It appears that the leftist affiliated religious groups have been able to keep the extreme left wing thugs in check at least for last night as no violence was reported. The leftist groups claimed that half a million was going to turn out for their protests but judging by the pictures from the left leaning Voice of People website, they were probably able to get about 50,000-70,000 depending on the time of day it was:
A day time view of the US beef protesters.
View of beef protest at night looking towards City Hall.
Beef protest at night looking in the opposite direction from City Hall.
Yonhap News tends to confirm this with a report that says “tens of thousands” attended the protests. Even the Voice of People report put the number at 60,000 which is a far cry from the half a million claim from the protest organizers. Frankly I’m not impressed at all by the turn out.
I think this once again shows how the leftist movement in Korea has lost the support of the general Korean public. When they are able to turn out 250,000 like they did earlier in these protests that is when you know they are supported by the public but the turn out now shows it is just the usual leftist groups which have been augmented this week with their allies in the leftist religious groups.
The long lines of Korean citizens earlier in the week buying in mass quantities US beef is a sure indication that public opinion is quickly turning on these leftist groups:
The other thing to realize in regards to turn out for these protests is that these leftist groups bring out all their children in order to inflate their numbers as well as indoctrinate the next generation of leftist activists:
As you can see no child is to young to be used as a propaganda tool for these people:
And when the kids get bored of holding candles there are even crazy cow games to play to continue the indoctrination process:
The work of the KTEWU teachers were able to continue to get high school girls to up as well and protest:
The high school group Candlelight Girls
Besides being augmented by kids the protest numbers were also inflated by the religious groups I mentioned earlier. Here are the Christian groups in action on Saturday both during the day and at night:
Nothing like nuns participating in the destruction of public property:
Likewise here are the Buddhist groups in action as well:
Judging by the pictures it appears that the Buddhist groups had a much lower turnout compared to the Christian groups that attended.
Of course the politicians from the Korean leftist political parties were showing their faces again as well including everyone’s favorite Kang Ki-gap:
Many of these protesters obviously in an attempt to influence the Amnesty International investigator in attendance at the protest were holding up leaflets calling the Seoul Police Commissioner Yong Ui-cha, a criminal:
The protest organizers were also able to get some star power to help them as well as Kwon Hae-hyo (who just lost a lot of cool points with me) worked as an announcer for the protest organizers:
The award for the most ridiculous protesters of the night without a doubt goes to these guys:
As Roboseyo rightfully pointed out the character “V” in the movie “V for Vendetta” was an anarchist not a democracy advocate as the people claim to be.
When Roboseyo approached these people to ask them if they knew this they had no idea. Apparently their knowledge of movies is about is good as their knowledge of the science of mad cow disease it appears.
Just take a look at how many of these fools there are:
Did anyone see the protesters wearing any of these shirts? If so they would be even bigger fools then these “V” protesters.
The counter protest composed of overseas Koreans, English teachers, and 300 ex-North Korean soldiers was a huge let down according to frequent commenter Kalani who attended the protest. He reported seeing only 500 people attend which was much smaller then the reports of a thousand to thirty thousand attending. The 300 ex-North Korean soldiers also appear to have either not shown up or were very low profile. On the Voice of People report there was plenty of beef protesters who were deriding the counter-protesters which shows what little effect the protest had.
I didn’t like the idea of this protest in the first place by mixing North Korean human rights with this mad cow nonsense. I don’t mind people protesting against the mad cow nonsense but I don’t thinking mixing it with North Korean human rights is the way to go about doing it.
For images of what happened last night I highly recommend everyone go over to Roboseyo’s site and see the video he filmed. He has plenty of footage of the “V” protesters as well as a counter-protester carrying US and ROK flags arguing with some ajushis about how them smoking American cigarettes was more dangerous to their health then mad cows.
