![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Entry tags:
Kumiho
A random thought on Korean foxes in reference to the movie I reviewed. It, necessarily, gives away plot and ending, not that I didn't give away plot and ending in the review/summary already. :D But it will make more sens if you've read the review/summary.
I know more about the cultural associations of Chinese and Japanese foxes than Korean foxes, since I've been reading about them, but I'd gathered that for the most part Korean foxes tend more to the evil side, trying to kill people, and that they're overwhelmingly female. It's sort of interesting that the two least evil of the family in The Fox Family are the women. Not that the entire family is especially evil - they don't manage to kill any innocents after all, and are shown as ambivalent to the whole idea at one time or another.
The older daughter falls in love and doesn't want to kill her lover (although that could be read as a patriarchal thing of respect to the man/weakness in the woman), but the younger daughter, although she's treated like Wednesday Addams and the movie tries to make it look like she might be the serial killer and shows her preparing and eating raw meat, is actually sneaking off to work at a part-time job to pay for the meat she and the dog eat, and she is the one that brings the evil serial-killer down.
I'm wondering if this is a deliberate subverting of traditional Korean thought on foxes (it wasn't such a bad movie that I'd rule out something like this)- as a dark comedy it relies on inverting expectations so the eeevil foxes turn out to be incompetent in varying degrees - or if it's a sign of (a) my sources being biased or not complete, or (b) change in attitudes towards foxes in recent times.
Huh.
I know more about the cultural associations of Chinese and Japanese foxes than Korean foxes, since I've been reading about them, but I'd gathered that for the most part Korean foxes tend more to the evil side, trying to kill people, and that they're overwhelmingly female. It's sort of interesting that the two least evil of the family in The Fox Family are the women. Not that the entire family is especially evil - they don't manage to kill any innocents after all, and are shown as ambivalent to the whole idea at one time or another.
The older daughter falls in love and doesn't want to kill her lover (although that could be read as a patriarchal thing of respect to the man/weakness in the woman), but the younger daughter, although she's treated like Wednesday Addams and the movie tries to make it look like she might be the serial killer and shows her preparing and eating raw meat, is actually sneaking off to work at a part-time job to pay for the meat she and the dog eat, and she is the one that brings the evil serial-killer down.
I'm wondering if this is a deliberate subverting of traditional Korean thought on foxes (it wasn't such a bad movie that I'd rule out something like this)- as a dark comedy it relies on inverting expectations so the eeevil foxes turn out to be incompetent in varying degrees - or if it's a sign of (a) my sources being biased or not complete, or (b) change in attitudes towards foxes in recent times.
Huh.
no subject
no subject
no subject