Hwang Jin-Yi (kdrama, 2006, 24 episodes)
“Jin-Yi.”
“Yes, Mistress.”
“What do you think is the most important thing to a courtesan?”
“Is it wine?”
“No.”
“Then . . . is it talent?”
“Not exactly.”
“If that’s not it . . . is it love?”
“Impertinent girl! Do you know what love is?”
“Mistress!”
“Wine, talent, and love . . . although they belong to us, none of those are the most important. The most important thing to a courtesan . . . is pain. When you can swallow your pain and overcome your desires, that is when you become a true courtesan . . . and a true artist.”
-Quotes taken from WITH S2's subtitles
(Forgive my really bad attempt at getting some caps. I was going to put more effort into it, but then I realized I suck. But look, drunk!Ha Ji Won! =D)
At first I thought Hwang Jin Yi (kdrama, 2006, 24 episodes, also Romanized “Hwang Jin-I”) was Dae Jang Geum with artist-prostitute courtesans (gisaeng). For the first nine episodes, the parallels are numerous. You have two former close friends and now rival headmistresses, Baek-Moo of the Song-Do Troupe and Mae-Hyang of the Royal Troupe, who have different artistic/life/career philosophies and are vicariously competing with each other through their respective protégés. Baek-Moo is the consummate artist, herself exceptional in dance, and she seeks to bring out the consummate artist in her girls. She believes in the sincerity of art for art’s sake. Mae-Hyang, on the other hand, who has achieved the highest honor and position for a gisaeng as Palace Headmistress, sums up her philosophy in a simple phrase: “It is not the strong who survive but the survivors who are strong.” Like the historical gisaeng, she has political astuteness and is keyed to the political atmosphere in the palace. Her protégé, Bu-Yong, not only takes this lesson to heart as she matures but might even take it a step too far (or too impertinently).
Baek-Moo’s protégé Hwang Jin-Yi, however, is that frustrating creature: a true prodigy. (She’s also a real historical figure. Little is known about her life, though, so fictional license has had free rein imagining it for us.) Her talents in the arts of poetry, music, and dance inspire all the envy and rivalry in the talented-but-not-genius that Jang-Geum managed to fire up in Keum-Young. I thought that this was how the drama would go, with the rivalry playing out similarly in how it did in DJG, with petty tricks playing out into real hate with the steadfast devotion of the protagonist triumphing in the end.
But then the first nine episodes, which unfold the saccharinely sweet and tragic story of Jin-Yi’s first love (okay, I admit I found it not so sweet but probably because Eun-Ho [played by Jang Geun Suk] is so baby-faced at his tender nineteen years of age that it annoyed me--he’s eight years Ha Ji Won’s junior in real life), ended and Episode 10 jumped four years ahead.
Episode 10 made my jaw drop with cautionary delight because suddenly I realized I wasn’t watching Dae Jang Geum with prostitutes but possibly a Korean Sor Juana de la Cruz without the Catholicism or vows of celibacy but prostitution and class conflict. In that sudden time jump Jin-Yi transforms from youthful sweetness and light into the accomplished, famed and renowned courtesan Myung-Wol (or Myeong-Wol, literally “bright moon”), a downright arrogant, condescending bitch--and yet somehow it seems all justified by her searing intellect, her quick wit, and her enormous talents. Her hatred, malice, and spite in the wake of her thwarted love alter and complicate all the relationships in the show in a way that I found compelling. She is such a bitch you think you’d want to slap her but the way she puts high-class fools in their place with cleverness, (mocking) playfulness, and confidence (in both her mind and body) is oh-so-satisfying. Of course, this attitude has to come back and bite her in the ass later, but it’s awesome while it lasts and she’s completely misunderstood!
I can’t decide if tragedy, and thus a path to artistry, or relationships are at the heart of the show. This is probably where Hwang Jin Yi’s flaws show the most, I think, especially in the home stretch of episodes where the writers seemed unsure of their own message or how it would be achieved. It overuses its own conventions a bit too much as well--I lost the number of times Jin-Yi or someone else was threatened with expulsion or death. But you could easily call this show A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Woman. In the end, it is Hwang Jin-Yi’s artistry that endures and her long (and sometimes overly dramatic) path through love, pain, social status, and tragedy that gets her there.