He also has footage of what he calls “The Candlegirl Dance”. I was digging through the Hanchongnyun site looking for images of the protest and look what I found the Hanchongnyun clowns are the one behind the Candlegirl dance:
You can see they actually spent plenty of time choreographing and practicing this dance:
Here they are doing their dance at the protest:
Kalani had mentioned that someone dressed in pink had tried to start trouble with the counter-protesters and considering these Hanchongnyun clowns have a thing for pink, it is safe to say the person who tried to cause trouble was from Hanchongnyun.
All in all though the beef protesters accomplished little last night and the police appear to have done a good job not reacting to anything the protesters may have been trying to do to instigate violence for the Amnesty International investigator to see. Like I said before I’m not impressed by the turn out and if this is the best these groups can do then I suspect we are beginning to see the beginning of the end of these protests.
______________________________________
For additional commentary on the beef protests make sure to check out Robert Koehler’s and Scott Burgeson’s postings on the protests.
Popularity: 3%
11:45 am on July 6th, 2008 1
It would seem South Korea is in some sort of political turmoil that no one else in the world understands. Its more than imported beef, or so it would seem, yet one has to wonder how ill informed or ill served by the media are these people. South Korea has issues that make no sense. Someone want to clue me in?
11:57 am on July 6th, 2008 2
Actually, it was Scott Burgeson who spoke with them, and reported the conversation back to me; we walked around the protests together for a while — but we were both disappointed that they didn’t realize what their symbol stood for. They should have just danced the candlegirl.
1:06 pm on July 6th, 2008 3
For the average South Koreans, this is a national pasttime. The US has baseball - Korea has protest seasons.
1:38 pm on July 6th, 2008 4
Great guys in Pink shirts
Yesterday I saw a couple of Katusas walking together at OSAN…I just caulked it up to just a couple of gay Katusas…My only wish was I brought my camera that day
3:09 pm on July 6th, 2008 5
4:05 pm on July 6th, 2008 6
“Kalani had mentioned that someone dressed in pink had tried to start trouble with the counter-protesters and considering these Hanchongnyun clowns have a thing for pink, it is safe to say the person who tried to cause trouble was from Hanchongnyun.”
It was a pink raincoat with the candlelight-teen stencil on the back. This was the typical rabble rouser — an older man, the type you see around a pojangmacha street cart after 10 soju bottles too many looking for a fight. He wasn’t drunk — just looking for trouble. There were quite a few of them walking through the crowd with a smirk on their faces holding up their “Candle power Wins” sign.
They weren’t Hanchongryeon. They were just rabble rousers.
#4 Kingkitty. Pink is the hot color for this summer — actually it was last summer. Koreans don’t think of pink as strictly a female color.
4:19 pm on July 6th, 2008 7
“…we were both disappointed that they didn’t realize what their symbol stood for.”
“V for Vendetta” is an “old” CD I have in my collection with Korean subtitles. Your comment that the Koreans didn’t understand the symbology does not compute. Any Korean would know it if he had watched the movie … it was in the subtitles. When Koreans get caught in what they think they are pulling sly jokes, they will lie … just like little kids. My daughter knew what the “V” meant — and those kids knew too!!!
5:29 pm on July 6th, 2008 8
500,000 anti-American protesters lined the streets of Korea. So far America fake negotiators have caved in on everything Korea wants. Yet they are still out there.
The Americans are still unaware of anti-American hatred from Koreans.
http://theseoultimes.com/ST/?url=/ST/db/read.php?idx=6847
Park No Ja (epic retard) was there.
6:12 pm on July 6th, 2008 9
That’s the most retarded dance that I ever saw. LOL
9:50 pm on July 6th, 2008 10
KK Kau, Scott directly asked them if they knew what their symbolism stood for, and they said, “No. Not anarchy. Democracy.” Either they haven’t watched the movie in a while, or they were impressed enough by the powerful symbol to “forget” its real meaning for the sake of good dramatics, but the fact is, they said the “V” was for Victory, not an inverted Anarchy symbol. Their words to Scott B.. We’re just a bunch of foreigners, not Korean thought police — what would have been the harm in telling us the actually WERE anarchists, if that’s what they meant to put across?
