In Defense of To The Beautiful You
Back
in March, I spent a day at KPOPCON ‘14 in Berkeley. I was there
mostly for the Idols in Drama panel, featuring Stephanie Parker from
Viki interviewing Javabeans and Girlfriday from Dramabeans. They
covered a lot of interesting topics at the intersection of KPop and
KDrama, including the phenomenon of “Idol Dramas,” which
Stephanie illustrated with a promo poster from To The Beautiful
You. I had always assumed that the producers of TTBY had cast
their two leads because they were pretty, already famous, and
demographically correct for the roles (i.e. two young human beings,
one male and one female). However, apparently it was more the other
way around: the producers made TTBY in order to cast the two leads.
It turns out that TTBY’s stars, Minho and Sulli, are both
represented by SM Entertainment. And while SM Entertainment
represents a few actors and models, they are primarily a music agency
— one of the “Big Three" agencies in KPop. (Thank you to
Divina Magracia, Ellen Ong, and Tuhina Das at the Hot Issue
workshop for explaining the Big Three!) Sulli, Minho, and
most of those pretty extras walking around in the background at
TTBY’s all-boys boarding school were idols and SM Entertainment
properties first, and only cast members in TTBY as an extension of
that. As one of the panelists at KPOPCON put it: “Oh, you won’t
cast our idols in your drama? Then we’ll make our own drama
for them. So there!”
SHINee's Minho (picture credit: soompi.com) |
The summer of 2012 was a heady time for me: it was the summer I discovered the wonderful world of Korean Television! Sometime in mid-to-late July that year, I was intrigued enough by a Gaksital screencap on Hulu to try watching it from the beginning, and I was instantly hooked. A few days later I had reached the end of the available episodes of Gaksital and started searching desperately for other KDramas to satisfy my sudden obsession. I quickly devoured Rooftop Prince, The Moon Embracing the Sun, The Princess’ Man, Secret Garden, and Sungkyunkwan Scandal, and was excitedly looking forward to the imminent debuts of Faith and Arang & the Magistrate, both of which started in mid-August. Fridays and Saturdays (when I was finally able to see the subbed episodes) were the high points of my week, but as with so many addictions, each Gaksital/Faith/Arang binge was followed by a crash. So to ease the transition, I picked up To The Beautiful You.
TTBY is the story of Gu Jae-Hee (Sulli), who was born in Korea to Korean parents but moved to California at age 5 when her mother married an American. Jae-Hee fails to thrive in the U.S., becoming a sad, shy teenager, until one day she sees Korean high-jump champion, Kang Tae-Joon (Minho) win a competition on TV. His success, and his personal motto — “A miracle is another name for hard effort” — inspire her to join her school's track team, where she discovers her self-confidence for the first time since leaving Korea.
Unlike in Padam Padam... (or not?) the wings here are purely metaphorical. |
Like
Gaksital, Faith, and Arang, TTBY was a
Wednesday/Thursday drama, so it was typically available online at
about the same time as the other three, and in many ways it
made for the perfect dessert wine: pretty, sweet, and simple. I’m
sure that even its haters must admit that TTBY was exceptionally
lovely, employing a bright, over-saturated color palate, surprisingly
artful photography, and a ludicrously beautiful cast. And for those
of us who appreciate such things, it should be noted that we
were repeatedly treated to visions of that beautiful cast in
extended, minimally clothed montages that involved a lot of sweating
and/or water. A special shout out to Kang Ha-Neul, and Seo Joon-Young
in this category, who wasted few opportunities to display their
young, muscled figures for us in multiple states
of undress, and kudos also to Minho for a strong 3rd place finish.
