Latest Posts by aphilosopherchair - Page 4

A Geopolitical Reading of Knulp

A Geopolitical Reading of Knulp

Identity has a peculiar relationship with itself. According to art and literary theorists, the act of naming or otherwise describing something replaces the true nature of the object with a representation which accuracy and comprehensiveness are constrained by human limits. Yet in public consciousness, one may contend, this caricature tends to be mistaken for the real thing in the long run. Thus,…

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Strange Waters

Strange Waters

“The Sixth Dragon – Joseon’s Top Swordsman, Moo-hyul” Hong Kong fiction and its Korean counterpart, heroism and escapism, the corporeal and the illusory—entities in these pairs nestle within each other in symbioses at times wondrous and at times sobering. Hong Kong martial arts fiction has made an impact on the South Korean popular culture scene since the 1960s. In 1967, the Hong Kong film Come…

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We won’t forget. Remember April 14, 2014 and the 304 passengers on board.

The NI Series (2): Noble Idiocy and Ignoble Surgery

Admin’s Message: Here is the second installment of this more casual series of posts on the interaction between culture and drama writing. This time, 0kuo0 from C-drama blog Cfensi, whose ethnicity is Chinese, sees the noble idiocy trope as more of an instance of the literary tradition of exaggeration, rather than culture. He does not reject the trope altogether, but cautions against misuse of it.

written by 0kuo0

It is undeniable that the noble idiocy trope is sometimes linked to ideals such as Confucian values and concepts like love, loyalty, etc. but I am not sure if I would say they are intrinsic to those ideals.

I like to conceptualize it as more of a part of the artistic and literary tradition of exaggeration for dramatic effect. We see this successfully employed in various forms of art and it seems natural that this might be an extension of it. However, most of the time I start feeling like it is employed not for thought-out dramatic effect but due to examples of success in previous dramas and the pursuit of viewers and profits. These tend to make you feel like it was more of a cut and paste job. It feels rough and abused.

Don’t get me wrong. There are definitely those media forms that get it right and lead the audience to accept the triumph of symbolism of logic and a normal thought process and the fact that these types of media tend to ignite a rabid following is probably only encouraging their overuse. It is kind of like more recent but as of late, seems to be dying trend of having unreasonably conservative parents that run counter to the couple or main characters randomly dying near the end of sudden circumstances to make it “touching.” There are the successful examples and those that are just trying to ride the tail-coats of the trend.

You cannot say that such an interpretation is completely illogical because people are not perfect and we should not expect characters to be either. These “tropes” do tend to have a thought process behind them but the question for me is if it fits into the new story it was put in. Was the transplant something that would work or something going to cause an immediate rejection? Does it make the most logical sense in the new story and given the new dynamics? Sometimes no because the character personalities or story background is probably different and that would make this otherwise touching act seem really dumb like having some great sacrifice happen after having the characters know each other for years versus just a few weeks.

I guess my point is that it is usually something that is cherished when it is done right and has some reasonable backing or progression to lead us to it but there are those stories that simply insert dramatic elements without properly analyzing and building up the progression of the story to that point and that is when it tends to get tiresome and overused.

The NI Series (1): Noble Idiocy Is Neither Noble Nor Idiotic

Admin’s Message: Hello Tumblr followers, thank you for reading The Asian Drama Philosopher (A-Philosopher)’s Chair all this while!  As a special treat for everyone, the Chair is inviting bloggers from different backgrounds to share their views on the relationship between culture and drama writing. First up is well-known K-drama commentator samsooki, who is of Korean heritage. Enjoy his breezy writing and express your support for him. 

written by samsooki

Well, you know it was coming.  It is episode 12 or 13 of your favorite k-drama romcom, after all.  The other kdrama shoe known as “noble idiocy,” must drop.

The Setup.  It has taken a dozen heart-tugging episodes, and a half of a lifetime from the time they attended the same elementary school, but the protagonists (let’s pick names – Bob and Mary) have defeated both (a) the evil scheming uncle who wants to take over the chaebol board of directors, and (b) the crazy ex-boyfriend/girlfriend who won’t take no for an answer.  After weeks of Wed-Thurs cliffhangers, Bob and Mary have finally become the OTP (One True Pairing) that we always hoped would happen!  Ooooh, but what twist hath fate wrought upon our starstruck couple!  The protagonists suddenly find themselves in a quandary – an unexpected and inexorable something (probably a dormant cancer, orphanage secret, and/or a chaebol proxy fight) is standing in the way of their happiness ever after!  What, if anything, can be done?

