“It’s time to kick ass and chew bubble gum. And I’m all out of gum” – Duke Nukem

I have previously used this video in another post so sorry to repeat my self but after a week of advertising and marketing it just feels relevant

East Asian Film, “breathless” directed by Ik-jun Yang

“Karma’s a bitch”

No Idea

The first thing that springs to mind after watching Ik-jun Yang’s film “breathless” or directly translated from Korean, “shit fly” is that I am going to have to find new and exciting words to truly represent how much I hate someone, after the first 30 minutes the words “fuck” and “cunt” had lost all meaning to me whether or not this is a good thing is still up for grabs.

Breathless a film set in South Korea in which I disturbed man (disturbed due to his child hood and then subsequent life after this) goes around beating people up for money or beating up police officers or in fact people who attack women which is interesting and I will mention why later on. The long and short of it is that Sang-hun the lead of this film is an utterly horrible excuse for human being.

This first and important point leads me to belie that even before watching the rest of the film there will be some form of character arc and progression something directors and writers often miss for example “Air Force One” (1997) a film utterly without character growth and all be it in a far removed genre from Breathless still exhibits a, how not to guide into how to design and developed characters.  Thankfully Breathless manages to have a number of characters who demonstrate growth.

I will return to a previous point made regarding the main characters approach to women being and interesting one in the one of the opening scenes our “hero” (a term I use loosely) is seen defending a prostitute and after this done he takes to verbally abusing her. As well as this when he  encounters the female lead character for the first time Yeoh-hee (a school girl) he spits on her without provocation and when she ask him to clean her tie he punches her directly in the face, knocking her out cold.

The character progression of Sang-hun is an interesting one he hates everyone around him even what could be seen as his “friends” these being his boss and co-workers at the dept collection agency. But he still spends time with them outside of work, he hates his father for killing is little sister while trying to kill his mother and then the mother dies while in what looks like an attempt to get help or simply run and yet the father lives Sang-hun, he also hates his love interest but again still chooses to remain in her company. The progression of course if you hadn’t seen it coming is that this character starts to “feel again” and as cheesy as that sounds it is done in an interesting if not obvious way and although the film sadly tends to drag in sections this could have been an artistic point that me in my western “I need to see explosions and big tits every 30 seconds” mind set missed.

As with the progression being almost obvious but still way executed, the ending is not with a out a sense of irony this is something that I will not spoil because although the plot twist may seem generic they still manage to interest me and I found myself rooting for Sang-hun by the end of the film no matter what he had done in the past but karma it seems is always there to trip us up.

The Plot of this film starts in South Korean with Sang-hun (who as a child lost his mother and sister to extreme domestic abuse) which is the reason behind him treating people like dirt. He swears spits and hits people often without provocation, these talents are such that he puts them to use at debt collection agency. It is a boy meets girl story with a number of very dark twists. He assaults a young school girl Yeon-hee and from this they form a strange relationship with romantic implications. Through meeting this girl Sang-hun begins to change of course reluctantly at first but begins to relate more to what friends and family he has left and begins to have feelings towards Yeon-hee however not matter how hard he to tries to atone for his past, karma has other plans.

“Think from outside the box, collapse the box and take a fucking knife to it” – Banksy

“When you can’t run, you crawl. And when you can’t crawl, you  find someone to carry you” Joss Wheadon, Firefly

I haven’t blogged anything in a while so i figured it would be a good idea to do a quick blog on how i feel about this very new term, “wow, im so far behind already”. That pretty much sums it up.

In last weeks 121MC session my contribution was the same as every one else in my group, we were tasked with a simple objective, to find out what is a student faveriot food. I contributed to this by attempting to collect data on the subject by using a simple questionaire or survey. Once that data had been collected we came together as a team to discuss what we had ‘discovered’. With this being done we then attempt to justifie what we had done to our lecturer, this being a difficult task as i was new to this area of Media, so justifing choices we made which really had no reasoning to them beyond simple common sense was exciting at best.

