Author | Chezai
Editor | Yan Fei
title picture | "Long time no work"
For young people, watching other people go crazy in different ways gives them the pleasure of borrowing other people's wine glasses and pouring their own wine. Recently, the Korean drama "Long Time No Time" has become popular on Douban as soon as it was aired, with a current rating of 8.6.
"Long time no sex" - This drama title is translated from the English name "long time no sex", which makes people think that it is going to explore the "sex" of modern East Asians and explore the reality of sexual depression. But in fact, after the first episode of the drama quickly explained the passionate first love story of the male and female protagonists, it changed the style and came to the real life after marriage.
This couple, like ordinary young Koreans, faces urban poverty such as debt, unemployment, shrinking housing prices, and rising mortgage interest rates. In the face of economic problems, love and sex have become non-necessities. Love is no longer the core of marriage, economic community is the essence of marriage.
After accidentally discovering that their friend had cheated on her, the couple found a new way to make money. They solved their financial difficulties by blackmailing the cheater, and staged a black humor about the new poor in the city.
Samuel couple's adultery catching team. (Picture/"Long time no do")
Over the years, the theme of Korean dramas has changed from "talking about love" to "talking about pressure", Oppa has become "Xi Ba", from tenderness to hysteria, secretly responding South Korea's increasingly serious social situation.
It may be said that it is a mental symptom or a traffic password, but watching them go crazy is actually a kind of spiritual soothing experience.
Sexual contraction is more cost-effective than sexual tension
In "Long Time No Time", "Zhengfeng Oppa" lost a lot of weight and repeated the exam 7 times (the plot of "Reply 1988") and finally got admitted to college. In the blink of an eye, in 2023, his business failed and he could not find a job. His current situation was to buy a car with a loan from his wife and became Samuel, a taxi driver.
While his wife Yuzhen was watching TV at home, the news station was broadcasting a report interviewing home buyers. Several years after the epidemic passed, the economy showed no signs of improving. The mortgage loan has not been repaid, house prices have dropped by one-third, but the loan interest rates have continued to rise. The family's finances are stretched thin and they can only tighten their belts to get by. Yuzhen eats white rice with only kimchi, and Samuel has to reflect on himself when he is sleepy while driving and buys a cup of coffee.
House prices are falling crazily. (Picture/"Long time no sex")
The quality of life has shrunk, and the fleeting sex can no longer be taken care of. The old couple has a tacit understanding to solve it by themselves. It’s not that you can’t afford sex, but it’s more cost-effective to do it yourself.
However, sex just disappears in a monogamous marriage. It overflows everywhere and happens in dark corners.
Samuel's friends seem to have a happy marriage and a happy family, but in fact one party has been cheating on her for a long time, and the other party cannot stand the false sexless marriage and has been drinking alone for a long time.
Middle-class respectability is vulnerable. (Picture/"Long Time Haven't Do It")
Yuzhen, who works at the front desk of a hotel, comes into contact with various men and women having affairs due to her career. Over time, Yuzhen even had a special notebook to record the basic information of these cheating men and women, and secretly set them off depending on their mood.
Rather than saying that Yuzhen's behavior is driven by a "sense of justice", it is better to say that it is caused by revenge in a cramped life. By chance, this clandestine observation turned into a money-making operation for the couple, thereby robbing the "rich" and giving to the "poor". Through the perspective of "catching rape", we can see behind the steaming passion and the various behaviors of all living beings under high pressure.
The second couple caught in the act was a bank teller who cheated on his wife while she was pregnant. The front legs are like life and death, and the back legs use the lunch break to hold the watch and eat burgers while making love. An affair also involves investment-output ratio. Yuzhen was puzzled: "The average East Asian man only has 7 minutes. Is it worth engaging in such an affair just for these 7 minutes?"
race against time. (Picture/"Long time no love")
There is no loyalty in marriage, but there is no true love even in an affair. You know, the modern concept of romantic love originated from extramarital affairs that broke free from the shackles of the world in the 19th century. It seems that this drama is going to destroy love to the end.
After the male employee received a blackmail letter from the Samuels, the audience discovered that he could not even come up with 15 million won (approximately RMB 80,000), so he tried to persuade his affair partner to share the extortion fee, but the woman did not agree. In the end, the infatuated Oppa's character collapsed and he actually asked the other party to return the 3 million won in advance for rent.
promised to be loyal, but in the end it was all about money. Even a trace of dignity was gone, and the two finally broke up on bad terms.
share the affair fee. (Picture/"Long Time Haven't Done")
Although there are kissing scenes from the very beginning of the first episode, in fact, the kissing scenes in the drama are basically very unappetizing. Just like a glutton who doesn't know enough, he stuffs big fish and meat into his mouth until his mouth is dripping with oil, and there is no sense of beauty or tension at all. In the
TV series, when his wife Yuzhen was inspired by her sisters and decided to take the initiative to break the sexless marriage, her husband said "being so deliberate is not love." Then Yuzhen retorted, "Isn't it love when we all share a bank account?" The era of economic affordability is also an era of collapse of romantic love.
Quan Gao Yun, the director of this drama, also made a well-received movie "Little Princess". A classic scene in the film is when a boy goes to his girlfriend's rental house to meet and chat, and when the atmosphere gets hot, the two of them take off their clothes. But there was no heating in the room, and it was too cold. The two people hugging each other let go, each put on their clothes, and decided to wait until spring.