The Western Solution.  From a Western structural standpoint, the path toward Bob’s and Mary’s resolution includes:  (1) forthright communication, (2) working together to assuage each other’s fears, (3) gaining mutual strength for the Final Showdown, and (4) ending the cycle of individual misdirection by forgiveness and trust.  Seems pretty self-explanatory, doesn’t it?  All they have to do is work together!

The K-Drama Response. Noooo, we must be far more complicated. Bob and Mary must be cliven asunder by a unilateral and preemptive decision made by one of them as a dramatic score plays in the background, followed by heartbreaking preview scenes of “why isn’t he/she answering my texts” angst.  The first of Bob and Mary to blink away his or her single, pretty tear must leave Korea, forever, or at least a very long time.  Further, there must not be any further communication of any kind for at least a year, perhaps three.  Finally, each must suffer and cry alone while reminiscing through montage clips, wondering if fate will be kinder in future lifetimes.  And in the end, what appeared to be a noble effort to cause less pain, has now caused more, idiotically.  Let the sardonic eye-rolls, the knowing sighs of disbelief and cynical anti-tropist over-reaction commence.  Yes indeed, it is the kdrama trope of noble idiocy.

Surely, the kdrama’s PD (the production director) and the writers can do better? But maybe, what we believe to be a crutch for unoriginal writing isn’t what we think it is at all.  Perhaps the writers are merely introducing and then reinforcing an Asian principle that Koreans have long since internalized.

 What is going on here?  

 a.              Western Perspective – Y’all Are Noble Idiots.  The Western view, of course, is based on perspectives heavily influenced by individualism and discrete ethics.  In the Western view, each person is responsible for his or her actions and no more.  The Westerner would look at Bob’s silly actions and argue that, even if Bob initially believed that his own happiness would be greater if Mary is not burdened by Bob’s problems, how can Bob leaving the country without a word to Mary be the proper method for achieving such happiness?  And if Bob were acting in such a way for Mary’s happiness, surely Bob would not believe that he would be making Mary happier if he left her in a frozen state of uncertainty for years, perhaps forever? Pure madness and counter-productive!

 b.              Korean Perspective – You Don’t Understand Our Worldview. Surely, then, Koreans with their 5,000 year history, would know better by now!  Hmm, perhaps they do, though?  By way of background - the Korean worldview is framed by a Confucian philosophy integrally woven into every part of Korean society.  On whatever level, the general principle is the same – a person’s highest duty is to take responsibility for those who follow such person.  This is true of familial relationships (parent to child, spouse to spouse, sibling to sibling), educational and corporate relationships (seniors to juniors) and political governance (ruler to subjects) as well.  This worldview dominates Korean thinking.  It is the reason why one’s age is so important, and why honorifics are critical to conversation, even between family members.  One must always know who should be taking responsibility for whom, and likewise, who should be following and who should be leading.  It is the reason that students address one another by titles like sunbae (one’s senior) and hoobae (one’s junior) and that words like oppa and noona mean so much more than their literal meaning.  Family, friendships, corporations and even nations are held together by this principle of taking responsibility for those who follow you.  Is it any shock that this principle also applies between lovers as well?

Of course, one can argue that romantic relationships should not necessarily follow the Confucian philosophy, especially not in the post-modern age. My counter is that as true as that argument might be, Bob and Mary are not yet a couple at this stage in the kdrama.  As such, each of Bob and Mary is likely to fall back upon traditional relational notions to deal with the other of them.

Taken to its logical conclusion then, Bob cannot simply ask Mary to (1) share in the burden of the obstacle, and (2) work together to deal with the OTP crisis.  Such a request would be nigh on unthinkable because one of Bob or Mary must take responsibility for the other, and cannot share or delegate such duty.  And this kind of relationship is not unique to Eastern philosophies.  The concept that certain duties cannot be delegated is not just an Eastern concept, but it is part of the bedrock of Western jurisprudence as well.  A fiduciary duty is the highest level of obligation that a person can owe to another – and such obligation cannot be shared.  Just as an agent must act solely for the benefit of the principal, and a trustee cannot halve his liability by delegating half of his duties, Bob cannot breach his obligation to Mary.

It would be alarming then, for Bob, in the face of an obstacle that appears unsolvable without the help of Mary, to confess his burdens to Mary.  If Bob were to share his burdens with Mary, Bob would be abdicating his role as Mary’s protector.  Bob cannot have it both ways – if Bob has any designs on remaining the kind of person that Mary could rely upon, Bob cannot ask for help from Mary. Taken on a macro level, such an action would turn society upside down.  Bob’s only choice, therefore, if indeed Bob is the one who takes responsibility for the problems besetting our OTP of choice, is to remove himself from the situation entirely.  