That said, the impression they made WAS striking, despite the muddled symbology.
Surabol: what do you mean? The Candle Girl’s gonna be bigger than the Soulja Boy!
11:00 pm on July 6th, 2008 11
As far as I can tell, they were anarchists only in the vulgar sense that they dropped a bomb in the middle of the semiotic web into which they made their dramatic entrance, and blew it all to high hell.
Tonight (Sunday) City Hall Plaza was completely blocked off by the police at 9pm, but that was hardly necessary given that there was only handful of actual protesters. Here’s what I saw at around 6pm:
http://www.kingbaeksu.com/bbs/view.php?id=bug&page=1&sn1=&divpage=1&sn=off&ss=on&sc=on&select_arrange=headnum&desc=asc&no=1162
Seems things are cooling down pretty quickly. Can anyone say “tin pot character” three times in Korean?
8:19 am on July 7th, 2008 12
Gents, thanks for clearing up what you guys saw at the protest. King Baeksu great report again. I think we actually hold very similar views on these protests other then the fact I believe these groups intentionally chose an anti-US issue to start the protests with because they knew it would resonate with the underlying anti-US sentiment in the Korean public.
11:13 am on July 7th, 2008 13
There seem to be some problems in the logic of what stands for “public opinion” here: while as many as 60,000 protesters (or less) are deemed to be unrepresentative of a more general public opinion, a few photos of “long lines” of Koreans buying US beef are “a sure indication that public opinion is quickly turning on these leftist groups.” Can someone explain how these photos are more representative of “public opinion” than those of last night’s demonstration?
2:47 pm on July 7th, 2008 14
All you have to do is look at the trend.
The groups protesting can no longer draw big crowds which shows the Korean public has abandoned them. The Korean left is relying on their core groups members who bring out every kid they can find to hold a candle to inflate their numbers at these protests.
If Saturday night is the best they can do then we are beginning to see the end of these protests.
11:20 pm on July 7th, 2008 15
Well, I don’t want to defend everything about the protests, even if I am being perceived as the main sympathizer among the foreign bloggers, but I will note as I did on Roboseyo’s page:
11:25 pm on July 7th, 2008 16
I also think Martin makes a good point. There’s a rush to make this or that representative. The organizers are out of touch, so everyone involved is out of touch. There are some ajeoshis buying beef, so all of Korea will buy beef.
I will note that a couple of million people tuned in on live webTV broadcasts of the protests at the height of this thing. That’s almost one out of every twelve or thirteen people in Seoul. (Assuming those tuning in were concentrated in Seoul, that is.)
And finally, Agora discussions have been tending to push for weekly, rather than daily, demonstrations for a while now. I hardly think two months straight of demonstrations coming to an end qualifies us to start throwing “tin pot” around. How many North Americans would show up for two months straight for an issue we might consider loftier — like, say, prosecuting for illegal wiretaps, or fighting the abandonment of habeas corpus for “suspected” terrorists?
2:54 am on July 8th, 2008 17
I have seen the anarchy sign often in Korea, including at some demos years ago. And if you search “????? + V” on Naver, you get hundreds of hits in Korean:
http://news.search.naver.com/search.naver?where=news&query=%B9%AB%C1%A4%BA%CE%C1%D6%C0%C7%20V&frm=mr&sm=tab_nmr
They mention the word anarchism and V in reviews in Cine 21, the leading film mag here, in Yonhap News, in heaps of newspapers, blogs, etc. I remember when the film came out, the reviews in English also made prominent mention of the anarchism theme.
Gord, you are essentially excusing ethnocentric misappropriations of foreign culture here in Korea. I have a right to call them on their BS, just as they have a right to do to me if I grossly ignore the codes and context of Korean culture. I think you are essentially being patronizing, in fact, by excusing or justifying such behavior.
