would East Asian men be interested in a show that focuse more on action than on relationships?) Iris would have worked better as a period piece or wuxia drama coupled with palace politics than as a contemporary story about Korean intelligence services.

I note that the tacit approval of premarital relations continues in this popular drama. Just last week I was watching one of the entertainment news shows (probably Entertainment Weekly on KBS), and in their coverage of some celebrity wedding, it was mentioned that the bride is pregnant and expecting. It is sad that this is reported without any sort of disapproval (or shame on the part of the couple). In the drama Three Brothers, the eldest daughter-in-law asks the prospective daughter-in-law why she and the youngest son and in such a rush to marry, posing the question, "Are you pregnant?" She then says that the only reason why people rush to get married is because the woman is pregnant, citing the example of celebrities.

While the ideology of radical feminism has not taken root in East Asia, the expectations and goals and morals associated with feminism seem to have. How much of this has been due to outside influence, and how much to the cultural elites seeking to ape the West?

Kim So Yeon is rather cute with the short hair, but she is also very thin...

Han Cinema