Pizza is Originally Korean!

I’ve been telling pretty much everybody I run into–whether Korean, Korea-expat, Koreanist or not–about this ad. I just find it astonishingly clever, with amazing attention to detail (e.g. pause and read the comments at 0:41-42…brilliant satire), and am in awe at the CEO’s own willing participation, and the hilarious succession of shots of his ancestors, no less.

Btw, to quote myself from TGN, below is the first Korean news report I’ve turned up. Basically just a summary of the ad and points out that it it is clearly comic, but also suggests (incorrectly to my mind) that a majority of Korean viewer comments on YT have been opposed to the ad……:

http://news.kukinews.com/article/view.asp?page=1&gCode=all&arcid=0005440751&code=41191111

If I can add a few (or several) words, largely in agreement with Yuna and WangKon @53. TK: this isn’t meant to be a dig at you at all–I like your work, and readily recognize a very deep Korean tradition of satire and even self-deprecation as well, from Chosun period stuff through Chae Man-shik to Kim Chi-ha and to the much more slapsticky “Gag Concert”, but there are additional issues that need unpacking, which I’d like to hear your thoughts on (and I also get your comment on not wanting to waste time in the comments section on TMH, but this is worthy of thought and a long post on your own site, if you’d care to take it up).

Like Yuna, for the first 30-60 seconds or so I also had an “OMG, please tell me this isn’t serious” reaction, before I was able to settle in and enjoy the brilliant skewering of zealous nationalism. What seems unusual to me, in addition to the sending up of potentially sacred cows, though, is the precise mode of the ad’s satire as it, at least initially, until the pizza box, involves the use of understated dry wit, which I do think is rare in Korea. If you take Chisuk (“My Idiot Uncle”) by Chae Man-shik, for example, he’s doing something similar, but the object of his satire is Koreans who slavishly followed Japanese customs during the colonial period (I’ve always been amazed that the story squeaked by the censors, who were clearly oblivious to the satire–which to me is much more overt than this ad). His nationalist street-cred survives more than intact with that story.

Even some of the best local ironists (take, e.g., early Bong Joon-ho films like “Memories of Murder” and “Barking Dogs Don’t Bite”) use irony in a dark way, I’d argue, where the humor comes more from the issue of the blackness of the comedy, rather than the idea that it is subtle “shared knowledge” of being in on a joke. That latter style, however, is a very common mode of humor for myself and one of my closest friends (also a Korean Studies person) and we have regularly had problems with friends in Korea, because where we have assumed that our clear tipping off that what is meant as an ironic joke said with a straight face is “shared knowledge” of a joke between ourselves and interlocutors is instead taken at face value. This still happens even with close friends ( and this inc. my wife), whom I’ve know for well over a decade: if I say something with a straight face that is obviously meant to be wry and ridiculous, I can still get a quizzical reaction of “Are you serious?” (Granted, this can happen on occasion with Westerners too, but the level of frequency is *much* higher with people raised with a Korean sensibility of humor–put it this way: my formative humorists are people like Emo Phillips, Steven Wright and Monty Python.) Not sure how many people know/remember Steven Wright, but can you imagine how his humor would go over in Korea? Lead balloons would have trouble keeping up with how fast he would sink, I suspect. (I’ve also yet to see “The Red Chapel”, the DPRK doc, but it sounds like something similar there was afoot in terms of clash of humor styles, let alone the additional issue of bringing in the DPRK.)

Also, I’m still trying to get to the bottom of who GumshoePictures are–yes, I’m assuming a US-based production company and have no idea whether they pitched the idea to Mr. Pizza first or vice-versa, but it obviously comes from people who are incredibly well-steeped in what is going on. (e.g. the easy transposition from doduk to dokdo; the hysterical blog comments if you pause at 0:41-0:42, the pictures on the history dropout’s wall and the background to his computer, and indeed the sly dig at Minerva, I think; the brilliant use of traditional music with its switch from gayageum to piri just as you go to the Buddhist staut; I could go on and on). As I’ve said to some friends, basically I take this all as evidence of Korea’s increasing transnational connections and growing cosmopolitanism, etc.) My best guess is 1.5 generation K-As who’ve gone to film school/studied advertising in the US, but I welcome further info. Gumshoe, if you’re out there: my deepest respect to you (or however many you are). Bloody fantastic work. Ditto to 정우현: sir, it cheers my heart to see a CEO who can run with this sort of ad and participate himself, even including mock portraits of ancestors. I’d heard before that he was a 대단하신 분 and the ad confirms it in my eyes.

Okay, this has gone on long enough. Thanks for those who’ve paid attention.

Excellent research there, Hamel. Much appreciated. And #81, yes, I think it’s clear from the filming that regardless of where Gumshoe claims to be based, it obviously went back and forth between US & Korea for the making of this project. A friend has identified one of the buildings in one of their sidebar videos as being at the Academy of Korean Studies. These guys really know what their doing, and the list that Hamel provides suggests that these people are at the top of the game–and it shows.

@83, As somebody who has made a documentary (hopefully I get to remove the “” on that) myself and is currently in the process of making a second, all I can say is it was interesting to see how the finished product looked in comparison to what happened when my co-producer originally set out to make it….and I expect the same thing to happen this time (albeit this is scripted and we’re reliant on the footage we’ve come up with…). Hamel will probably have some interest in that himself, I imagine .

Just to add a p.s. to that. I’ve just looked at the non-subtitled mirror version, and the like:dislike ration there is running 329: 44. Enormous difference. And one of the issues from negative commenters (and, oh boy, you can almost see this coming…..) on the subtitled-version is that in the graphic of the plane flying over the ocean from the US to Seoul, the body of water between Korea and Japan is titled in English “East Sea”.

Well, it turned out to be something that was worth co-authoring an article on with my colleague Rumi Sakamoto, who works on internet nationalism in Japan. People who were interested in this thread might want to have a look at this week’s Asia-Pacific Journal: http://japanfocus.org/-Rumi-SAKAMOTO/3629