The starring roles of these two dramas are Li Xu and Ahn Jae Hong. (Photo/"Little Princess")
Under the disturbing and economically constrained situation, caution, conservatism, and foresight have replaced the impulse, passion, and desperation necessary for romantic love. Neither loving nor doing is a priority anymore.
What’s interesting is that in this economical and modern emotional landscape, women’s views on mate selection have also changed simultaneously. Whether it is the Buddha-like Oppa holding a lotus in his hand, or Samuel, the "sexy guy" who has a peaceful personality, a plain life, and an average appearance in this drama, they have nothing to do with sexual tension, but isn't this just a matter of eating them all? The “husband-like feeling” of Xiaohongshu’s bonus?
performs his duties outside during the day, works hard to make money and does not spend money randomly; when he goes home at night and puts on an apron, he can cook a delicious meal, greet his family members, be emotionally stable, respond to requests, and output emotional value like a loyal dog.
Zhengfeng Oppa is good at sewing and cooking. (Picture/"Long Time Not Made")
In the relationship between Yuzhen and Samuel, Yuzhen was the one who took the initiative from the beginning, the decision-maker and leader in the marriage economy. Samuel, on the other hand, has a gentle temperament and likes to sew and mend. He can also make delicious kimchi after getting off the taxi to go home.
In the "catch the traitor" operation, Yuzhen was the commander, and Samuel was the executor. Although it is inevitable that his weak nature will be exposed again during the implementation process, the good thing is that he obeys his wife's words and has a strong sense of responsibility. This feeling of being useless is not annoying.
It sounds like this is a cliff-like downgrade in female mate selection. But today, when consumption and love are downgraded in all aspects, the criteria for choosing a spouse will of course "return to rationality". Whether it is a sense of uselessness or a sense of being a husband, they are the safest choices among people's limited choices.
The heroine in the play is from a superior position overlooking the male protagonist. (Picture/"Long Time Haven't Made")
goes crazy, Korean drama traffic password
From the first episode, this drama has established a certain familiar mental state - the result that may reach the critical point at any time under various squeezes, Just crazy. The elephant in the room is as stable as Mount Tai. The little fish and the shrimp are fighting against each other, tearing apart dignity and causing collective madness. In the play, the heroine often makes famous quotes, such as "Only madmen can make a fortune" and "There is no need to be pitiful, there are no women in Korea who are not pitiable."
Only crazy people get rich. (Picture/"Long Time No Time")
It seems that this drama intends to simply blame the "Long Time No Time" intimacy problem on the economy, and does not intend to fully explore the changes in people's emotional status in this social environment. For a script that focuses on madness, it seems to be enough as long as the emotional source of madness is real and the golden lines are rooted in realist observation.
is just like last year's popular feminist movie "Barbie", which presents the cause and effect of patriarchal construction in the form of fairy tales and fables, points out the most vulnerable aspects of patriarchy and easily breaks it. This TV series also There is no attempt to describe practical issues in detail. It's like a talk show, presenting these issues point-to-point in a black humorous way, and then venting them out in a wild and imaginative way.
The real patriarchal world is far more solid than the one in "Barbie". (Photo/"Barbie")
After the dramatic robbery, the hard-earned money was used by the couple to pool money to buy a birthday gift for their father, and to pay for cram school tuition for their sister and daughter. The whole drama almost repeatedly jumps between sharp sadness and cathartic laughter, hitting the audience's emotional points hard.
There is a meme on the Internet, saying that in recent years, there are no Obamas in Korea (in movies and TV series), only "Xi Ba". Looking back, almost all Korean films and TV shows that have appeared in the industry in recent years have such characteristics.
In Li Cangdong's "Burning", the protagonists are almost all "madmen". Those with vested interests are crazy because of nothingness, and the lower class are crazy because of anger; in "Squid Game", people play a shooting game, and the cruel killings expose the night. The dream of getting rich suddenly; in "Dark Glory", the whole film is filled with hysterical yelling... Korean people's "madness" has gradually evolved from a faint mental attack to a collective explosion on the emotional surface.
In "Dark Glory", the main character is always yelling. (Photo/"Dark Glory")
However, dramas such as "Dark Glory" and "Superpowers" first give the audience a sufficient sense of being oppressed, and then provide the audience with appropriate outlets for emotional catharsis. The beginning of "I haven't done this in a while" simply no longer sets up the depressing story, and shows a state of madness as soon as it starts.
Whether it is the former or the latter, the success of South Korea's hit film "Crazy" lies precisely in its presentation of the differences between different classes and its response to social emotions.
Korean scholar Kim Jin-kyung once expressed his hidden worries about the modernization of Japan and South Korea: Japan compressed the 300 years of Western European modernization into 100 years, while South Korea only took 30 years. A conservative and traditional country achieved capitalist transformation in a very short period of time and entered the international stage. However, it also brought many social problems. The speed is so fast that all sectors of society have little time to reflect.
This society, which is full of contradictions and has no time to reflect, is the soil where the creative consciousness of Korean film and television works grows today. The fact that these film and television dramas are so popular shows that people are almost unable to contain their anger.
Proofreading: Yang Chao, Operation: Ono, Typesetting: Liang Ningyan
