A Damn Fine Cup of Culture

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!

Ah, love.

Son Oh Gong, the Monkey King, the Great Sage Equal to Heaven, is in love. Not willingly, mind you. He was tricked by a mortal woman into wearing the Geumganggo. This bracelet makes him infatuated with her and desperate to protect her by any means. He’s infuriated. He’s disgusted. After all, he was originally planning to eat her (it’s a long story)! But he is undeniably in love.

Hwayugi, also known as A Korean Odyssey, is a 2017 Korean adaptation of the 16^th century Chinese classic Journey to the West. In the original novel, Sun Wukong, the Monkey King, is tasked by the Buddha as a penance to accompany and protect the monk Tang Sanzang. The latter is on a perilous journey to India to collect Buddhist scriptures. They are joined by others such as Zhu Bajie (Pig or Pigsy).

Monkey is the smartest, the most powerful, but also the most violent of all of Sanzang’s companions. He is distilled anarchy. The archetype of the subversive trickster, present not only in every decent pantheon but also in plenty of modern storytelling (see, for instance, the chaos that is Looney Tunes). To give Sanzang some measure of control, the gods place a circlet of gold around Sun Wukong’s head: if the Monkey misbehaves, the circlet tightens and gives him an unbearable headache.

The Hong Sisters, known for writing such K-Drama crowd pleasers as My Girlfriend is a Gumiho and Hotel del Luna, have taken their liberties with the source material. They’ve moved it to modern times, changing it into a cross between an extroverted supernatural love story and Ghostbusters.

Son Oh Gong’s love interest is Jin Seon Mi. Once an unloved little girl who sees frightening spirits, she is now a roaring success in real estate. She frees properties of ghosts who haunt them and makes a ton of money with it. She’s also undeniably weird, brandishes a yellow polka dot umbrella at all times, quarrels with entities nobody can see, and trusts nobody she can see.

Now she has Son Oh Gong at her side to protect her against the most powerful forces. Soon, they are up against a wide array of apparitions: a mermaid that haunts a library. A spirit who cuts the hair of unhappy lovers. A tiny Japanese girl from the 1930s who kills you when you find out who she is.

She didn’t mean to make the Monkey King fall in love with her. She just wanted to stop him from threatening her and was tricked by others. But now she’s afraid of what will happen if she unleashes the Monkey. Because, he tells her very pleasantly, she must know that as soon as she opens the Geumganggo, he will kill her. But until then, he will shower her with love and she must make sure to enjoy it while she can.

He yearns for her and buys her ice cream without asking whether she likes it. It never occurs to him that that matters. His love is all about him and not one bit about her.

The choice to make Son Oh Gong’s leash the shackles of love rather than a crown of headaches is a clever one. Son Oh Gong is too smart to let physical pain distract him from finding nasty ways to revenge himself on his human handler. His heart needs to be in it.

Lee Seung Gi plays the Monkey with a terrible haircut and a feral glint in his eyes, scintillating with playful curiosity, nasty wit, and a sense of controlled violence. A being both powerful and powerless. He is utterly believable as a person learning for the first time what love means. After his initial fury at the enemies who tricked him, he leans into it. After all, he will live forever and can therefore afford to explore the now:  he can go with the flow until the human’s meagre life span ends and the balance of power is in his favour again.

Oh Yon Seo plays Seon Mi as a woman who has learnt far too early that no one will have her back: she must protect her own life at all costs. She has the oddness of someone who has given up on seeming normal and has decided that this is just who she is. Even more so than Son Oh Gong, she is a newcomer to love. He makes her feel that, for the first time, someone is in her corner. It’s addictive. But she’s no fool: when she senses herself falling for the Monkey, she knows that her life is short and precious and that she must build a wall around her heart. As Son Oh Gong begins to change, will she change as well?

Apart from the central conflict and the ghostbusting shenanigans, the series is carried by an excellent and funny ensemble cast. Son Oh Gong’s arch nemesis and unfortunate roommate is Woo Ma Wang, the Bull. In this iteration, Ma Wang is, of all things, a scene-hogging talent show judge (and something of a control freak). He sits on stage picking future Idols and soaking in the energy of the adoring mortals. Then, there is his loyal assistant Dog, a woman with a simple solution to every problem: “Shall I eat him?” Pigsy himself is an Idol, followed wherever he goes by a gaggle of fan girls. Their love towards Pigsy, Son Oh Gong soon realises, is as self-centred as his own infatuation.

Hwayugi also has the most adorable zombie girl I have ever seen – a side quest follows her attempts to find out who she was and why she was murdered, while eyeballs pop out of her head. And finally, a shout out to the squarest cast member: Seon Mi’s assistant Han Joo, who has never in all his years working for her clocked that his CEO can, in fact, talk to ghosts. Kim Sung Oh plays him with such shoulder-shrugging cluelessness that his sheer normalcy becomes the most interesting thing in the room.

But love, yes. Is love less true because it is coerced? It is, after all, a feeling. If it feels real, how can it not be real? How can it not change into something real? But love is not just a feeling. When does love become more than self-centred infatuation, when does it become something you do for the other person? When does love grow up?

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