Yet I think the show’s strengths, especially in the middle, outweigh its weaknesses. (It is the strength of the middle episodes that make you want to push through its somewhat slipshod, groping final episodes.) The show has real gems of conversations about love, art, and integrity--or, at least, the subtitling rendered these lines beautiful and touching. The costumes pop with the introduction of the adult Myung-Wol, the stunning dark colors (dark reds, blacks, whites, and greys) with bold designs that make her stand out on the screen. The dancing and musical aspects make me want to shake the hands of the actors and actresses, especially lead Ha Ji Won, who had to learn and perform them. The cast boasts intelligent women, which I can always appreciate, and Jin-Yi putting down people with poetry is undeniably sexy (Sor Juana vibes!). It is almost sadly pathetic to see how her malice and unattainability make her even more desirable in the eyes of would-be clients. The delight of rivalries playing out on intellectual and talent battlefields is saved from too much predictability by outcomes that are, hopefully, unexpected.
Rapid streams, do not boast of your speed.
Once you reach the ocean, you can never turn back.
The moon is shining brightly (“myung wol”) on the mountain, will you not rest a while?
(Best invitation to sex, y/y?)
The show does have trouble, at times, balancing Jin-Yi’s personal path to artistry, bolstered both by encouragement and opposition, and her romance. Rather than augment and complement each other as they organically should, too often the plot lets one overshadow the other. I wish they could have coexisted with more harmony, but it is true that an integral part of the story revolves around the impossibility of Jin-Yi and her fellow gisaeng obtaining both at once. Where my gripe lies is that the plot doesn’t flow as well as it could in developing these two aspects. I spent a significant part of one episode asking my screen, “Myung-Wol, shouldn’t you be practicing instead of hanging out with lover boy?”
Yet what sticks out in my mind about this show is how Hwang Jin-Yi developes its numerous relationships, almost all fraught with complicated levels of emotions that are all over the love-hate spectrum. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a show where the term “frenemies” really made sense or was carried out with such tension between the line of “friend” and “enemy.”
There are few central relationships in this show that are simple. The student-teacher relationships between Baek-Moo and Jin-Yi/Myung-Wol, Mae-Hyang and Bu-Yong, and later but to a lesser degree Mae-Hyang and Myung-Wol are a mess of tough love, pride, instruction, and nurture. What is satisfying is that the life and artistic lessons learned are reciprocal, with each party learning from the other (besides the upstart, but “correct” artistic observations that Myung-Wol throws into Baek-Moo’s face and pride--with it nonetheless being clear that Myung-Wol constantly returns to Baek-Moo’s lessons and example of character). Bu-Yong’s striving struggle to gain Mae-Hyang’s approval and affection can be sad even while it is motivational to her, while Myung-Wol and Baek-Moo’s unhealed relationship is tragic, especially after Myung-Wol’s empty victory in making Baek-Moo humble herself at last, matched only by Baek-Moo and Mae-Hyang’s unresolved friendship and rivalry that held a great amount of hidden respect for one another. One of the most touching scenes of grief in the show, I thought, was Mae-Hyang’s moment of grief and mourning.
Almost all the romantic relationships are checked with obstacles in some way, but some of these love stories are touching exactly because they are frustrating and frustrated. I was particularly touched by the simple beauty of the music teacher and accompanist’s relationship with Jin-Yi’s mother, Heon-Keum. That they loved each other was obvious and the teacher’s (I can’t even remember if his name was ever said) role as a substitute father for Jin-Yi is cute. I think only he and Heon-Keum are the only two who keep calling Jin-Yi by her given name rather than her courtesan name Myung-Wol. It is also adorable how he compares his love for Heon-Keum to tempos in music and it broke my heart to see how he expressed his grieving, the significance of which hits after peering so long into the centrality of the arts to these performers.
I could go on forever about the myriad of complexities in everyone’s connection to each other and the tangled web of conflict, attraction, loyalties, and rivalries they weave but I won’t. I will say, though, that I think that Jin-Yi’s second love, Minister Kim Jung-Han, actually was deserving of her, far more qualified than Eun-Ho was. He appreciated her art as much as he appreciated her and he understood the sacrifice she would have to make to be with him. More than that, he was a good man in and of himself, caring and accomplished in a political way. I would have been happy had fate and their desires been kinder to them. An interesting conversation between them has Jung-Han wondering what it would have been like between them had Myung-Wol been born a man--if she had been, they could be friends, supporting each other, and able to banter with each other through poetry. Myung-Wol fires back: "What if I had been born a noblewoman?" Which begs another question: could she have kept her music if she had been born a noblewoman? I was truck by Baek-Moo's claim that they, as courtesans, have music while noblewomen do not. Mistranslation?
