Letter #164: Aema*

Good morning, Erin.

Love is a many-splendored thing. 

It can also bite you in the patoot, as I am all too aware. And such is the case with Aema.

I’m sure you have no interest in this show, just as I had no interest in this show—save for one important detail: So-e is in it. And I can’t not support my girl. 

So, did my love bloom into an unexpected poppy of delight, or did affection once again slip a dagger between my ribs as I walked to get a late-night snack?

Or maybe it was just pretty okay—who can say—let’s find out, as we continue our used-to-be-on-a-dating-show bloc!

1. Dear God, was this a slog. And I didn’t even watch the whole thing. (I couldn’t. It was that much of a mess.) There were only six episodes—six, Erin, six—and it took me WEEKS to get through them. And, again, I didn’t even watch all of it!

1A. I mean, genuinely, I could not watch for more than 15 minutes at a time, which is probably how long any one episode could hold its coherence before pivoting to an entirely different genre. And I don't mean the show mixes in bits of comedy and drama—no no no, that tried and true formula is for philistines, Erin! A real work of staggering artistic genius shuffles its tone so frequently that you can’t get a handle on whether to take any single moment seriously or not!

1B. I’m not exaggerating. This show cannot pick a lane. I think it’s trying to be a satire, but it’s also completely unaware of what that means. Like, it’s clearly trying to criticize…um, that era in South Korea’s cultural history? the entertainment industry? prevailing social norms? But, in a satire, the jokes are the commentary. The absurdity is the commentary. It’s a juxtaposition or slight exaggeration of reality that shines a light on a topic or issue or person or way of thinking and exposes its underlying flaws. What it IS NOT is a character getting up on a soapbox every time she speaks (...unless the soapbox speeches are the things being satired, which they are not, here), a po-faced arc dedicated to sex trafficking, or a dedicated subplot about sexual moralism. That’s a docudrama with strong social messaging—and it belongs NOWHERE NEAR the goofy plot about making one of the most consequential movies in South Korean history. 

1C. Which, by the way, THIS SHOW ISN’T EVEN REALLY ABOUT. No, seriously, it’s literally revisionist history, a fake retelling of how the film was made (from people to events). It’s a real movie. But no one involved with it is…I just don’t understand what the point is. Why not do a show about something like the real Madame Aema? Why not make up an erotic movie and talk about the dirty dealings of its production? In fact, it becomes EVEN EASIER to be biting and absurd, in that case, because you aren’t tethered to reality in any capacity—including the contents of the film! I just don’t understand what the point of this whole endeavor was. Honestly. I asked the AI, and it couldn’t tell me. 

1D. And even further than that—very, very, very little time is spent on the actual making of Madame Aema, which wouldn’t be all that important an element to bring up except that it also, then, spends waaaay too much time on the making of Madame Aema. Which shouldn’t surprise me, since everything else about the series is so off-kilter, but…again: pick a lane.

1E. …also, did you know Madame Aema is a real movie? I probably should have said that. An erotic film that was a MASSIVE hit and spawned something like a 10-movie franchise. 

1F. One last thing about not picking a lane: waaaaaaaay too many story threads. It wants to cover bits and pieces about so many different aspects of the context surrounding the film (censorship, exploitation films as another spoke in the exploitation machine, male vs female perspectives on the erotic, female vs female competition, patriarchal norms), but it never focuses in on any of them for long enough—or, for that matter, with any particular depth—for any of them to really go anywhere. So, ultimately, we don’t need so much focus on the writer/director, we don’t need one of the lead actress’s friends and her subplot, we don’t need the romance subplot between the well-endowed male actor and the production assistant girl. (In fairness, I don’t know what the show was trying to do, exactly, so I can’t say for certain what was needed, but these three absolutely don’t go anywhere—which is especially weird, considering the writer-director is supposed to be one of the main characters.)

1G. (…though, also in fairness, I fast-forwarded through most of the final episode, so what do I know. Maybe the actor and production assistant get together and are the lynchpin to the whole thing.)