Note that this is not because Bob thinks any of the problems is insurmountable and will inevitably hurt Mary, but because he believes he is not (yet) strong enough to deal with the issue. Note as well that even if Mary also stepped up and declared responsibility for Bob, each of Bob and Mary would be forced to take action unilaterally because of the impossibility of sharing duties under the Confucian way of thinking.

In Korean thinking, harmony in society, whether on a macro or micro level, depends upon the ability of those who take responsibility for others.  The good leader will cause his or her nation to prosper, and the good parent will cause her children to become good adults. Likewise, the person who capably wears his or her mantle of leadership will permit harmony to exist within the relationship.  And it is within this context of harmony that love can truly exist and flourish.

 Hope that helps quell the anger of anti-tropists out there seeking another noble idiot to skewer!

Beethoven is a Blanket

“It was like spraying water onto a blanket-clad child. Fretting that she might have a hard time, I stinted on water for myself and sprinkled it on her. But the cotton blanket absorbed the wat…

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Deep Down Inside, Beneath the Clothes of Culture

Deep Down Inside, Beneath the Clothes of Culture

Logic broke down when a bare-bodied male philosopher locked eyes with a little cat in a bathroom. That was the scene Jacques Derrida painted of himself alongside a meditation on how the cat was behind him since it was before him. But more precisely, Derrida was referring to the animal world in general and how animality surrounds and pervades humanity since it precedes the emergence of humanity.…

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When Mathematics Meets Politics in a Lunchbox

When Mathematics Meets Politics in a Lunchbox

Every time a grisly murder ordered by his father, King Taejong, takes place, King Sejong despondently buries himself in magic squares—n x n matrices in which each number from 1 to n2 appears just once and the sum of numbers in each row, column and main diagonal (a value known as “magic constant“) is identical. But the troubling news would not leave him alone in this introductory portion of Tree…

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Passing the Baton ...

"Spit out the worm."

That line from Six Flying Dragons is what we want to tell this increasingly feverish, belligerent and senseless world now. Less than half a day after the previous post on counter-terrorism was released, yet another round of attacks made the headlines. When life is this fragile, there is all the more reason to treat ourselves and one another more kindly.

The rest of this post and the title were meant as a preview of a Tree With Deep Roots post commemorating the end of Six Flying Dragons. A note of thanks to Tumblr bloggers for their support anyway.

Happy reading. And happy philosophizing on all things entomological.

The Meeting of the Face and the Gaze

The Meeting of the Face and the Gaze #CheeseInTheTrap #Kdrama #ParkHaeJin #KimGoEun #Humanities

On the lush grounds of frizzy-haired college girl Hong Seol’s campus roams a bunch of green-eyed beings—stalkers, thieves and one copycat—accusing one another of being weirdos who think of normals like themselves as weirdos. There is also the Mr. Nice, Yoo Jung, whom Seol catches betraying a faint smirk when a flirtatious schoolmate trying to strike up a relationship with him at a…

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In Calibration … "I'm not strange." (Jung) Other than that, Cheese in the Trap is a surrealist drama which serves cheese-coated piano keys in a mouse trap, complete with a side dish of acrylic blood. Read this WordPress article to revisit the fascinating portrayal of human psychology that once kept viewers spellbound and made the recent turn of events doubly disappointing.

The Dark Sides of Education

The Dark Sides of Education

Kazuo Ishiguro is no Michael Crichton. Lying at the heart of his dystopian world in the novel Never Let Me Go, where human clones are raised as organ donors, is not futuristic speculation about biotechnology, but a metaphor for how awareness of the finitude of life influences ordinary people’s treatment of love and friendship. What also intrigues him are the stories we manufacture and share among…

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Lost Heroines

“Is there a taste you want to remember?” In a quaint alleyway in the heart of Seoul, a scarred, reticent chef known only as “Master” operates a low-key eatery from midnight to seven in the morning. The menu has just one modest dish, but patrons are free to order whatever they want. Night after night, various sorts of workers drop by and share their woes and joys over the hearty dishes, while…

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Icing on the Bytes

Icing on the Bytes

If you believe you have graduated from Korean dramas of the early 2000s or take pride in never having been part of the fandom, you would probably shrivel in mortification at yourself in the event you fall for the following tropes in 2013 web series Wind Chimes in a Bakery: cancer, amnesia and parental opposition to courtship. Few, though, would consider the symbolism of love through wind chimes a…

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Weaving Poetry, Beauty and Meaning

Weaving Poetry, Beauty and Meaning

Huang Juxiang (lit. fragrance of yellow chrysanthemums), Yamamoto Yueniang’s Peranakan mother and look-alike Enveloped in a mesmerizing atmosphere with a light touch of folk magic, Southeast Asian drama The Little Nyonya traces the story of its fairylike, Japanese-Peranakan heroine Yamamoto Yueniang from the 1930s to the present day. Its origins, however, began much earlier. Since the 10th…

