Also on the “Misuda” front, Jamila from Uzbekistan has captured the hearts of Korean TV viewers, mostly on account of this (WARNING: painful to watch) and this. You know, there was a time when Uzbekistan was a major center of learning for the medieval Muslim world. Sheesh… what would Nathan say?
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37 Comments
She looks like a younger and thinner version of Ida Doshi.
I’m ashamed to admit this, but I find Ida Daussy strangely charming.
Jamilla must have something stuck on her face - she keeps cupping her nose and flicking her hair. The breast jiggle was pretty cool too. Those skills look a bit too well honed, a bit too, well, “professional.” She’s also got a natural version of what looks to be the ideal for Korean facial surgery - western eyes and nose and high Asian cheek bones - the ‘Uzbek look’. Kind of strange how similar alot of women look after getting the same type of plastic surgery in Korea. I always thought a woman’s special or unique features made her attractive as well. Jamilla pretty much encapsulates what that show is about - foreign women put onstage as exotic sex objects.
What I can’t figure out is why no one was laughing at her - I mean, that ‘한국말 빨리빨리 하고 싶어요’, the way she said it, is laughable. And I agree with you about her ’skills’, dokdo. I think what we’re seeing here is the product of her Korean for Special Purposes lessons from her employer.
She’s apparently the source of controversy now, too. On the show, she said she’s been in the country for a month, but the netizens say she was a model on a Korean home shopping program two years ago:
http://www.donga.com/fbin/output?n=200711150342
Looks like it’s back to the full salon for Jamilla.
She is pretty hot though.
Like a number of guests and “talent” on Korean TV shows filmed in a studio before a live audience, she is wearing a hat. It’s always bugged me to see that. I know it’s acceptable here — but not many other places.
In L.A., when students wore their hats in class and in restaurants, I would sometimes explain to them why it wasn’t okay.
I’m not alone. Tony Soprano didn’t like it either. You may recall the episode in which he gets up from his table at a restaurant, goes over to a loud, ill-mannered youth sitting at a nearby table, stands over him and, with no preamble, tells him “Take the hat off.”
Do tell — why isn’t it okay to wear one’s hat indoors?
Manners, for one thing. I know the concept does not have currency here, but still…
#2,
I’ve met her. She is charming. She was delighted to meet someone who spoke French.
#5,
She does appear familiar.
#7,
Yeah, seeing that hat bothered me too.
Hats are for outdoors.
#8,
It’s rude. It’s an old tradition. Knights would remove remove their headgear indoors as a sign of respect for their host. The tradition continues in the military.
Brendon, shouldn’t you know this? Haven’t you served in the military? Oh, right, I forgot. You were a commissioned officer, right? I’ve seen quite a few with berets indoors and without outdoors, undoubtedly as a sign of contempt for their subordinates.
Re: #3
“foreign women put onstage as exotic sex objects.”
Exactly. The whole show sickened me so much, I couldn’t even finish the clip. I mean, I knew what to expect from from horny Korean guys on the show, but the foreign women (many of whom speak Korean fluently) willingly putting themselves through such a degrading experience is depressing.
Also, the Korean women looking down upon those women didn’t help, either. In short, the show is one of the most low-brow and lacking in taste shows I’ve seen since Jerry Springer.
PS. Women are generally exempt from the rules that men must follow about hats… except when wearing a hat or clothes that resemble what men wear. She wasn’t wearing a dress and cowboy hat, as furry as hers may have been, is still a cowboy hat. She shouldn’t have taken it off.
It’s strange that people who are sicked by this monkey show, it seems like there’s a lot of expats keeping a close interest on the show. I saw few minutes of the show, and never been back since.
While on the topic of women and manners, what I found to be funny about that clip was the Cyrillic text that said: Ассалому алайкум (assa-lamoo alay-koom), the Arabic greeting that in her part of the world at least, is reserved only for men. In other words, only men can say that to other men. If a woman said that it might not be received too well over there.
Of course, let me add that she never said that on the clip… It was simply just written on the screen when she first spoke.
Yeah, this show makes me cringe too.
Yeah, this show makes me cringe too.
There is some room for interpretation, I grant, but what I’m seeing on these blogs about this show amounts more to pissy caricature than informed truth.
I admit the show is silly. But it’s not degrading in the way that you think.
The Misuda girls are there to represent themselves, their personalities, their respective countries, as well as to be representative of foreigners in general. They’re also there to represent bits of Korea itself and Koreans themselves. They’re there to discuss their lives in Korea and to try to be entertaining about it. Surely, they ain’t there to whore themselves out. And they ain’t there to be boring.