On top of that, it was largely innocent and good natured. As seems all-too-common in KDramaland, TTBY’s teenagers were expected to navigate a plethora of inappropriately adult situations, like moving halfway around the world or managing their own careers, with minimal adult supervision. But perhaps partly because they were still in high school (and certainly in large part because nobody was supposed to be "poor but cheerful and hardworking" - ugh!) it lacked the sort of drudgery that can sometimes accompany those tropes. Even the personal angst several characters had to endure somehow seemed more wholesome than usual, and never allowed itself to devolve into true melodrama. Similarly, there were antagonists in TTBY who could be petty and vindictive, but unlike the rest of my viewing schedule that summer, none of them were outright murderers! I should mention that there was a disturbing attempted rape and several hazing/bullying incidents with fairly nasty overtones in the first half of the series, but these scenes really were symptoms of the lazy storytelling — narrative crutches — rather than defining characteristics of either the story or the characters within it, and so were much easier to move past quickly, at least for me.
Best
of all, TTBY was uncomplicated to the point where it didn’t even
bother with pesky drama staples like character motivation or logic.
TTBY was one thing, and one thing only: a series of excuses to place
its two pretty idol leads in a long series of gorgeously shot,
mildly-to-very titillating scenarios together, and it was steadfastly
unwilling to waste its energy worrying overmuch about the mechanics
of how or why said situations occurred. (Though it did make an
effort to include plenty of PPL, of course. Did you buy a new Samsung camera in 2012? I can teach you how to use it!) As the glue to hold all
these loosely related scenes together, TTBY employed slapstick comedy
and gratuitous male semi-nudity the way most other dramas strive for
a cohesive plot.
For
discerning, experienced viewers like many of the folks over at
Dramabeans, the total lack of quality in TTBY’s script was a fatal
flaw (and perhaps additionally insulting for its denigration of the
much-loved Hana-Kimi source material), but for me it was
liberating. Still fairly new to KDrama and totally dependent on
amateur subbers (special thank you to amateur subbers — I would
never have fallen in love with KDrama without you!), it was kind of a
relief to be freed from the pressure to understand what was going on
in the plot or why a character was doing what she was doing at any
given time. With TTBY, I could turn off my brain, let go of the
emotional traumas wrought by that week's Gaksital, Faith,
and/or Arang, and just enjoy the bright lights and pretty
colors flitting mindlessly across my screen. (Really, I cannot
overstate the gorgeousness of this show. Huge, unironic kudos to the
production design, lighting, and photography teams!)
Even
for these reasons alone I would have happily imbibed TTBY as a
scrumptious "after-dinner" delight for the entirety of its
run. But then, right about the time Nice Guy replaced Gaksital
in the Wed/Thurs lineup, something strange happened to me with TTBY:
Incredibly, unbelievably, and against all odds and expectations, I
started to realize I was looking forward to it more than any other
show I watched each week! This was in part due to the nature of its
competition, which had all entered fairly heavy melo phases by then,
making TTBY’s airheadedness all that much more of a relief. But
what truly elevated TTBY from mere pretty fluff to a genuine delight
for me was actor Lee Hyun-Woo.
Like
the majority of the supporting cast in TTBY (as opposed to the leads
and the extras), Lee Hyun-Woo is neither an idol nor an SM
Entertainment property. He is an actor, and in Hyun-Woo's case in
particular, an actor with an impressive resume of dramas and movies
for someone still so young (he turned 21 in American years in March).
So you may not know his name, but you might well recognize his face.
Most recently he starred with Kim Soo-Hyun and Park Ki-Woong in the
smash-hit movie Secretly Greatly (aka Covertness), but
in TTBY he plays Sulli’s best friend at Genie High, who falls madly
in love with her even though he believes she’s a boy.
In
keeping with TTBY's mostly silly tone, Hyun-Woo's character, Cha
Eun-Gyul, is boisterously, almost clownishly cheery. He lays on the
aegyo thick and fast, and spends his personal time posting campy
selfies to social media and daydreaming a series of increasingly
ridiculous fantasies, typically involving himself and/or Jae-Hee
(both with and without Tae-Joon).
It
is to Sulli and Minho's credit that they usually enacted Eun-Gyul's
daydream sequences with less of the underlying embarrassment I
sometimes sensed from them during the more ludicrous events in their
characters' "real" lives, but it was Hyun-Woo who really
sold these scenes. Whether we saw him within the fantasy itself or
just followed his facial expressions as he woolgathered, plotted, or
worried about what shenanigans Jae-Hee and Tae-Joon might be up to
without him, Eun-Gyul's every agony and ecstasy was painted across
Hyun-Woo's adorable face with wild, engaging, addictive abandon.