If there was a place I thought the show fell a bit flat in the relationship department, it was probably those final lines from Bu-Yong. She claims that Myung-Wol was her closest friend and only rival--okay, Bu-Yong, if Myung-Wol was your closest friend, you needed more friends. (And to better recognize the friends around you, like Mae-Hyang’s vice-mistress.) In one sense this is true; Myung-Wol was the closest thing Bu-Yong had to a real equal. But their rivalry was mostly one-sided. I’m not sure Myung-Wol ever really felt threatened by Bu-Yong. BUT! I like the thought of them being close friends after everything is resolved . . . but it seems like they let Jin-Yi lose from the gyobang, the institution where courtesans are housed and trained. (A foolish move if you ask me since I’d want her to train the new girls!)
The drama does reasonably well from keeping its more developed characters from falling into caricatures. (It even tries to save some face for Lord Byuk Kye Soo at the end). Characters that are frustrating for most of the show are, by the end, allowed to come into their own and out of the shadows that others cast over them. It’s nice.
I enjoyed this drama and not just for Ha Ji Won who puts in a great range of acting (sweet and naïve to bitchy and hateful to mature and adult to determined and artistic to drunk [I love drunk HJW] to tearing, crying, sobbing, always!). It nearly falls apart in the end, but I found it amazingly gratifying to see, at last, the joy Jin-Yi finally captures in her art, the unfettered smile on her face as she gives herself fully to dance, returning to and expanding yet again of Baek-Moo’s lessons, about how to get through pain and transform tears into laughter through her art. (I tried to get a cap of this, but all the motion of her dancing actually made it really hard to get a shot of her expression.) The drama knew the entire time that they could not give Jin-Yi to romantic bliss because there’s nothing historically to suggest anything like that happened and I think this is what nearly hamstrung the writers in the end. But they stayed true to a vision of an artist, someone who could transcend themselves and let go of arrogance and find pride and joy in art.
Links!:
TV Special (behind the scenes, making of, bloopers): part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4, part 5 (The subtitles are kind of atrocious in parts with things being blatantly and noticeably wrong in places.)
Bloopers: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 (No subtitles, some overlap here, but the bloopers are so cute. I especially like the one where Ha Ji Won tries to show Kim Jae Won how to look like he's playing the geomungo and where Wang Bit Na flubs her line during the sword practice scene.)
“Yes, Mistress.”
“What do you think is the most important thing to a courtesan?”
“Is it wine?”
“No.”
“Then . . . is it talent?”
“Not exactly.”
“If that’s not it . . . is it love?”
“Impertinent girl! Do you know what love is?”
“Mistress!”
“Wine, talent, and love . . . although they belong to us, none of those are the most important. The most important thing to a courtesan . . . is pain. When you can swallow your pain and overcome your desires, that is when you become a true courtesan . . . and a true artist.”
-Quotes taken from WITH S2's subtitles
(Forgive my really bad attempt at getting some caps. I was going to put more effort into it, but then I realized I suck. But look, drunk!Ha Ji Won! =D)
At first I thought Hwang Jin Yi (kdrama, 2006, 24 episodes, also Romanized “Hwang Jin-I”) was Dae Jang Geum with artist-prostitute courtesans (gisaeng). For the first nine episodes, the parallels are numerous. You have two former close friends and now rival headmistresses, Baek-Moo of the Song-Do Troupe and Mae-Hyang of the Royal Troupe, who have different artistic/life/career philosophies and are vicariously competing with each other through their respective protégés. Baek-Moo is the consummate artist, herself exceptional in dance, and she seeks to bring out the consummate artist in her girls. She believes in the sincerity of art for art’s sake. Mae-Hyang, on the other hand, who has achieved the highest honor and position for a gisaeng as Palace Headmistress, sums up her philosophy in a simple phrase: “It is not the strong who survive but the survivors who are strong.” Like the historical gisaeng, she has political astuteness and is keyed to the political atmosphere in the palace. Her protégé, Bu-Yong, not only takes this lesson to heart as she matures but might even take it a step too far (or too impertinently).
Baek-Moo’s protégé Hwang Jin-Yi, however, is that frustrating creature: a true prodigy. (She’s also a real historical figure. Little is known about her life, though, so fictional license has had free rein imagining it for us.) Her talents in the arts of poetry, music, and dance inspire all the envy and rivalry in the talented-but-not-genius that Jang-Geum managed to fire up in Keum-Young. I thought that this was how the drama would go, with the rivalry playing out similarly in how it did in DJG, with petty tricks playing out into real hate with the steadfast devotion of the protagonist triumphing in the end.