“two men walk into a bar, the first man orders a Scotch and soda the second man remembers something he’d forgoten and it doubles him over with pain. He falls to the floor shaking, then through the floor and into the earth. He looks back up to the first man, but he doesn’t call out to him. They’re not that close” Alexis Denisof,  Angel

Binary Opposites of Gender

Man and woman although are binary opposites of each other does not make then the same as the next two binary opposites, Masculine and Feminine. Although often associate with male and female, man and woman being masculine and being feminine are not biological facts that come with the relative gender. However these two binary opposites are actually culturally imposed on the respective genders and have very little if no bearing on the biological gender besides that which ‘we’ as a culture gives it.

Masculine, to be masculine is to be strong, active, dominant; the masculine member of the group i.e. friends or family is often the one who has the best paying job, controls the remote control for the TV decides what does and does not happen in the place in which he lives. I use the word “he” assuming that this person I have describe is male, however it may not be the case the most cultural masculine person social group my be female.

Feminine, to be feminine is to be weak, passive, subservient, graceful, slender, caring; the feminine person is often seen as a female, maybe with a low paying job such as a secretary but the cultural depiction of a woman or any feminine character is that this person will spend most of there time at home, look after the house and children.

On a superficial level

The feminine individual wears beautiful clothes such as long or in some cases short dresses along with a number of often expensive accessories of crystal, diamond and gold. As well as this the individual will most likely have a number of different “make ups” to increase their attractiveness using such things as eye liner and eye lash extensions to increase their “cuteness” and so on. Other physical cultural impositions upon females and feminine individuals is long perfect hair, slender body, almost fragile look, high heels and yet still shorter than the masculine man.

As for the masculine individual often a ‘he’, large muscles or beer belly, suit or builder clothes, beer drinker, wears trousers. The “original” stereotype of a masculine figure is quite simple cover the things I have just said as well as noting that they can not wear makeup or straighten their and other more feminine acts, however in the present day this rule is not only ignored but often celebrated within cultures. At all costs is a masculine figure to appear strong and should show no weakness. Crying or showing any kind true emotion is of course a form of weakness. The masculine is often the provider of a family and will have either a very important managerial job in which he as a lot of authority or a very simple but taxing labour job which only they can do because of the physical attributes.

A little deeper

So far it appears that there are physical differences between masculine and feminine, which is true, as well as this there are also emotional differences such as the different ways in which the separate parties go about expressing them selves or not expressing them selves.

The masculine person will not often talk about clothes in detail nor have anything to say about the ‘house work’ their interests lye in being “the man” in their attempt to be the “alpha male” in every the story the masculine person will tell they will somehow come out on top being the victor in another attempt to not appear weak. Social the masculine individual will enjoy watching and talking about physical or violent things such as certain sports. As well as this, women are often a hot topic for men to discuss who is more attractive and compare old girlfriends.

Feminine individuals often noted for their ability chat or gossip for hours on end about what masculine figures see as pointless or insignificant, this is of course true if you turn the issue around. Feminine individuals often talk about clothes and other superficial things that I have previously mentioned. As talking about the masculine person maybe not in the say way as the masculine type would, this does not mean that it is any better or worse.

A conclusion

What I have briefly touch upon and tried to convey in these short paragraphs that stereotypes are how we base our cultural and social bases, this could be construed as a scary thing not truly knowing when these cultural truths were created and are now just accepted in some social circles as complete undeniable facts.

I have also hinted in some areas that although these preset stereotypes exist, there are those out there which try to defy them, whether to make a statement or simple because they enjoy their life, straddling both masculine and feminine and don’t even se it as an issue to be discussed.  

This being said it almost feels like as world wide culture we are slowly changing when looking back a few decades for men to spend so long on their physical appearance would be unheard of, as well as using make up and hair strengtheners which is now more and more acceptable and on the flip side women have clearly got a lot more rights then which they started with, wearing trousers as well as skirts and so on. As I mentioned at the start, masculinity and femininity are not the same as being man and woman however they have long be connected at the hip and it is interesting at least and truly inspirational that we are what some would say to be ‘evolving socially’ whether this is a good thing or not is a question still up in the air.