Dear mr president

After a whole semester’s movie watching I feel really related, if not attracted to the actor Song Kang-ho. It is not to say, of course, that the characters he played really speak to me as a person, but more like they are genuinely the image I prefer, or always have for Korean men. Indeed, the other K pop stars are pretty, and they might be truly the epitome of Korean masculinity, but Song Kang-ho is real – personal opinion: He represents the majority of Korean (middle aged) men who couldn’t care less of international politics or body-building. Hard to speak of high moral principle, very domestically centralized, paternalistic in nature yet flexible when pressured, humorous, and generally speaking – not that good looking.

YMCA baseball team, the good the bad the weird, the host and the president’s barber – he is always this marginalized class pressured to perform his best and consequently and accidently save someone – without conscious higher mission in mind. Unlike, say, the Hollywood heroes.

Song Kang-ho and his characters resemble more of Mr Bean than Arnold Schwarzenegger, but without the former’s rigidness. Song has a spirit of mob – and an easily scattered one.

I guess in the end I would venture that very Korean man has a mob mentality, somewhere, somehow – probably too much speculation, I know.

So if Han-mo was going to write a letter to the president (which I doubt), unlike Pink’s provocative style, he probably would say: Dear Mr President, please just leave my family alone. We could move out of town if we are in your way – it was a pleasure to cut your hair. We will always carry a picture of you.

I was not too sure if this week’s reading was for this movie or, more like, paprika? Anyway, was totally carried away and disturbed by Freud's description of sexualized parent-children relationship and I wouldn't term it for this family for sure.