If they are too lazy to read a few reviews of an important movie for their “movement,” and think that going to a massive anti-government demonstration is cosplay and means nothing serious in the end, then screw them! They are retards!
5:39 am on July 8th, 2008 18
Apologies, this rambles a bit.
First off, I find it hilarious that one might call the use of costumes in a protest movement “retarded,” consider its long history. For example, “retarded cosplay” figured in none other than protests of the Vietnam war, and after all, the hippies you think so highly of also followed a rather ornate set of costume codes during the Summer of Love; on one level, it could easily be seen as having involved a rather large exhibit of “cosplay.” Does that make the Summer of Love “nothing serious” and “retarded” too?
But there’s a more interesting example in the Luddites. They made extensive use of cross-dressing, somehow not mentioned in Wikipedia at all, though you can see on the image on the main Wikipedia page that the image of Nedd Ludd is of a man in a dress. They did it for a simple reason, which was that violence would be much less likely used on women than on men, as well as to effect a kind of disguise. This kind of thing isn’t even limited to the twentieth century, either: the Luddites and Saboteurs were famous cross-dressers, for the same reasons. And — realistic or not — the fears that were expressed online in discussions of how authorities might respond to the protests, such as for example agents provocateurs starting fights among protesters, were oddly reminiscent of the same fears nineteenth-century Luddites.
And also note: I’m not saying the protesters are the same as the Luddites. The Luddites had a pretty clear goal in mind and seemed to be fighting for a clear agenda… sort of. (Though there’s scholarship that suggests it was a different agenda than we commonly think, thanks to anti-Luddite propaganda, so even there there’s some confusion.) The lack of clarity here is something I’ve criticized myself, in my comment responding to you, and people I talked about it with on Saturday mostly agreed. But masks and disguises and costumes have long been a part of protest movements — including some that you hold in high esteem — so mocking it here as “retarded” and mere “cosplay” seems unfair.
As for intellectual laziness and not reading movie reviews, I understand your exasperation, but you seem to be overlooking the fact that the movie was not the comic book, and that plenty of people — not just lazy ones — don’t read movie reviews or blogs about the films they see — especially the ones they liked or that resonated for them. We can go around denouncing them as ignorant and ethnocentric, or instead, and this is likely to be more useful in figuring out what they did and why, we can ask ourselves why they chose to take up that symbol despite their not being anarchists themselves.
One useful starting point is the fact that anarchism was almost completely excised from the movie: most of the English-language critics who mentioned it were mentioning its absence from the film, and any Korean critic who did otherwise, even in Cine21, was undoubtedly just trying to show off that he or she had read the Wikipedia entry on the book, because dude, seriously; that movie is not about anarchism. In any way, shape, or form. It all but screams for an American-liberal reading.
And by the way, before you dismiss that observation, and before you get too comfortable with the idea I’m patronizing Koreans here, I’d like to point out that the English-speaking internet has largely much missed out on the connection too. If you Google (English-language webpages only, to ensure we catch all the references to anarchy in English) for “V for Vendetta” you’ll find close to 4 million hits. Then add “anarch*” (a wildcard that will include anarchy, anarchist, anarchic, anarchism, etc.) to the search and it drops down to just a bit over a hundred thousand mentions.
When you calculate it all out, it appears that approximately 2.5% of English-language discussions of V for Vendetta make any mention of anarchism or anarchist thought… in other words, the majority of Anglophones discussing the film online — Anglophones who have the leisure of reading book reviews and even of going out and reading the original comic book in their own language — are also guilty of “ethnocentric cultural misappropriation,” or, er… no, that would sound silly, wouldn’t it?