2. THAT SAID…without doubt, a lot of this show assumes you either lived through early-’80s Korea or are familiar enough with the broad concepts of the era (and the lingering cultural throughlines of it (or even from long before it)) that key contexts will be recognizable by implication alone. So, immediately, I was at a disadvantage—and that is not the fault of the show. It’s maybe something to consider in a broader discussion of what is and is not owed to your audience—and who you should assume your audience is—but that’s not something I’m specifically holding against this show in this discussion. Did it make certain things difficult for me? Absolutely. (Knowing South Korea was a dictatorship at the time would have been a big help, for example.) But sloppy plot and character mishaps weren’t the products of context ignorance. 

3. But, whatever else I could say, I absolutely knew a whole bunch of people in this show:

• the secret agent mom from Alienoid as Hee-ran, our older female protagonists

• Kim Tae-ri’s dad from Revenant as the sleazy film producer

• Sanchez from Hotel Del Luna as the writer/director

• the schoolgirl prostitute from Bargain as (younger female protagonist) Ju-ae’s friend

• So-e from Single’s Inferno 2 as Mi-na, an aspiring actress/sleazy producer’s girlfriend

• the Gille suit guy from Sweet Home 2 as an actor/“sexy” bartender for the ahjummas

• the gym brother from Frankly Speaking as a young actor

• the PTA mom from Crash Course in Romance as…a madame, of sorts, I guess

• the aunt from Behind Your Touch as a clothing designer

• Ms. Cho from Hotel Del Luna as…I dunno, a cafe owner or something? (min-reunion! woo!)

• the heavyset diver lady from Welcome to Samdal-ri as the 

4. So-e is so good, in this. I know I’m in love with her, but I promise I’m not exaggerating when I say she is one of the only two standout performances—and genuinely THE BEST character in the series. She’s probably got the most going on (certainly per moment of screen time) and is maybe the most consistent character overall: she’s got a plot and a personality, and it’s a totally solid throughline from start to finish for both. 

4A. But, yeah, her acting is great! She plays a sex kitten starlet (I seriously did a double-take when I first saw her because I didn’t recognize her!) who is 100% in on sleeping her way to success—or some measure of comfort, if that’s easier, kicking up a storm that she is not selected to be pimped out to a party of elite politicians (as she has happily(?) done before) in favor of Ju-ae. She’s silly and sexy and, as we see later, quite sad—and I don’t mean pathetic but tragic, delivering my absolute favorite line of the series: Mi-na attempts to flirt with a thug who tosses her aside, sneering that he doesn’t understand why she’s putting so much effort into her whole sex kitten thing instead of just knowing her place (that is, the sex stuff without all the “kitten” chatter)...to which she says, “I’m only trying so hard ‘cause I know my place.” Which just cracked me right in the face. Like…damn. EVERYTHING we need to know about her is wrapped up in that line. And So-e delivers it perfectly. 

4B. Further, she’s soooo good at switching between the silly and flirty and serious moments, and I think she really got to shine in each of her segments, no matter how long any of those segments turned out to be. If you can find a collection of just her scenes (or don’t mind scrubbing through Episodes 2-5), I’d recommend it. 

4C. AND JUST LOOK AT THIS RIDICULOUS OUTFIT I LOVE IT SO MUCH!!!

5. The other noteworthy performance, in my opinion, is the sleazy film producer. He walks a perfect line between jokey and serious portrayal, with his exaggerated moments being a front or him being his own hype man, always slowly giving way to this strangely grounded combination of greedy oaf, desperate survivalist, and sincere dreamer. I thought he was great. (The actor. The character is kind of despicable.)

6. Y’know who wasn’t good? Hee-ran. The character was awful. I mean, thoroughly unlikeable—but I don’t think I was supposed to dislike her. She’s a total biz-natch, as my sister would say, and I found her (and her speeches) utterly intolerable. And the actress is…I mean, I won’t quite go so far as to say that she’s bad—but her performance is frikkin’ weird (probably because the show can’t decide what it wants to be). She’s constantly doing this breathy, Marilyn Monroe-esque voice in every conceivable situation. I couldn’t tell if it was a put-on and that she (the character) was constantly projecting her actress-y persona as a means of keeping everyone enamored of her or if this was just supposed to be who the character was (again, was this meant to be satirical or a deliberate choice?), but she drops it more and more as the show goes on—and I’m not sure why. Is this because I wasn’t fond of her or of the show? Maybe. But I think it’s more likely to be just another of many inconsistencies. 