Similarly,
as much as I enjoyed the awkward prettiness of Sulli and Minho
together, it was in her scenes with Hyun-Woo where Sulli most shined.
(Don't get me wrong, I stand by my earlier assertion that both Sulli
and Minho's performances were no more than barely adequate in
general, but Sulli in particular seemed to do her best work, such as
it were, with Hyun-Woo.) Hyun-Woo's acting in TTBY isn't the sort of
"art" that will likely ever earn him wide acclaim, but for
me his total commitment to every scene, regardless of logic, dignity,
or quality of dialogue, is exactly what I look for in a performance,
no matter what the medium. And occasionally that skill even rubbed
off a little on his co-stars. (It’s also worth noting that the
scriptwriter seemed to do his best work with
Eun-Gyul, making his journey rounded, reasonable, heartfelt, and
highly entertaining, which sets him significantly apart from the rest
of the cast.)
Although
not standing out for their performances in quite the same way as Lee
Hyun-Woo, TTBY had several other guest or supporting actors worth
noting as well for one reason or another. These included actor Kim
Woo-Bin (as Jae-Hee’s older Korean-American friend and admirer in
episodes 9-10) and ZE:A’s Hwang Kwang-Hee (as a pouty,
lipgloss-obsessed classmate with a flaming crush on Eun-Gyul),
neither of whom are my cup of tea in general, but others out there
seem to really like them. I already mentioned my admiration for the
physical work done in TTBY by Kang Ha-Neul and Seo Joon-Young as
Genie High classmates, and their performances (particularly
Joon-Young’s) were entertaining as well, while Ki Tae-Young, Lee
Young-Eung, and Kang Kyeong-Joon rounded out the pretty quotient on
campus with solid, if unremarkable performances as Genie faculty.
Also, TTBY is where I first saw Korean-Canadian actor Julien Kang, my
soft spot for whom I explored in more detail in my review of Dream.
Sadly, Julien remained fully clothed in TTBY, but I guess we can’t
always have everything.
The
harsh truth is that nonsensical/unexplained character motivation and
logical inconsistencies in plot are hardly rarities in KDramas. Yes,
TTBY was a worse offender than most, but if these were actual crimes,
the writer and director of TTBY would have plenty of company in jail.
In fact, as the most brazen offenders, TTBY’s production team would
rule that prison like kings, the same way TTBY itself rules (in my
book, at least) over all those dramas that try to slip their little
cheats past the viewers under the cover of stories that are otherwise
supposed make sense. I contend that their chutzpah, combined with
their dedication to visual beauty and Lee Hyun-Woo's virtuoso comedy,
made To The Beautiful You a cheesy, nonsensical, and utterly,
utterly delightful triumph!
Afterword:
It
is worth noting that TTBY’s overall mindlessness extended to its treatment
of several potentially sensitive social issues, particularly
homosexuality and sexism. As a
gender-bending rom-com, it was impossible to avoid these topics
entirely, but TTBY generally trod a fairly neutral (or oblivious)
path through the potential landmines, and people with very strong
opinions about what constitutes “right” or “wrong” might well
be offended by TTBY’s failure to commit to any one
side. Also, TTBY manages to stand out for its conspicuous lack of
rounded female characters in a field that is hardly overrun with
balanced female representations to begin with (i.e. television in
general and Korean television in particular). While I certainly
empathize with the “if you’re not with us, you’re against us”
mentality when it comes to overcoming centuries of oppression and
deeply entrenched biases, I also think that in striking a balance on
social issues, TTBY kept itself more widely accessible, and there is
something to be said for that. Similarly, by virtue of its
primary setting (in an all-male boarding school), I can understand, if
not fully condone, the female underrepresentation, and also have to admit
that the two-dimensionality of TTBY’s very few females was, at
least, fairly well mirrored by the two-dimensionality of its sea of
very pretty, minimally clothed males. What is more, it would be
a bit hypocritical of me to expect insightful social commentary or powerful
role models from something that was otherwise so vapid, 안그래?