Yes, it would, because after all, as I imagine you know, this is precisely how popular cultures work. Figures morph and transform over time, and their treatments by later derivative artists — especially in film! — change their popularly understood meanings. These days when we think of Superman, we think of him fighting “crime” or taking on an insane military-industrial-science complex (as often personified by Lex Luthor); that is, as an extension of the justice system or the state. Most of us don’t think of old Superman as a raging fighter for the rights of the working poor, though in the early days of the comic, he often fought villains like slumlords, corrupt state orphanage administrators, and crooked bosses. Most people don’t remember that in Korea and America alike.
And perhaps you have missed the discussions of V online in English, but there was actually a lot of disappointment expressed (by those who knew and loved the book) at how little of the original intellectual/anarchist basis remained. This is one of the reasons Alan Moore himself hated the film and distanced himself from it: he noted that is actually recast the original political conflict in the book — fascism versus anarchism — as something else — American neoconservativism versus American liberalism. So, really, even Moore thinks the movie is in itself an American-liberal tirade against American neo-conservativism. How can we fault Koreans for correctly seeing that in the film?
Then we factor in the subtitling — where detail and nuance is always lost — and lack of access to the comic book, and what we get is a liberal fantasy narrative about citizens rising up against a neocon government. In other words, the protesters used the symbols you saw with pretty much direct continuity to their use in the film. Yes, there is a level of utopian fantasy here. That, too, should be familiar from earlier protests movements, including ones you esteem highly.
But basically, it seems to me they were using liberal icons as a protest against conservativism that they perceive as aligned with American neoconservativism.
Which is, I imagine, what they would have told you, had you asked them why they’d taken those symbols up. Perhaps in not so many words, because it would be obvious to them, and puzzling that you would ask about something that seems unrelated to the film. But it seems important to me to know — and I don’t mean to be nasty here, but I think this is a valid question:
Once you discovered that they hadn’t been aware of the anarchist trope in V for Vendetta, and once you established that they didn’t know the V-sign was an inverted anarchy sign…
Did you ask them why on earth they decided to use the symbol and mask? Or did you just decide they’d misunderstood everything and were idiots, and walk away?
I don’t know, what you’ve written seems like a really, really cheap shot, and I think there are much better places to aim those strong uppercuts and jabs of yours.
5:50 am on July 8th, 2008 19
I crossposted the above at my site. We can continue there or here, in case GI Korea doesn’t want the thread to be hijacked by this one subtopic.
6:52 am on July 8th, 2008 20
Gordsellar thanks for the comments and clarifications. I think you may good point about how V is perceived in Korea. If V is perceived that way then it makes sense why the protesters wore the costumes. However at the same time if they were concerned about what people internationally thought of these protests to include the Amnesty International investigator then they just shot themselves in the foot.
Also like I said before if 50,000 is the best the Korean left can turn out to include having to bring their kids and religious groups out to inflate their numbers then obviously they have lost support from the Korean public. When the protesters were getting 250,000 people to turn out then they had public support. Once 2MB apologized and changed the beef import regulations the average Kim on the street appears to have been satisfied.
The polling I showed on my prior posting also shows that the public perceptions of US beef is changing greatly as well:
http://rokdrop.com/2008/07/06/popularity-of-us-beef-in-korea-grows/
The trend is clear that the leftist groups have now lost support from the Korean public unless they can find another issue to demagogue.
Also North Americans do not need to show up 2 months straight for protests for a variety of reasons but the main one is that Americans are more likely to write letters to their Congressman and demand action through the elected representatives. If those elected representatives are not carrying out the will of the people then in the next election they will be voted out. That is how an elected democracy works.
If Barack Obama wins the presidency and two months after taking office every Christian conservative group surrounded the White House and Republican members of Congress refused to meet shutting down the government then what would you think of that because that is what is going on in Korea now.
3:54 pm on July 8th, 2008 21
GI Korea,
The discussion seems to have continued here, though Rob also had a reply on his site. Heavily distributed thread!
As I noted, I don’t think the popular reception of the film in the anglophone world imputes much anarchist thought in the movie, either. There are discussions of whether the movie was anti-American, anti-Christian, pro-terrorism, and so on. But as I noted, only 2.5% of discussions in English even mention anarchism.