7. And y’know who (I’m pretty sure) wasn’t good but whom I quite liked? Ju-ae. Or, more specifically, I liked the actress playing Ju-ae. Ju-ae is kind of dull, and the performance mostly underscores this, with the actress spending a lot of her time with a deadpan, if somewhat wide-eyed, expression—BUT…the actress just has something about her…I dunno. I thought she was magnetic, and I’m shocked this was pretty much her first big role, from what I could see. When she was on screen, I couldn’t take my eyes off of her, even as I wondered if she was actually any good or not. (And, no, this is not me thinking she was hot and disguising it as something else. I did think she was attractive, but in the same way I find Kim Tae-ri attractive: her looks are secondary to this ethereal other…something. This actress had that same kind of something that made me perk up every time she stepped on screen.) I’d like to see her in something better written or, at least, less artsy-weird. 

7A. What’s kind of disappointing is that Ju-ae’s introduction is f***ing perfect: it’s striking and strange, yes, but importantly it’s sexy without being AT ALL sexy. It was exactly the moment the show was going for and set the tone for the writer/director character’s story (his yearning to create the erotic in the not-explicitly-erotic (and also the very explicitly erotic, but…whatever, being a pervert is complicated, okay, Erin, geez!)). The scene is brilliantly conceived and executed, and it’s a shame this is pretty much immediately lost. 

7B. And I’m serious about it being immediately lost, too, because my very first note after my praise of Ju-ae’s introduction is about how the show needs to decide if it’s going for quirky un-realism or being a straight docudrama. So…if it wasn’t already clear, trouble was there from the start. 

8. Speaking of Ju-ae, here’s my favorite line of hers, which is as good in-context as it is out-of-context: “I’ve got bigger battles to fight. I’m not fighting a horse, as well.” That’s true wisdom, that.

9. Hey, did you know that men can be scummy and exploitative? I bet you didn’t. I mean, I certainly didn’t. But, apparently, it’s true. And thank goodness this show took the time to teach me. 

9A. …I’m being snide, of course, but this was yet another show where the message about sexism was to point it out and…nothing else. Just a bunch of “see? What’s I tell you?” and it’s just plain boring. I know Korea is not America, and I know their social dynamics structure when it comes to men and women is not on the same timeline as America’s—that’s not what I’m getting at. That is, I understand that there’s a subversive element to even broaching this subject, and showing it explicitly (particularly in the manner in which it is shown here) says quite a bit on its own. However…it feels really frikkin’ lazy. Because it’s shallow, yes, and because it’s done all the time, yes yes—but the biggest issue is that the series goes to great lengths to show all of its major characters live under a system outside their control, that they are all in one way or another beholden to some manner of oppressive force, only to very clearly designate who is a good person and who is a bad person based what they are, not how they conduct themselves. The men are predominantly scumbags (bad) or twerps (good). And the only bad women are the ones who enable the bad men. (So…the madame (and perhaps the servants who work with her, depending on your reading.)) 

9B. Like, there’s this great woman-to-woman sexism between Hee-ran and Ju-ae, early on, as the older Hee-ran has to confront being replaced by the younger Ju-ae, but (and I saw this coming as soon as it was introduced) it is eventually described not as a conflict between age and youth, or even the power struggle between fresh and fading beauty, but as the result of male influence on “the sisterhood”: Hee-ran isn’t mean to Ju-ae because she’s jealous or afraid or embittered; she’s mean to Ju-ae to protect her from the exploitation of powerful men. (I mean…Hee-ran loudly accusing Ju-ae of f***ing her way into the movie felt a little personal, to me, but maybe I’m just bad at feminism.)

9C. Strictly speaking, these simple dichotomies aren't awful in and of themselves—in that it doesn’t have to be a bad thing that these portrayals are simple and neatly divided. But when you want to address this kind of thing specifically, want to make it one of the themes or messages central to the story you tell? Sorry, no, not good enough. You can’t say it’s totally cool and funny for Hee-ran to try to kill the sleazy producer for being sleazy, but also say he’s a monster when he finally fights back. It’s unserious.