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A Headful of Mountain Flowers

A Headful of Mountain Flowers

The most boorish and mercenary character in Hong Kong drama War and Beauty is also its greatest romantic. Eager to leave poverty behind and make a name for himself in the dog-eat-cat world of 19th-century Qing China, delivery agent Kong Wu has no qualms leaving a group of defenseless girls to the mercy of ruthless thugs so that he can complete his job. Yet when he discovers a silk handkerchief…

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“Banks used to be places for number crunching with this dry and boring image in my mind. After playing the role of the banker Hanzawa Naoki, I realized that they are really about interpersonal stories. In the sense that one can handle financial transactions in the hope of helping people, banking is a job that ...” [Read more at The A-Philosopher’s Chair: https://aphilosopherchair.wordpress.com/2016/01/18/simoleon-physiology/]

© All rights reserved. This is an original translation done by the admin. No reproduction in any form is permitted without express permission.

(via Simoleon Physiology)

2016 Drama Soup for the Soul

2016 Drama Soup for the Soul

The Asian Drama Philosopher (A-Philosopher)’s Chair thanks everyone for their warm support in the past, especially ladysighs for spreading the love for Six Flying Dragons beyond the drama blogging community. All the same, drama watching is a very time-consuming activity, so it does not really expect readers to watch any of the dramas covered on this site. What it truly aims for is cross-cultural…

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Jordanian Inspiration, Joseon Incarnation

Jordanian Inspiration, Joseon Incarnation

 詠半月 (영반월) – 황진이 (黃眞伊) 誰斷崑山玉 수단곤산옥 裁成織女梳 재성직녀소 牽牛離別後 견우이별후 謾擲壁空虛 만척벽공허 Translation: Half Moon Poem – Hwang Jin-yi (Joseon poet and gisaeng) Who broke off jade from the mythical Kunlun mountains and fashioned it into a comb for the weaver fairy? After she and her cowherd lover separated, it was thrown haphazardly on the blue sky. It is not unusual to depict scenery through fashion. Clones of…

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Announcement: 2015 AlKemist Awards

Announcement: 2015 AlKemist Awards

After toiling for months, The Asian Drama Philosopher (A-Philosopher)’s Chair‘s inaugural year-end special is finally out! What is the secret behind the name A-Philosopher? Which 2015 productions reminded Asian drama bloggers of magic spells? What were some of the memorable elements of 2015 Korean dramas and outstanding art, literature and ideas featured in them? What were the highs and lows of…

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Necessity and Sufficiency

Even the most fervent critic of metaphysics must have pondered from time to time: what is the meaning of my existence to this world? Feeling hopeless about her prospects in grades-obsessed South Korea on the day of the college entrance examination, mathematically challenged highschooler Jang Dan-bi jumps into a rain puddle transporting her to a drought-stricken Joseon, where Sejong the Great…

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Tagorean Victory

If Taiwanese drama ToGetHer could be compared to a dish, it would likely be a hearty cheese and tomato sandwich topped with a soft and silky sunny-side up egg—nothing profound or elegant, but enviably more efficient than a typical philosophical tome at brightening up a wintry morning. All the same, this is not an ordinary sandwich, but one which yolk carries a small dash of the flavor of the…

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Mystical Quintet

Rock art, remarked philosopher Thomas Heyd, transforms land into landscape by imbuing it with cultural meanings. When someone looks at an old inuksuk, as Arctic researcher Norman Hallenday similarly opined, he is seeing more than a pile of stones—what enter his gaze are also the thoughts of another human being. And depending on how the viewer further engages with the stone structure, he adds new…

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Devotion The Poets' Camp Prince Consort Xue Shao: [Y]our mother (Empress Wu below) killed her to fulfill the romantic fantasy you conjured on a whim!

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A Soldier Wearing a Ball and Chain

A Soldier Wearing a Ball and Chain

Eminent American judge and legal scholar Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. once expressed the following disturbing opinion: “If I were having a philosophical talk with a man I was going to have hanged (or electrocuted) I should say, I don’t doubt that your act was inevitable for you but to make it more avoidable by others we propose to sacrifice you to the common good. You may regard yourself as a…

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Weather aesthetics and environmentalism in relation to She Was Pretty (via Of Sky Waltzes and Rain Dancers)

Past and Personhood in She Was Pretty (via The "Was" in She Was Pretty)

Game theory surrounding She Was Pretty (via Monte Carlo Fallacy)