I agree that the average person was ready to move on once the beef issue was renegotiated, and I think the people who pushed the protests for longer miscalculated how long the interest in just protesting everyday would hold out. I talked to people on Saturday who claimed that the masses would keep coming out till 2MB was impeached, though others were quick to contradict them.
The real problem, which Scott pointed out, is that the left had no agenda (at least after the renegotiation occurred) and that they need to articulate one.
And while I agree it’d be nice if people could just write to their CongressCritters here, as they can in the US, but I think we both know that Korean CongressCritters aren’t as likely to respond to letters. It’s how longstanding, established democracies work, yes, but I doubt American democracy worked that way 21 years in, either. And that’s a nuance I think the Obama comparison misses, though I would agree that Christian conservatives shutting down the government would probably be a bad thing.
Then again, I imagine Obama would actually manage things better early on, instead of relying on spin and other aggravating retorts like, “I’m the most powerful man in the country!”
As for the beef, well, as I’ve said, it’s become obvious the protests are also about more than that… except for those for whom it’s all beef and nothing else. In other words, it’s a jumbled bloody mess. But they’re planning for it to cool off into weekends only, which will be a boon to many of the businesses in the Gwanghwamun area. My favorite sushi joint was, I’m pretty sure, locked out of customers (who didn’t want to walk an extra mile to get to the restaurant for dinner) for weeks!
4:41 pm on July 8th, 2008 22
No, I tried to have a dialogue and they told me to fuck off. That’s really when I decided that they were posers. I took a picture of a girl in a mask and she was the third person I spoke with asking if she was an anarchist and she said no, and then before I could say anything else, the guy next to her, also in a mask, told me to leave because I was “interfering” with their photo opportunities. The other two people I spoke with, including their leader holding the giant inverted anarchy flag in the air that you could see from 100 meters away, were not interested in having a dialogue either.
Just to be clear, I am not the person who initially wrote about this or brought it up to put the protesters in their place, but it seems you are bending over backwards to justify this, and that is where I draw the line. I have spent a lot of time trying to understand what the protesters mean when they say what they say, so I am not going to just selectively decide that it doesn’t matter what they are trying to say when it is inconvenient for me to do so, and indeed one key thing that turned me off the protesters in general was their ability to justify anything and everything in the name of their cause, even in the face of the facts and the truth. I mean, are you now going to tell me that it’s cool for Koreans to adopt Nazi and Hitler symbology because they represent andmirable “volk power,” and what they mean in the West is irrelevant?
I’ve been in Korea long enough to understand how signs and symbols from other cultures are often misappropriated here, and in most cases it is done because of ethnocentrism, which is really a form of extreme cultural nationalism and which I often find repugnant. If they do it knowingly, that’s cool and I’ve seen spoofs of a number of Western movies at the protests that were hilarious, including many references to Sicko. I have also lived in Japan and I can assure you that you would never see Japanese at a protest making the same mistakes about V for Vendetta. The Japanese also appropriate signs and symbols from the West pellmell, but they are very sophisticated about it in general and that’s what sets them apart. Japlish, for example, is often quite cool and hilarious, but I rarely if ever find Konglish cool or hilarious. It’s usually just gibberish, and often rather embarrassing. “Saladent,” anyone?
In any case, I have seen photos of the V for Vendetta protesters all over the Internet, including on many expat blogs such as this one, and the ironic thing is that if I had not spoken with them myself and gotten the real backstory, the message that would have been taken away by most of the Westerners who saw the photos is that they were anarchists. Which would have been wrong and in a way also self-selectively ethnocentric. So I find it funny that you are so apparently upset about my reaction here when you would have totally misunderstood their message yourself if I had not spoken with them and gotten the scoop.
BTW, I don’t like hippies at all, because in my experience a lot of them are posers as well!
