[Crazy Boy] Depiction of modern women

While the action scenes, heavily influenced by the fighting style of Jackie Chan, were interesting to view in the film, Crazy Boy, what attracted me the most was the way women in modern days were treated and represented by men. Released in 1985, Dolai, talks about this so-called crazy boy who works as a manager for the singing girlgroup called Thriller. At first, this main character is depicted as a quiet week boy since most of the members of the group treat him with very little respect, ordering him to carry things for them. But soon later, it seems obvious that the girls need Dolai’s protection since they constantly get into troubles. He not only protects his girlgroup, but he also risks his life for anyone who’s in danger. He fights against injustice no matter how dangerous it is. Although the film seems to focus on making him a superhero, what it actually draws our attention to are the dangerous situations that the girls are continuously put in.  The girls are the representative of Korean modern women in the sense that they don’t fit themselves in with the traditional society, but rather they are determined to achieve their goals and dreams of being big stars. Thus, it is shown in the film that back in the period, society gave more freedom and rights to those women who had always been discriminated. However, as the film emphasizes, women were still being objectified and exposed to danger threatened by men and authorities. In the film, there appear thugs at a bust stop, pickpockets, perverts, burgalars, the drug runners, rapists and the men who want to enslave the girls as prostitutes. The crimes they’ve made or were about to make were so upsetting that they reminded me of the suicide of actress Jang Ja-yeon. In the movie, the owner of the club proposes that if one of the members of Thriller sleeps with him, then then club will help promote the band and make them stars. What happened to Jang was pretty much the same except for the fact that her manager did not beat up the owner to protect her. Even though I knew those men from the film were just fictional characters, I felt disturbed because I was very aware of their existence in our real life now.