Masculine Melodrama- Bromance?

                                                       Masculine Melodrama- Bromance?               

Watching this film, I couldn’t help but notice an imbalance between the male and female characters and their assigned roles. Masculinity is a theme that completely dominated throughout the entirety of the film. I could not recall after the viewing of any involvement or participation of a female character aside from Jin-Sook. The film only chose to show the fathers of the boys while the mothers were either working abroad, passed away or simply neglected to mention. As for Jin-Sook and the Rainbow band, the imbalance was even more obvious. The film portrayed the scene where the band was performing live. The camera angle shooting from far back in the audience showed tens and hundreds of male students surrounding and “preying” at the girls. It felt like the girls were demoted and even objectified into a “prize” for the male students. The idea was further revealed through the conversation between the four boys as they named which “one” they wanted. Alternatively, when Sang-Taek visited Joon-Suk after going separate ways in middle schools, Joon-Suk gave away Kin-Sook without any hesitation to Sang-Taek as a goodwill gesture. Furthermore, few years later when Sang-Taek visited Joon-Suk from Seoul, Joon-Suk’s opinions and comments on Jin-Sook were extremely hostile, even though she was the only person left taking care of him. Jin-Sook was merely a sex tool for him. These scenes really struck me as odd. Why was Jin-Sook portrayed in such a humiliating and dehumanized fashion? Could it be that by leaving out and dehumanizing the roles of female characters and stripping them of identities a way to shift the emphasis on the relationships between the male characters?

And why the timing of each time Jin-Sook was shown on the screen coincided with Joon-Suk friends’ presence and each time her status with Joon-Suk was immediately overwhelmed with the friendship between the male characters? This reminded me of the term “bromance” previously discussed in class. To me, Joon-Suk and Sang-Taek definitely had a bromance relationship. Perhaps it is because they see the things they do not have in each other and thus admire one another? Sang-Taek admires the masculinity in Joon-Suk while Joon-Suk envies the intelligence and normal life Sang-Taek has.