But then the first nine episodes, which unfold the saccharinely sweet and tragic story of Jin-Yi’s first love (okay, I admit I found it not so sweet but probably because Eun-Ho [played by Jang Geun Suk] is so baby-faced at his tender nineteen years of age that it annoyed me--he’s eight years Ha Ji Won’s junior in real life), ended and Episode 10 jumped four years ahead.
Episode 10 made my jaw drop with cautionary delight because suddenly I realized I wasn’t watching Dae Jang Geum with prostitutes but possibly a Korean Sor Juana de la Cruz without the Catholicism or vows of celibacy but prostitution and class conflict. In that sudden time jump Jin-Yi transforms from youthful sweetness and light into the accomplished, famed and renowned courtesan Myung-Wol (or Myeong-Wol, literally “bright moon”), a downright arrogant, condescending bitch--and yet somehow it seems all justified by her searing intellect, her quick wit, and her enormous talents. Her hatred, malice, and spite in the wake of her thwarted love alter and complicate all the relationships in the show in a way that I found compelling. She is such a bitch you think you’d want to slap her but the way she puts high-class fools in their place with cleverness, (mocking) playfulness, and confidence (in both her mind and body) is oh-so-satisfying. Of course, this attitude has to come back and bite her in the ass later, but it’s awesome while it lasts and she’s completely misunderstood!
I can’t decide if tragedy, and thus a path to artistry, or relationships are at the heart of the show. This is probably where Hwang Jin Yi’s flaws show the most, I think, especially in the home stretch of episodes where the writers seemed unsure of their own message or how it would be achieved. It overuses its own conventions a bit too much as well--I lost the number of times Jin-Yi or someone else was threatened with expulsion or death. But you could easily call this show A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Woman. In the end, it is Hwang Jin-Yi’s artistry that endures and her long (and sometimes overly dramatic) path through love, pain, social status, and tragedy that gets her there.
Yet I think the show’s strengths, especially in the middle, outweigh its weaknesses. (It is the strength of the middle episodes that make you want to push through its somewhat slipshod, groping final episodes.) The show has real gems of conversations about love, art, and integrity--or, at least, the subtitling rendered these lines beautiful and touching. The costumes pop with the introduction of the adult Myung-Wol, the stunning dark colors (dark reds, blacks, whites, and greys) with bold designs that make her stand out on the screen. The dancing and musical aspects make me want to shake the hands of the actors and actresses, especially lead Ha Ji Won, who had to learn and perform them. The cast boasts intelligent women, which I can always appreciate, and Jin-Yi putting down people with poetry is undeniably sexy (Sor Juana vibes!). It is almost sadly pathetic to see how her malice and unattainability make her even more desirable in the eyes of would-be clients. The delight of rivalries playing out on intellectual and talent battlefields is saved from too much predictability by outcomes that are, hopefully, unexpected.
Rapid streams, do not boast of your speed.
Once you reach the ocean, you can never turn back.
The moon is shining brightly (“myung wol”) on the mountain, will you not rest a while?
(Best invitation to sex, y/y?)
The show does have trouble, at times, balancing Jin-Yi’s personal path to artistry, bolstered both by encouragement and opposition, and her romance. Rather than augment and complement each other as they organically should, too often the plot lets one overshadow the other. I wish they could have coexisted with more harmony, but it is true that an integral part of the story revolves around the impossibility of Jin-Yi and her fellow gisaeng obtaining both at once. Where my gripe lies is that the plot doesn’t flow as well as it could in developing these two aspects. I spent a significant part of one episode asking my screen, “Myung-Wol, shouldn’t you be practicing instead of hanging out with lover boy?”
Yet what sticks out in my mind about this show is how Hwang Jin-Yi developes its numerous relationships, almost all fraught with complicated levels of emotions that are all over the love-hate spectrum. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a show where the term “frenemies” really made sense or was carried out with such tension between the line of “friend” and “enemy.”
