L-FILMS, TV-SERIES reviews
Hello Dracula11/25/2020 Hello Dracula This year I discovered South Korean television series. The main preoccupation of the South Korean TV are romance, crime, fantasy and history. According to the numerous TV series I watched I find South Korean society patriarchal and conservative therefore I was pleasantly surprised when I watched drama Hello Dracula (2020) directed by Kim Da-ye. Despite the misleading title – the name is used metaphorically for dark secrets or problems that everyone carries and tries to avoid but as the main character An Na (Seohyun) describes »the best way Dracula disappears is to face Dracula as it is in order to move forward with your life«. In the case of this story Dracula is that An Na, a primary school teacher, is a lesbian and her mother Mi Young (Ji-Hyeon Lee) has been avoiding this topic ever since she found out about it. But when An Na's girlfriend of eight years Soo Jung (Chung-Ah Lee) suddenly breaks up with her An Na's world falls apart and she doesn't want to pretend any more. However, this two episodes drama is not only about metaphorical Dracula but also refers to the French philosopher Sartre and famous quote in his play No Exit »Hell is other people« – or as An Na says herself »hell of me is from my mom«. This refers to An Na's youth when she was caught kissing a girl in a primary school and the two were dragged into a church where they were condemned and told they would go to hell due to their sinful behavior. However, when An Na tried to tell her mother that she really likes girls and that she would probably always feel loving girls her mother told her it would pass with years and that everything comes down to finding the right boy. Yet An Na's love for women didn't pass, her attraction towards women as a grown up woman has been still the same as she was a young girl. Because her mother didn't wish to accept her daughter's sexual orientation An Na started thinking there was something wrong having feelings for women. An Na's stance thus coincides with yet another Sartre's observation »By the mere appearance of the Other,« says Sartre in Being and Nothingness, »I am put in the position of passing judgement on myself as on an object, for it is as an object that I appear to the Other«. And it is exactly because of An Na's mother pretending and ignorance of her sexual orientation that An Na became depressed and emotionally distant while trying to please more her mother then herself. However, everything escalates when An Na's girlfriend Sojung sends her things via mail while asking she does the same with her things. When An Na's mother see how devastated An Na is she decides to meet Sojung on her own telling her it is shameless sending some one's stuff via mail. When An Na realizes what her mother did she gets really mad at her and that is the point when they both eventually start talking about their Dracula. Mother finally tells An Na there is nothing wrong with loving women and that she loves and accepts her the way she is and An Na's admits she was emotionally distant to her mother but she is going to change that and start including her into her life. Hello Dracula's honest portrayal and change of a daughter-mother relationship reminds me of a French-Romanian philosopher Julia Kristeva's analysis in her essay Black Sun where she suggests that we need not only a new discourse on »maternity but also a discourse on the relation between mothers and daughters, a friendly relation and a discourse that does not prohibit the lesbian love between women through which female subjectivity is born.« (Oliver, 1993: http://www.cddc.vt.edu/feminism/Kristeva.html). Lesbian love means that love is not burdened by the functions of women set by patriarchal society but that women live according to their desires, needs and wishes, and still within the community and in harmony with it. Similarly, Belgian philosopher Luce Irigaray talks about the nature of individual relationships between women – especially the mother/daughter relationship. Thus she stresses the need for mothers to represent themselves differently to their daughters as from to their sons, and to emphasize their daughter’s subjectivity – taking their subjectivity seriously and allowing them the freedom to be an individual rather than some sort of clone of a previous generation of women, consciously emphasizing that the daughter and the mother are both subjects in their own right who can freely choose whom to love and marry, even if it is another woman. Despite Hello Dracula isn't about a portrayal of a lesbian couple per se it gets the closest I watched of K-series. Both, Seohyun and Ji-hyeon Lee's performances are brilliant as screenplay is excellent as well thus I am looking forward to the presentation of K-lesbian romance. It would be nice if we watched Seohyun again and saw her on screen kisses another woman in portrayal of an actual lesbian relationship. I am sure she would be terrific as well. Literature Donovan, K. S. (2003): »Luce Irigaray (1932?—)«. http://www.iep.utm.edu/irigaray/, article obtained 25.11.2020. Iragary, L. (1985). This Sex Which Is Not One. New York: Cornell University Press. Iragary, L. (1993). Sexes and Genealogies. New York: Columbia University Press. Oliver, K. (1998). »Kristeva and Feminism«. http://www.cddc.vt.edu/feminism/Kristeva.html, article obtained 25.11.2020. Kristeva, J. (1989). Black Sun: Depression and Melancholia. New York: Columbia University Press; Kristeva, J. (1987). In the Beginning Was Love: Psychoanalysis and Faith. New York: Columbia University Press. Sartre, J.P. (1986). No Exit And Three Other Plays. London: Vintage, Penguin Books. Sartre, J.P. (1956). Being and Nothingness: An Essay on Phenomenological Ontology. London Rutledge.
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