On the face of it Misuda is about young pretty foreign women talking in Korean about Korea, which is a relatively new premise. If sexuality is present here, it’s no more pointed or degrading than anything else that exists on air these days. In other words, it’s light entertainment. And actually the sexual tones in the show are entirely natural and appropriate. After all, we are not talking about 50 yo foreigners. Anyway, I take Misuda for what it is, a show with a regular cast of characters and friends trying to be funny. Sometimes it’s funny, sometimes it ain’t.
That said, Misuda does have its serious purposes, and I would argue that it’s good for Korean society. It’s definitely not the degrading cat house on TV some of y’all (including a few Koreans themselves) make it out to be. At its best, it’s getting conversation in Korea going, it’s bringing important social issues out in the open, it’s challenging Koreans to look at foreigners as individuals, as their own characters, and not just as an anonymous outgroup — with mixed results of course but nothing’s perfect.
Anyway, I like the show but I admit its value is “degraded” by the fact that it can be so much more. I don’t like how the show focuses a lot on that ZA girl who can barely speak Korean. It would be much better if in general it didn’t go for the silly gag so much. Better discussion would be had and at more volumes if the girls who are not fluent in Korean were cut out. The South African girl is disruptive. She’s not a bad person by any means, to be fair. And in fact sometimes what she says tends to be the most biting and critical. She’s mentioned DVD bangs, love motels, and prostitution on the show, and she’s pretty much the only one who does so on a regular basis.
While I’m at it, the guys on the show are there to give an (often awkward) welcome and because they provide a natural setting for such a show. Nobody would be watching Misuda- or at least the majority, guys and girls, wouldn’t be watching — if it consisted of a panel of bespectacled Ewha University grads cognizing at length on serious political issues of the day with female foreigners. Perhaps there’s a need for this sort of show too, but then we’d be missing the point. Viewers are not watching in the first place because they’re looking to be bored to death with stilted debate.
Also, the reason why this Uzbekistan lady is popular is not because she’s sexy per se. It’s because she’s soo Korean about it. She plays up to an archetype pretty well, and she’s got her mannerisms down pat.
Ack!
“Jamilla pretty much encapsulates what that show is about - foreign women put on stage as exotic sex objects.”
This is more caricature, factually inconsistent and untenable considering that Jammila’s act is unusual for the show.
It seems to be part of the reason why she’s caused such a stir this week. No other girl on the history of the show came out so strong.
The way she acts, flirtation and “aegyo” heavy, is fun and funny. Indeed, it’s supposed to be self-consciously comical. Not to mention, it’s familiar and fits well with the show’s broader “Korea” theme because she’s actually acting like a Korean. Guys AND girls laugh at it.
The “angry expat” response going on here, indeed, is akin to someone watching Dumb and Dumber and getting upset at how it mocks retards. Maybe not the best choice of film (or words), but there you go.
It doesn’t matter if people here hate 미녀들의수다. Call it lame or boring. But get the basic representation right. There are plenty of smart ways to criticize this show, actually. I have yet to see a single reasonable criticism posted here yet.
One criticism I’d personally make it is that as the show progresses, besides being more and more reflexively silly (and less about Korea), it’s becoming and more, I don’t know, monochromatic in the sense that the roster of girls are becoming less racially varied. What happened to Leslie? Where are the girls of color? Why are all the girls so freaking pale?
The hat debate is inane and mildly offensive. Can’t wear a hat indoors? Knights? Sign of respect? Give me a break. What, are we still living in the dark ages?
The show’s prop department ran out of black face-paint and dreadlock wigs.
abcdefg is right, with the possible caveat that some guests seem also to have increased media exposure as a goal. Still, I see no reason why this should prevent anyone, Korean or non-Korean, from expressing an opinion about a particular person or episode. In other words, you can see Jamilla in the context of the show and all it is, but others are going to look at Jamilla from the context of all the women they’ve ever seen, both here in Korea and elsewhere, and not focus on what the show represents to Korea and its people.
Me? I’m going to feel free to comment on a single episode or person, and I might not always focus on the show in all its representative senses.
And the hat? That hat was made for porn.
Hat protesters, “here is Korea.” There are no knights, and hat manners are different, sorry.
Besides, Tony Soprano, the etiquette guru that he was, got shot in a diner months ago.
Which is one of the biggest problems with the show.
I wonder what Jamila looked like in her high school photos.
why are you so upset with misuda?
