Le Mee In

I’ve been watching the Korean make-over-show “Let Me In”. The show offers a life changing physical transformation of a participant who will be entitled to an extreme evasive surgery. After he or she had gone under the knife, it would be difficult to trace his or her old self. The ugly duckling had transformed into a swan. The face size had become smaller, the eyes bigger, the nose narrower, the cheeks sharper. Whatever maybe the “defects” can be “fixed” by their talented doctors.

Before the surgery and the “big reveal”, the lives of the participants were featured. It was always a life full of hopelessness, misery, anger, pain, self-loathing and discrimination that was brought by their physical “imperfections”. Most notable of the stories are the daughter who is abused by his father because she looks like her ugly mother who left them, a wife who is being neglected by his husband because she is no longer the attractive woman he married, a young woman who cannot get a job despite her high school grades because she is not “up with the standard of beauty”, a guy who hid in his house for five years because of his large chest, a suicidal girl because she was bullied in school because of her appearance. There are other sob stories that will illicit the sympathy of the audience who had, more than once, had experienced or experiencing the same things.

In defense to the show, it never claimed that it can resolve the problems of the participants. What it promised was “hope”, a “fresh start” to the sufferingparticipants.Not a few will claim that that hope is fleeting and false given that it is from an unnatural process like plastic surgery. But I would say that whatever it is, it is still hope, and it is now up to the participant how he or she will use his or her newly constructed beauty to turn his or her life around.

What can’t be denied, though are the implications in this show. This is when the old-age question “What is the true standard of beauty?” persists. The media being the purveyor of “what is beautiful”, and in Korea that is the K-pop artists and actors. You need to conform to them or else you will not be considered as “beautiful”. What happens now to the celebration of uniqueness and individuality? We are all born different with varied genetic make-up, therefore, there is no certain “mold” of beauty.

But still, forcing yourself on a “mold” which you are made up through dangerous processes like extreme plastic surgery is the individual’s personal decision that others just have to respect. The same equal respect due to those who decided not to alter themselves to “fit in”, without maltreatment and bullying. Hence, a more accepting society must prevail for those who decided to change or not change themselves.

The bottomline of this is a healthy self-image. Once you realized that there is no need to look like the “perceived” epitome of beauty that proliferates the mainstream media to be loved and valued, then that is already a good start for self-acceptance and inevitably, self- esteem.



Best of Haruki

There are varied recurring themes and styles to the collection of stories of Haruki Murakami in his book Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman. The best six stories that I had chosen is what I think best represented a certain theme and style that I favor.

Birthday Girl

This is one of my favorites because of the seemingly simple story, but the context had been richly entangled with fate, magic and mystery. If you can make one wish for your birthday, what would it be? The story had a narrative that was easy to follow, from the girl needing to work on her twentieth birthday, to the events that had lead her to be in front of her “fairy-godmother” and offering her an opportunity to ask for a birthday wish. It did not directly reveal what was the birthday wish of the girl, but it was implied at the end. It is one of the few stories in the collection that has a happy ending and who would say no to a birthday wish to be granted when it is offered?

The Mirror

I would say that I am not the bravest audience of horror movies. I would not pay for movie ticket that would scare me and I would not be able to watch properly because I will just cover or close my eyes. Even in cable TV, I will change the channel when I know that something scary will come out. But it is different with books, probably because it does not offer cheap thrills of prosthetics and tired twists. Just like in the story The Mirror, there is a certain engaging development of the story; it is like the reader was transported to the eerie setting and had become one with the character. Moreover, it is a kind of scary stuff which is more on our mind as it points out: “…the most frightening thing in the world is our own self”

A Folklore to My Generation: A Pre-History of Late-Stage Capitalism

The author had already made the disclaimer that this story represents his generation. It was his take on how he perceive the youth at that age that he belonged to. I was able to relate to this story because I also have a strong opinion about my generation, kids who were born in the 80’s, grown up in the 90’s and working the 2000’s. In our time, the development of technology had been rapid it was hard to keep up, there was an absence of world war, working in abroad is the trend. I would say that it is an era in my country that opportunities were available for those who want it, that social mobility is possible through hard work and a good education still holds the key to success. Another good thing about this story is that it was neither critical nor patronizing on his and the other generations, it acknowledges the difference of each and just tells it as it is.

The Seventh Man

This is another rarity in the collection because the character achieved hope and salvation at the end. The story was about a friendship that was lost and life riddled with guilt. The giant wave best represents the events that will ultimately changed one’s life. Even though life had been difficult, hope, no matter how minute, will always be there. And that propelled the character to continue on living on the best possible way, despite his grief and burden. And I think that that was the beauty of this story, even if darkness looms over us, there will always be a certain moment that it will be cleared off, and that the horizon will once again be bright.

Chance Traveler

“Romanticizing serendipity”, this is why I think this story is the anti-thesis of the whole book. A brother and sister fell apart; they had not kept in touch for a very long time. But a “series of coincidences” had paved the way to their reunion, incidentally, on the time that the sister had needed his brother the most. In an observation that the author’s theme had leaned towards alienation and lost, this story had been an irony of it all. It was an unexpected tale in the collection that shows the other side of the author that reconciliation and acceptance must prevail so that genuine happiness in this lifetime will be achieved.