9D. Further: the sleazy producer and Hee-ran are both trying to keep their dreams alive, just by diverging methods. He allows himself to exploit, though he’d prefer not to; and she allows herself to be exploited, though she’d prefer not to. Both have long-since accepted that this is the way of things. One is certainly more victim than the other, do not doubt, but both choose to participate in the system because it is all that is available to them as a means to what they want. Now ask me if the show acknowledges these complexities or treats the characters with any amount of parity. (More on that later.) 

9E. Just to put a fine point on it: I actually have a note about the production assistant guy who works for the sleazy producer being a character I quite like, actually, because he’s a decent, realistic person who never mistreats anyone as he tries to do the thankless work of keeping the practical side of the movie making sailing along—and then I wonder how long I’ll have to wait for the show to “patriarchy” all over the guy. (Spoiler: it takes until the finale. After several episodes of taking Ju-ae’s friend under his wing and showing her how to do the work he does, he scolds her for ripping off one of their investors—at which point she counters by saying that he’s guilty of not stopping the exploitation of actresses by the literal powerbrokers of their entire nation, as if that’s not the stupidest thing she could say. The absurdity of it is only blunted by the fact that the guy’s only response is to tell her that he might not be a good guy, but she’s still fired.)

9F. Or, for example, it’s totally cool and funny for Hee-ran to try to kill the sleazy producer for being sleazy, but he’s a monster when he finally fights back. You…you can’t do this and be taken seriously. 

9G. Or, put another way, this show managed to make me root for the sleazy, sex-trafficking movie producer more than its designated good guys. (And not by virtue of his character, to clarify.)

9H. Then again, I didn’t watch most of the final episode, so what do I know.

10. One of my favorite Mi-na moments is when she stumbles into the sleazy producer’s office, absolutely sloshed, and demands to know why she wasn’t sent to pimp herself out to the politicians, because she sees Hee-ran, the mega-celebrity, and demands to know who she is and what she’s doing there. It’s just so good.

11. I am going to need someone to explain why Hee-ran, who has made her career off of smutty movies, is upset that she has to be in something as smutty as Madame Aema, then insulted that she will not be the main character in Madame Aema, then desperate to be let out of her contract so that she can be in a “more serious director’s” equally smutty movie. Like, I can understand or justify some of it, but not all of it. Certainly not in the context of the rest of the story. 

12. Hee-ran criticizes one of the sex scenes in the script for Madame Aema by telling the writer/director that “there’s not a single woman out there who subconsciously wants to be forcibly violated.” To which I said, “BookTok disagrees.”

12A. …of course, what she means is that no woman actually wants to be raped, which is true. However, she’s also fallen into the erotica trap: anything in smut is inherently assumed to be playacting. And the scene she’s hoping to rewrite is assuredly not meant to be realistic. So, though she is technically correct, she is wrong on the facts of the genre. (Which isn’t a problem; I just think it’s funny, given the state of modern erotica.)

13. The concluding arc of the story is kicked off by the death of Mi-na (our beloved So-e (...spoilers)), which might be the biggest crock of s*** in the whole series. Neither Hee-ran nor Ju-ae cared a whit about Mi-na (if they even knew who she was), and for them to springboard from her death as their team-up moment is cheap and ridiculous. As cheap and ridiculous as Hee-ran blaming the sleazy producer for Mi-na’s death? No. (And boy did I have a rant at the TV about that moment, let me tell you.) But it’s pretty f***ing stupid. And unearned. And I don’t care that I barely watched any of Episode 6—I will die on that hill. F*** this show and the horse it galloped suggestively in slow motion on. 

And that was (with an asterisk) Aema, a show that, despite having a speech specifically about excessive amounts of masturbation, really liked to stroke itself off. Ugh. Waste of time. (The show, I mean, not mas—never mind. You…I’m sure you knew what I meant.)

Still…it’s been pretty “October” out, lately. A bad show can’t take that away from us. Probably. 

Also, I’ve recently discovered medieval lofi music, and I kinda love it.

I’ve been doing my fall-weather Phoebe Bridgers listening, of course, but it’s a nice counterpoint. Chill beats and lute balance psychosexual vulnerability surprisingly well. 

Hope all’s well with you, seonbae. Balanced or not. 

More soon.

—Daryl