Welcome to Six Damn Fine Degrees. These instalments will be inspired by the idea of six degrees of separation in the loosest sense. The only rule: it connects – in some way – to the previous instalment. So come join us on our weekly foray into interconnectedness!
Have you ever thought about what vengeance means to you? Who would you revenge yourself on? The coworker who stole your promotion, the jerk who cut you off in traffic, the kid who made your life hell in middle school? Someone closer to you? And what would it look like, to actually, really, finally get your own back?
I thought about this a lot when I was a child. My conclusion was that I needed the other person to feel mortified about wronging me. Violence was both too much and not enough – because cruelty would make the other person feel wronged rather than simply wrong. (I approached the topic with the same thoroughness with which I worked out my demands for the wish fairy.)
I must not be the only one to dwell on vengeance, as evidenced by the sheer number and variety of revenge stories. Broadly speaking, they fall into two categories: the Macchiavellian ones, in which the protagonist engages in elaborate machinations to bring down his enemies socially (and sometimes mortally) and ends up the Boss of Everything. Exhibit A: The original House of Cards (1990) with a deliciously Shakespearean Ian Richardson. The second type is what TV Tropes calls the Roaring Rampage. These rarely end well, nor are they expected to. The protagonist goes out in a blaze of glory or gets arrested. His revenge is intended to be the end of his story, not the beginning of a new one. Exhibit B: Rambo: First Blood (1982).
I long avoided the latter – they seem a magnet for “frustrated, emotionally inarticulate men, excusing their shocking misogynistic behaviour”, as Alan put it in an entirely different context in our most recent Sixth Degree post.
What you rarely see is a meditation on what revenge actually means. What does the protagonist want from it? Is the current course fulfilling her needs or does it require a tweak? Is it just about making the other person suffer or is there more to it?
It’s generally rare in Western media to see someone sincerely making their life happier through vengeance – if they do, it’s meant cynically or even humorously. I suppose the concept of “an eye for an eye” is antithetical to the concept of “turn the other cheek” that plays a huge part in the Western mindset. The casting of revenge as something positive for the soul, as something you perhaps need in order to be able to move on, becomes transgressive.
The Korean drama series Marry My Husband (Amazon Prime) does just that. Kang Ji Won has squandered her life: her husband Park Min Hwan is a horrible layabout, her boss treats her badly, she is dying of cancer, and then she catches her husband cheating on her with her best and only friend Jeong Su Min. They end up killing Ji Won in the ensuing altercation, saying “Why don’t you die already?” So when Ji Won wakes up ten years earlier in 2013, screaming hysterically, she gets a second chance at life. Within limits. As she soon realises, fate still exists; thus, everything that has to happen still happens. But it doesn’t have to happen to her. She doesn’t have to scald her hand ‘again’ with hot coffee, as long as there is another person who bumps into the coffee machine instead of her. So she hatches out the plan to set up her husband with somebody else and foist off all her bad fate on them. And who better to “take out the trash” than her so-called best friend?
“Time traveling to change your life” is a trope in Korean series, particularly for female protagonists. Korea also has a long tradition of revenge movies, one that I noped out of the minute I saw the trailer to Oldboy in 2003. So this is in some ways a traditional drama. But it is also a very thoughtful one.
Because the first thing Ji Won does in 2013 is both simple and very hard: she prevents people from leeching off her. She does so subtly, using what she knows of her enemies’ characters to manipulate them. But she takes the credit she earned, buys the stuff she likes, hangs out with the people she enjoys and is unavailable for those she doesn’t. She learns Judo and applies the principles, invests in stocks without telling anyone. Without permission or apology, she turns into the successful person she wants to be. This is intolerable for the people who call themselves her friends. They turn to more and more aggressive means to take her new successes from her, to keep her small. And somehow the things they do, that previously always worked, now misfire: because Ji Won is, literally, no longer taking it.
As the series progresses, Su Min and Min Hwan don’t understand how their lives are tanking while her star is on the rise. They refuse to accept it – and because of that, things get ugly.
“I just realised how you came to be like this,” Ji Won tells her ex-bestie in a pivotal confrontation. “You brought it upon yourself. And what’s more, it’s not over yet. An even more hellish world is coming for you. I’ll see to it myself. Get ready. It’ll be like nothing you’ve ever experienced. I’ll make sure I pass on my fate to you.”
But passing on your fate is not as easy as it seems. And it is what Ji Won needs to do, to win her happy ever after with the (new!) man she loves and the career she excels in.
It’s interesting that the original crime has to do with taking – and so does the revenge. Su Min has stolen everything from Ji Won, both in her job and her private life. She has stolen her original fate, to stay within the terms of the drama, and left her with a horrible ending. Ji Won’s revenge is to make her take the latter on herself.
Is that what revenge is?
Don’t get me wrong, this drama is a soap opera. It has murdering mothers, sociopathic ex-fiancées, high school bullies and super rich chaebol love interests, and those are just some of the side characters. If you, like my husband, prefer the catharsis of watching John Rambo blow up a gas station, this may not be for you. But if you like your make-over montages with a shot of vengeful philosophy, you should give it a try.
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