5:14 pm on July 8th, 2008 23
I’ll crosspost my response to the above here, too:
Well, this is another thing we’ll just have to disagree about. I think there are plenty of things worth criticizing, but this isn’t one. But I appreciate you’re not the one who wrote about it, and I shouldn’t have implied you did.
It’s unfortunate they were unwilling to talk with you, were more interested in photo-ops, and I’m sorry I underestimated your willingness to engage. That is sad, really, and I agree it’s not cool.
That said, I think I’m not really bending over backwards to “justify” this: if you can show me where there’s a shred of anarchist thought presented as such (and not just as vehement liberalism) in the film, I might change my mind, but I’ve watched it a few times and taught it to a large class and I’m telling you — it’s not present enough for people to get, not even my students who are generally pretty aware of Western culture compared to your average kid their age. But the anarchism theme is relatively absent, especially here in Korea, where for most “normal” people the political spectrum is “democracy” vs. “communist.” I mean, what are you gonna do?
In fact, when the V-related buzz started — well more than a month ago, because I discussed this with someone about a month ago this Friday — I immediately thought, “Aha, they’re riffing on the protest scene,” which, at least on the Korean 2-disc edition, is right on the front cover. It was a given for me that the anarchist element wasn’t even a consideration here. Maybe that comes from having taught it and knowing how unlikely people were to know that the theme existed in the book (but not the movie).
So, I think you’ve overestimated how your chat with these people has colored my understanding: I wouldn’t have “totally misunderstood their message” because, frankly, I’d figured out their intended message and their apparent reasoning with the choice of character long before you talked to them, when this trope emerged online back in mid-May, and the discussion focused on the huge citizen uprising that is portrayed in the film, and not on the violence of the titular character or his (original) politics.
And no, it’s not — ever — cool for Koreans to misappropriate Nazi imagery, any more than it is for us to slap the Japanese empire’s symbol on our stuff… which we still sometimes do. But no, it’s not cool, of course not. But if you don’t see that this is apples and oranges…
Frankly, lots of Americans took the film as intended that way, too. Cuccu, the poster after you [on my site], is an American who hasn’t read the book — and an intelligent one — and she didn’t know that V originally was about anarchism vs. fascism.
I don’t think scattered mentions of anarchism in blogs and film reviews is going to trump the reading the film itself elicits, which is a fantasy-narrative about how the liberal masses have sat around at home too long and let the conservatives take over, and now it’s time to take the nation back. With no translation of the book, what else do you expect people to take the movie as?
Maybe Japanese pidgin English is cooler, though I’m not sure how this contributes to the discussion. Maybe Japanese youth are more hip in the way they appropriate Western culture. (Though, I’ll note, that some very popular Japanese SF film (of the live-action sort) is a lot less sophisticated than one might imagine. How they took the superhero trope and got Ultraman — and kept making Ultraman the same way up to now — is beyond me.)
I find Korean ethnocentrism repugnant too, but I hardly think this is a case of it.
I do think it’s useful to set aside the postcolonial literary theory lingo and talk about the difference between “misappropriation” and reception.
Like, for example, how Western critics of Godzilla have routinely argued that it’s all about fears of nuclear power, nuclear weapons, and the like. Only recently, I ran across a paper published not long ago that said, essentially, “Er, guys… there’s a little survivor’s guilt mixed in there too, how could we have missed this?” But this is something that was largely missed by Western viewers, who went on to create movies like Them.
So things that might be obvious to one set of viewers are not obvious to other ones. When they take up those symbols for their own use, we can expect some disconnect.
I’d wager when Koreans watched the original TV miniseries V, which was aired during earlier protests a couple of decades ago, I doubt that the whole Nazi-Jew allegory resonated as strongly for them as did the whole “colonized by aliens” thing. I’d like to look into how much people received it as a story about Japanese (or ostensible American) colonization, but I haven’t found any resources on that yet.