There are few central relationships in this show that are simple. The student-teacher relationships between Baek-Moo and Jin-Yi/Myung-Wol, Mae-Hyang and Bu-Yong, and later but to a lesser degree Mae-Hyang and Myung-Wol are a mess of tough love, pride, instruction, and nurture. What is satisfying is that the life and artistic lessons learned are reciprocal, with each party learning from the other (besides the upstart, but “correct” artistic observations that Myung-Wol throws into Baek-Moo’s face and pride--with it nonetheless being clear that Myung-Wol constantly returns to Baek-Moo’s lessons and example of character). Bu-Yong’s striving struggle to gain Mae-Hyang’s approval and affection can be sad even while it is motivational to her, while Myung-Wol and Baek-Moo’s unhealed relationship is tragic, especially after Myung-Wol’s empty victory in making Baek-Moo humble herself at last, matched only by Baek-Moo and Mae-Hyang’s unresolved friendship and rivalry that held a great amount of hidden respect for one another. One of the most touching scenes of grief in the show, I thought, was Mae-Hyang’s moment of grief and mourning.
Almost all the romantic relationships are checked with obstacles in some way, but some of these love stories are touching exactly because they are frustrating and frustrated. I was particularly touched by the simple beauty of the music teacher and accompanist’s relationship with Jin-Yi’s mother, Heon-Keum. That they loved each other was obvious and the teacher’s (I can’t even remember if his name was ever said) role as a substitute father for Jin-Yi is cute. I think only he and Heon-Keum are the only two who keep calling Jin-Yi by her given name rather than her courtesan name Myung-Wol. It is also adorable how he compares his love for Heon-Keum to tempos in music and it broke my heart to see how he expressed his grieving, the significance of which hits after peering so long into the centrality of the arts to these performers.
I could go on forever about the myriad of complexities in everyone’s connection to each other and the tangled web of conflict, attraction, loyalties, and rivalries they weave but I won’t. I will say, though, that I think that Jin-Yi’s second love, Minister Kim Jung-Han, actually was deserving of her, far more qualified than Eun-Ho was. He appreciated her art as much as he appreciated her and he understood the sacrifice she would have to make to be with him. More than that, he was a good man in and of himself, caring and accomplished in a political way. I would have been happy had fate and their desires been kinder to them. An interesting conversation between them has Jung-Han wondering what it would have been like between them had Myung-Wol been born a man--if she had been, they could be friends, supporting each other, and able to banter with each other through poetry. Myung-Wol fires back: "What if I had been born a noblewoman?" Which begs another question: could she have kept her music if she had been born a noblewoman? I was truck by Baek-Moo's claim that they, as courtesans, have music while noblewomen do not. Mistranslation?
If there was a place I thought the show fell a bit flat in the relationship department, it was probably those final lines from Bu-Yong. She claims that Myung-Wol was her closest friend and only rival--okay, Bu-Yong, if Myung-Wol was your closest friend, you needed more friends. (And to better recognize the friends around you, like Mae-Hyang’s vice-mistress.) In one sense this is true; Myung-Wol was the closest thing Bu-Yong had to a real equal. But their rivalry was mostly one-sided. I’m not sure Myung-Wol ever really felt threatened by Bu-Yong. BUT! I like the thought of them being close friends after everything is resolved . . . but it seems like they let Jin-Yi lose from the gyobang, the institution where courtesans are housed and trained. (A foolish move if you ask me since I’d want her to train the new girls!)
The drama does reasonably well from keeping its more developed characters from falling into caricatures. (It even tries to save some face for Lord Byuk Kye Soo at the end). Characters that are frustrating for most of the show are, by the end, allowed to come into their own and out of the shadows that others cast over them. It’s nice.
I enjoyed this drama and not just for Ha Ji Won who puts in a great range of acting (sweet and naïve to bitchy and hateful to mature and adult to determined and artistic to drunk [I love drunk HJW] to tearing, crying, sobbing, always!). It nearly falls apart in the end, but I found it amazingly gratifying to see, at last, the joy Jin-Yi finally captures in her art, the unfettered smile on her face as she gives herself fully to dance, returning to and expanding yet again of Baek-Moo’s lessons, about how to get through pain and transform tears into laughter through her art. (I tried to get a cap of this, but all the motion of her dancing actually made it really hard to get a shot of her expression.) The drama knew the entire time that they could not give Jin-Yi to romantic bliss because there’s nothing historically to suggest anything like that happened and I think this is what nearly hamstrung the writers in the end. But they stayed true to a vision of an artist, someone who could transcend themselves and let go of arrogance and find pride and joy in art.
Links!:
TV Special (behind the scenes, making of, bloopers): part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4, part 5 (The subtitles are kind of atrocious in parts with things being blatantly and noticeably wrong in places.)
Bloopers: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 (No subtitles, some overlap here, but the bloopers are so cute. I especially like the one where Ha Ji Won tries to show Kim Jae Won how to look like he's playing the geomungo and where Wang Bit Na flubs her line during the sword practice scene.)