ABSOLUTELY MUST READ!!!!
Norimitsu Onishi continues to do some quality journalism on Korea, this time looking at “The King and the Clown” and the changing discussion of homosexuality in Korea. A must read, by all definitions. Particularly interesting is Onishi’s rather frank interview with Kim Gi-bok, considered the last surviving itinerant clown.
Two thumbs up for Norimitsu Onishi on this one.
26 Comments
i’ve been trying to find and download that movie with a subtitle track. any ideas anyone?
So is Onishi a Zainichi Korean or is that just his/her stage name?
I’m sure he’s as Korean as Mizarv
I smell conspiracy.
When the movie, “Old Boy”, was hyped, I saw about 20 mins of the movie and turned it off. What a crap! I saw nearly 80% of all movies Hollywood produced and have seen many dogs but Old Boy deserves the “poo poo” award.
I believe this movie is hyped as well. It is easy to lie about ticket sales in Korea by paying off some agents. This movie, I am afraid, will be another “poop” when you see it.
When the movie, “Old Boy”, was hyped, I saw about 20 mins of the movie and turned it off. What a crap! I saw nearly 80% of all movies Hollywood produced and have seen many dogs but Old Boy deserves the “poo poo” award.
Not too surprising coming from an ultra-conservative, bible-thumping homophobe.
Ask Hong Seok-chon… it’s OK to play a swishy gay man in the movies or on TV but god help you if you actually are gay. All this talk about a growing acceptance of homosexuality is way overblown.
If current pretty boy of the hour Lee Jun-gi came out tomorrow, he wouldn’t be able to get a table at McDonald’s.
I am not talking about the subject matter. The film looked like shot in 1960’s technologies. Resolution was poor. Too many dreamy shots. Like a cheap European junk.
Then, the story line..For 20 mins, you are not sure he is dreaming or things are really happening. F***king nonsense after nonsense. Cheap imagery techniques like an undergrad film student project.
I don’t see any quality in it to deserve even a poor neighborhood film award. Somebody paid off people attending the French film festival. I am certain of it. Only thing I am wondering is if Koreans paid with currency or with drugs.
Aside from the bible thumping, how is that different from the majority of the people here?
Taking Cathartidae’s comment one step further:
Not only is it okay to play a gay man in movies or on television, but it’s also okay to behave - hell even live - like a gay man in full public view. Just don’t actually admit that you are gay.
I know someone who works as a sound editor for Korean movies and, according to him, some of the Korean celebrities you would suspect are gay…are. Not to sound too much like baduk, but there are a lot of homosexuals in the entertainment industry (actors, writers, etc.). They are taking the approach of quietly introducing “gayish” characters in their work to slowly alter Korean perceptions of such behavior (I emphasize behavior, not homosexuality itself). Then they announce to the public that they have a girlfriend studying abroad and get on with their life(style). And they NEVER EVER tell the public that they are actually gay. That is the chosen formula. The public will believe whatever the media tells them, regardless of evidence that might suggest otherwise.
By the way, I’m not gay. (Not that there’s anything wrong with that.)
I’d like to add that the same applies to heterosexuals in Korea. Everything happens here. Everyone knows it. It’s okay to “do what you do”, just don’t be up front about it and certainly don’t announce it to the public. That’s why, when passing by a motel, a man says to his date (or vice versa), “I’m tired. Let’s go in here and sleep for a little while.” Not, “Let’s go get it on.” Even though both know what’s what. And I’d also add that this is half of the reason the public goes into such a titter over places like Hongdae. Sure, racism comes into play, but I think that it’s more of an insecurity that the system of “keeping things hidden” will crack.
I’m confusd about this whole gay thing in Korea. I went to see “Brokeback Mountain” with a Korean guy who loved “The King and the Clown.”
He just about lost it in the theatre with Brokeback though. It was too much for him, he said.
It was also interesting how Brokeback didn’t even show in Busan. (I saw it in a nearly empty theater in Masan.)
Oh wait let me correct that. Not Masan…Changwon.
Yeah, I guess the whole spit lube thing isn’t for everyone.
Because, you see Jodi, in the King and the Clown they didn’t actually say they were gay.
I guess the spit lube thing could have something to do with it too.
