Same, Same But Different

As I’ve shared before, I’m fond of watching shows from all over the world. I love that I can travel and experience different cultures through them. I’ve observed that stories that are being told are pretty much the same regardless of whether they are from Brazil, South Korea, Mexico, or Norway or Nigeria. For example, boy meets girl, they fall in love but can’t be together because of family opposition due to wrong social class, color etc… Another popular story theme is the super rich fighting over the family business empire and wealth. There is the battle between good and evil which could be in the guise of the police, the good, hunting down evil drug dealers and/or murderers, or the government, the good, defending against terrorists from “other” countries. I tend to avoid the latter type of shows because they tend to be high on violence and BS. It got me wondering, why do we like to tell and consume the same stories over and over again? And how do the creators of the shows manage to keep audiences engaged in the same stories?

The easy answer to the first question is because we are humans regardless of what part of the earth we are born in, our experiences are similar, it makes sense that we have similar tastes. Then I recalled a quote from the French writer, André Gide, “Everything that needs to be said has already been said. But, since no one was listening, everything must be said again.” All these shows have messages their creators want to share, such as, ‘you can find your prince or princess charming’, ‘love and the good always win’, ‘if you  work really hard you become successful, rich’ etc. These are worthy ideals.  I think even when we do listen we tend to forget so hearing the same stories again and again will eventually make the messages stick. Boy do I want to believe that the good (whatever that means) always wins and that love will save the day hence why I keep picking shows that reflect this.

Fluffy

I have to admit that many of the shows I start I don’t finish because I get bored and in the world of on demand streaming, there are plenty of shows to move on to. I recently managed to watch a 50 episode show to completion, to my surprise. The even more shocking thing about it was that I had to read subtitles because it was in Korean. I mostly watch Spanish, Portuguese and Mandarin shows or ones dubbed into Spanish and Portuguese. As my other half pointed out, I don’t watch these shows but listen to them because I usually consume them while I’m in the kitchen cooking or cleaning up. So being able to watch them without looking at the screen is important.  I picked Beauty and Mr Romantic because the title piqued my interest and it is South Korean. The best TV shows I’ve seen in the last couple of years are from South Korea. When I first saw that there were only subtitles in my languages of choice and no dubbing options, my initial reaction was to dismiss it. But then the opening scene of a 12 year old Park Do-Ra (the main protagonist) singing in a nightclub to a heckling crowd while her mother egged her on from the side of the stage made me want to continue watching for a little bit longer to see what would happen. What happened was  that I watched the entire episode. It was a bit tricky as I had to figure out how to cut up veggies and clean while reading the subtitles. The benefit of watching it on an iPad meant I could strategically place it within eye view, which allowed me to keep my eye on the screen and see what I’m chopping and wiping.  I continued like this for the next few days and watched all the available episodes. I found out that ONLY two episodes were released per week. I was annoyed with Netflix for not releasing all the episodes at once but I was also glad that I couldn’t binge watch as I had stuff to do. Twenty episodes later and I was still really engaged which was unusual for me. In fact, I looked forward to Saturday arriving so I could find out what was going on in the lives of Park Do-Ra and Go Pil Seung, her love interest. It reminded me of when I was teenager and used to eagerly await the weekly episode of Dallas. 

Every time I finish watching an episode of the show, I ask myself why can’t I wait for the next one? I know the story and I know how it will end, Park Do-Ra and Go Pil Seung will be together and live happily ever after. It is a TV show! But the stickiness of the show is how they get there, ridiculous yet believable. Without giving too much away, the writer kills off Park Do-Ra early in the show, bringing her back as a different person that somehow finds her way back to Go Pil Seung and her old self. In the process, she meets all the same advocates, villains and obstacles but without a dull moment.  Of course it’s not just the writing that is superb, the acting is also good. 

Rough

After I saw the final episode of Beauty and Mr Romantic, I felt satisfied and uplifted that Park Do-Ra and Pil Seug’s love prevailed and that the horrible people that tried to ruin their lives are now in jail and destitute.  Then I wondered, what if the type of story you want to tell is the kind that is hard to stomach such as rape or slavery? How do you engage the audience? I tend to stay away from unpleasant topics as there are enough horrible things happening in the real world. However, from time to time, I push myself to consume such stories. As James Baldwin wrote: “Not everything that is faced can be changed. But nothing can be changed until it has been faced.” A friend once told me that she saw the actor John Malkovich being interviewed, he was asked how he manages to play villains so well, he replied that he just looks in the mirror. Exposing myself to stories about the horrible things we humans are capable of is my way of looking in the mirror and facing up. It is also how I remind myself that I must do whatever I can to tap into and manifest my positive and loving human side. Because I believe we are all capable of cruelty and kindness it is just a question of degree and circumstances. Nevertheless, I approached the novel Homegoing about the slave trade in West Africa and the US with trepidation. 

As with the fluffy shows I like so much, I know what to expect with stories about slavery. Homegoing didn’t disappoint. It had all the awfulness, a group of humans doing inhumane things to other groups of humans. What I didn’t expect was that it would be beautiful.  The author, Yaa Gyasi masterly found a different angle to tell the same stories about cross Atlantic slave trade. She approached this familiar history from the perspective of two half sisters Effia and Esi starting in the 18th Century. Effia is married off to white slave trader based at Cape Coast Castle and Esi is captured and sent off to the US as a slave. The novel then  follows them and their descendants up to the 21st century. Europeans were not the only villans in the cross Atlantic slave trade, Africans also participated in selling out their own people. The consequences of being from the Africans that collaborated with the European slave traders could be seen through Effia’s lineage.  While the impact of being enslaved and taken to a foreign land is seen from Esi’s lineage. A common belief/argument in the US is that African Americans’ current socially disadvantaged status is a result of their failure to pull themselves up by their bootstraps and live the American dream just like their white countrymen, and not as a consequence of them being the descendants of slaves. What Homegoing does brilliantly is show how the trauma and social status acquired from slavery gets passed on from generation to generation regardless of whether your family owned slaves or were enslaved. It took over 150 years after slavery was abolished in the US for a descendant of Esi to make it to and graduate from university.