One last thing: I thought the Summer of Love was full of hippies — in October of that year they even held a funeral for the Death of the Hippies, so they referred to it that way themselves. Now I’m less sure I understand your esteem of the Summer of Love, since it essentially mainstreamed the bohemian culture that by the end of that summer was known as hippiedom; and anyway, my point was that cosplay was a part of the Summer of Love.
Last thing: the anarchism symbol usually has a cross-bar, like an A. The V sign doesn’t, although the graphic designer of the title in Korean cleverly made the ? on the phrase ?? ? ??? look like an inverted A. So while the graphic designer was probably familiar with the symbol — and it would be unfair to claim Koreans don’t know the Anarchy sign, therefore — I do think it’s understandable that someone would read the V sign as the film presents it — V symbolizing all kinds of things (violence, vigilatism, vision, the number 5, as well as Evey), but most prominently Victory. Maybe Korea’s a backwater and the kids don’t read enough English comic books (or well-translated ones) like in Japan. I don’t see how that’s an excuse to start throwing around words like “ethnocentric cultural misappropriation” unless we’re to dilute that word to the point where it means nothing but “misunderstanding” something.
But it does suck that they were such lamers and not interested in talking with you.
*****
Addition: at least we agree that hippies suck!
8:05 pm on July 8th, 2008 24
You got schooled by V.
8:45 pm on July 8th, 2008 25
As is often the case, “Money speaks louder than words”.
As more and more Protesters discover how much lower the price of American beef is, and do some simple math, to see how long they have been ripped off buy a controlled beef market, and the fact that growing numbers of their neighbours are filling their coolers, this protest will quietly fade away like a setting sun.
A general sense of mistrust, and supressed anger, will lead to another rally, sometime this summer, this time another subject will serve as a release mechanism. The candles, kids, fringe groups will appear in order,with the standard issue tag alongs, dances, mis-information, and emotional outpouring.
Expect more as other interest groups see the huge opportunity to cash in on this wave.
What is most amazing to the writer, is how efficiently the beef lobby has managed to fuel this fire, primarily for self interest, while keeping on the sidelines. My Hat is off to them. But winning a battle is not winning a war, the money and the hand of the market, will prevail, and 20 years from now, they will look back, with zero cases of human “mad cow disease”, and reflect, on the nonsense of it all.
But it did serve a purpose. It brought them together.
Strength together.
Maybe someday it will be brought to focus on a matter for the society that really has some importance.
11:40 pm on July 8th, 2008 26
12:03 am on July 9th, 2008 27
I mean, are you now going to tell me that it’s cool for Koreans to adopt Nazi and Hitler symbology because they represent andmirable “volk power,” and what they mean in the West is irrelevant
I find it noteworthy that in a discussion on misappropriation of symbols you pick one that has been misappropriated from India. I have seen plenty of swastikas in Korean monasteries and temples, and they not only predate the theft by Hitler but are also properly drawn/painted/carved.
I know what I am about to say will annoy you, but what the swastika means in the west *is* irrelevant to plenty of people - I’d say to roughly 1/6th of the world’s population. And that is not because we think Hitler was a swell chap with great ideas, but because the Swastika is ours, has been ours for many a millennia, and the holiness of the symbol enjoys a history that spans over thousands of years. What that Austrian psychopath did to our symbol is neither remembered, nor worthy of comment. I guess if you were in my shoes, you’d dismiss any Westerner who raises a hue and cry over the symbol as a ‘retard’ who is guilty of ‘ethnocentric cultural misappropriation’….
1:29 am on July 9th, 2008 28
Korean logic…
“Then Chung began arguing with Lee, insisting that his own health could be hurt by eating American beef. Lee explained to the student that the chances of catching the human form of mad cow disease by consuming American beef were one in four billion. But Chung shot back, saying he could be that one in four billion who gets infected.”
http://english.chosun.com/w21data/html/news/200807/200807070023.html
11:24 am on July 9th, 2008 29
3:12 am on August 24th, 2008 30