> Because, you see Jodi, in the King and the Clown
> they didn’t actually say they were gay.
Which is kind of the point… the director feels that the current Western idea of homosexuality is not universal, and certainly did not apply to 16th century Korea. But then, in the 16th century, homosexuality as we talk about it did not apply in the West either.
Anyhow, Korea is much more of a “down low” country.
Michel Foucault argued that homosexuality is a fairly recent social construct, so the clowns in that movie could have had an intimate but nonsexual relationship, like Abraham Lincoln and his buddy sleeping in the same bed. Or even if there was sex between the men, it could have been seen as OK only within that social category.
When I first got to Korea and saw men arm in arm, putting their hands on other men’s thighs, girls holding hands and wearing chinos and plaid shirts (the official lesbian uniform of West Hollywood, at least in the 1990s) I thought this whole country was gay.
About the King and the Clown (I still have to see it) but even if they never say they are gay in the film, the movie is still generating discussion about homosexuality and from I’m gathering, it’s creating a sort of quasi-acceptance of the concept is it not?
But then when these same people who (in Korea) have formed a false sense of comfort about the idea see something like Brokeback, well, at least the guy I was with reacted really strongly and kind of negatively, which surprised me based on how much he loved the King and the Clown and the discussions we had about homosexuality as a result of whatever it was he saw in that movie.
At first I was really annoyed by his reaction regarding Borkeback and I kept hitting him in the theater telling him to shut up, especially during the tent scene. He was squirming around, hiding his face and loudly making a scene.
But then after the movie he started to obsess over it all, insisting that he isn’t insecure or homophobic and how he wants to have a gay friend because I guess he thinks it’s “in” or something.
Then a few days later we were having a few beers at my place and without realizing it, I put my beer bottle between my legs as I reached out to grab something off my desk and the guy totally flipped out saying it brought back flashbacks of Brokeback and a scene where he noticed there were “strategically placed beer bottles.”
It must be a straight man thing, right? No matter what your culture is, east or west…You can be open to the concept of homosexuality but when you see homosexuality in your face like it was in Brokeback, it sort of freaks you out right? I take it The King and the Clown sort of touched on the topic enough to cause discussion but not really hmm…”explore” the issue as such?
When it comes to homosexual scenes with straight men (apparently Korean or otherwise), I take it lesbian scenes are fine but gay man scenes? Too uncomfortable?
sorry for all the typos
I think I can speak for most straight men when I say that regardless of how we feel about two guys getting down on screen, lesbian scenes are always fine. In fact, lesbian scenes are probably under-utilized in Hollywood. I think Halle Berry and Salma Hayek should show a little freakin’ dedication to their craft by making a lesbo film.
On a more serious note (not that lesbians making out on screen isn’t serious), I forget who I was reading, but she raised a really good point, I thought, by noting the seeming contradiction in Hollywood where openly gay actors can play romantic male leads, but openly lesbian actresses cannot play romantic female leads. I’m sure if I thought about that for a while, I could probably come up with some reasons why, but it seemed like an interesting comment at the time.
Anne Heche played a couple of romantic leads before coming back to our team.
“I put my beer bottle between my legs as I reached out to grab something off my desk and the guy totally flipped out saying it brought back flashbacks of Brokeback…” With that kind of reaction, sounds like your friend is in the closet.
This would have been a better movie….
http://img213.imageshack.us/im.....3ju8ys.jpg
I totally predicted that story. Just wait until the movie hits the US. I think it’s going to be HUGE in the States, for the novelty of it, if nothing else. The hacky headline writers of home will have a field day combining “brokeback” with various words that mean “Korea” in the American imagination.
I was talking to a dude from Time magazine and even used the exact comparison when telling him about the popularity of the “The King and the Clown” in Korea, “It’d be like if ‘Brokeback Mountian’ was a popular as ‘Titanic.’”
I think we’ve misunderestimated Shelton: Who else had the prescience to know that a gay-themed movie in a country that habitually if not obsessively compares itself to the United States in virtually every endeavor would end up being compared to a gay-themed move in the United States?
Me too, Shelton. I wa talking with to a [insert hip euphemism for 'writer' here] from [insert name-dropping weekly rag here], and I said the exact same thing.