I find it to be a more upbeat version of the Marmot’s Hole, where people who came to Korea don’t brag about how many natives they fucked, how their relatively larger size sexual organs were sought after, etc.
they also seem to be happier to be in Korea. Unlike some bitter ones, who are now out of Korea.
they seem to be more innocent, too.
and probably more liked among their peers in real life.
Where is it you live again?
Abcdefg wrote:
“The Misuda girls are there to represent themselves, their personalities, their respective countries, as well as to be representative of foreigners in general.”
This is exactly why this show is an insult to foreigners in Korea. Is this really who we want representing the face of the foreign community? For the most part our “representatives” mostly know how to giggle and flirt – they can’t speak Korean, aren’t taken seriously, and in this Confucian based Korean society, they’re at the bottom of the totem pole - young and female.
Abcdefg can you imagine a show like this in the West – a bunch of American guys interviewing semi-literate foreign girls about their views on marrying Americans? I don’t get it how that mix can be called a “natural setting.”
“they ain’t there to be boring.”
There are plenty of ways to make a show interesting, start conversations, bring out social issues, show foreigners as individuals, all the things you mention, AND respect non-Koreans. Abcdefg, if the show is about starting conversations, why do you think the show focuses on the girls who can’t speak? Dude, there’s no conversation here – these girls are mostly up there to be ogled and laughed at. It would be a whole lot more interesting if the foreigners could speak intelligibly to the audience, and sometimes present critical views, which you noted was lacking. It would also be more interesting if there were young foreign guys on the show too.
As for the Uzbek girl, abcdefg, how do you think she got those sexy Korean mannerisms down pat? “Self-consciously comical”? Comical to us, maybe, but I don’t see her laughing at herself or anyone laughing at her either. I’m sure she takes her professional obligations quite seriously. It would be comical if an average girl suddenly put on that act – but this is not a one-time act, nor is this an average girl. No other girl came out so strong, yes, but she just makes explicit the underlying theme of the show - why those girls are really up there on stage.
Why isn’t Leslie around? Too articulate for one - harder to laugh at someone like that. Nothing worse than an articulate retard, to borrow your Dumb and Dumber example. And, doesn’t fit the Korean ideal type for foreign female sexual attractiveness, either, as an African-American.
This country absolutely needs a show to open up dialogue with its foreigners and with its mixed Korean citizens - to break down barriers, build understanding, see people as individuals. And you want to entertain. The lives of foreigners are pretty interesting to Koreans, from what I can tell. There are plenty of ways to introduce Koreans to foreigners that portray them as intelligent people with interesting, fun personalities.
Did Jamilla go to high school? I missed that video. Please - photo links, if you’ve got ‘em.
#27,
She’s consciously overdoing it. I’ve met plenty of Uzbeks, none of them acted or talked like her.
Let me put it this way: you’ll see her soon in TV commercials talking like that. What’s that Korean model/comedian with the annoying voice? Do you think she’d still get noticed if she spoke in her real voice all the time?
Her name’s Hyun Young. She does have an irritating voice but a great body that makes up for that. Not that I’m a fan of her. Which begs the question. Why the irritating voice when she has a body that makes some mens’ thingys stand up?
Leslie, at first impressed my wife with her maturity, intellect, and her ability to express herself clearly in Korean. But as time went by she started acting and talking like the other less smarter girls, which led to my wife saying that she was disappointed at Leslie for letting herself be swept up by the atmosphere of the show. I don’t blame her though. The show is geared to showing foreign women as tall, pretty, and funny in a less than ideal way, plus the audience was voting for the ones that fit that image. So, it was either go with the flow or sink in the popularity contest.
When I clicked on the first Jamila link, my McAfee Antivirus popped up and said it trapped a Trojan that was trying to impregnate my computer (to confuse a metaphor or two).
One Korean TV program that has made at least some effort to do that is KBS’s 인간극장, which has highlighted various expatriates in Korea (and their families) numerous times.
I’d rather see more shows like that than this idiotic “White Horse Revue” everyone seems so enthralled with.
“Do tell — why isn’t it okay to wear one’s hat indoors?”
Well, it just is. It’s arbitrary. And 98% of Americans and Canadians know it. And all of us raised in the west know of it, which makes me think your mom was distracted by other things or you never paid her heed.
It’s hard to admit your folks deviated from social mores a bit. Just don’t make like your treatment represents something.
If anyone wants to see the full episode, it’s already up on youtube, titled “Talk with Beauties (korea, KBS) ep1 51-1″
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v.....re=related
The hat debate is just silly!
You ain’t in Kansas anymore. Get over it!
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