THIS REVIEW appeared in the Summer 2011 issue of Korean Quarterly. It is as I originally wrote it, not the edited version that went into the paper. PLEASE DO NOT REPOST THIS REVIEW WITHOUT MY EXPRESS PERMISSION. Thanks. -Bo
Celebrity Sweetheart /
Star ae Yeon-ina/k/a
Star's Lover /
Oh! My GoddessSBS 2008-09 – 20 episodes
Director – Boo Sung-chul
Screenwriter – Oh Soo-yun
This 2008 offering from SBS is known by a number of titles,
Celebrity Sweetheart being the most appealing. It stars Choi Ji-woo as blockbuster movie star Lee Mari, and Yoo Ji-tae as part-time college lecturer and aspiring novelist Kim Chulsoo.
The story opens with an allegory about the difficulties of finding love in the modern world, then turns to little Chulsoo, whose mother abandons him. (Father having left some years before.) As her young son runs crying after her, carrying his sleeping infant sister on his back, she draws a line in the dirt and forbids him to cross it. This idea of drawing literal and figurative lines, to keep others at bay, follows Chulsoo through his life.
Heroine Mari is actually called "Maria" (her maternal family is Catholic). Around the time Chulsoo's father disappears, Maria loses both parents to a freak storm at sea. She goes to live with her grandmother, who lives and works in a Catholic school. Grandma (forbiddingly played by Ban Hyo-jung) is a strict woman who never hugs or comforts the little girl. The child is bullied, called names and generally made a community target, but Grandma apparently believes whatever doesn't kill you makes you stronger. A particularly telling early scene has a boy boldly stealing food from pitiful, tiny Maria's plate as Grandma looks on, doing nothing. Eventually Maria runs away to work in a hair salon. She is "discovered," makes her first movie (using the name “Mari”) and suddenly becomes the focus of all the adoration missing in her lonely childhood.
This worship is remarkable for its fervor. She can't go anywhere without being swarmed by a chattering crowd, snapping photos. Her fans copy her hairstyles, minutely study her clothing choices, avidly follow her “personal” life (a persona carefully crafted by her manager) and buy anything and everything associated with their idol. Mari is everywhere. She's on talk shows, in movies, dramas and, of course, commercials. Her image appears on walls, on the sides of buses, in convenience stores, in hole-in-the-wall restaurants, even on bags for the local hamburger chain. “Don't say no to Mari! Drink this!” bleats one ad, seemingly from every street corner.
The thing about the adoration heaped onto Mari is, she actually deserves it. She is kind and greatly generous, especially to those who work for and with her. Not only is she idolized by strangers; people who personally know Mari love her. Even those who want to use her for their own benefit fall for her. She does have a reputation (again, carefully crafted) among her fans for making men fall for her and, then, dumping them as things become serious.
Three men besides Chulwoo vie for Mari's attention. Her first love, a photographer (Phillip Choi), disappeared early in her acting career but is never far from her thoughts. Second is a boy she knew in childhood, now a media executive (Lee Ki-woo). Both these young men are named Woojin, which turns out to be important. The third aspiring lover is "Olympic champion and
chaebol (family monopolistic conglomerate) heir" Hayoung (Ki Tae-young). Hayoung's role in this mix is that of a god from the machine, a catalyst making things happen that look like they won't. (Amusingly, Hayoung's Olympic sport is skeet shooting.)
Much like the earlier
Winter Sonata (KBS 2002; reviewed KQ Summer 2006), which also starred Choi Ji-woo as Yujin,
Sweetheart reads like a very long, episodic movie. The difference in this later role is that Mari, unlike Yujin, is strong. She doesn't sink under the waves when things get too rough. She fights for herself. She may lose her way at times but always finds it again. One of Ms Choi’s more attractive features as an actress is a perception of wavering fragility. (This might also be a disadvantage; in this production, she sometimes seems to be teetering on the outskirts of faded beauty.) This fragility is put to good work for her portrayal of Mari, who fools people into thinking they can control her.
Mari's manager, Mr. Seo (Sung Ji-roo) is a jerk. There's no other way to say it. One can’t help wondering after awhile why no one ever slaps, kicks or punches him. But he did discover Mari, and he never misses a trick in the publicity department. He runs a highly successful management agency and has absolute sway over his stable of celebrities' professional, and most of their personal, decisions. (By the way, this is not unusual among actual—especially young—Korean actors.) The emphasis is on the amount of money that can be made, not the actor's satisfaction. Mr. Seo decides Mari hasn't been winning enough awards because the industry doesn't respect her. Of course, he doesn't give a damn about respect; to him it's simply a means towards the end of making more money. If they were Americans in this situation, he might try to get her into an indie feature directed by and starring a famous, aging male actor. If they were British, he might try to place her in a prestigious stage revival of “She Stoops to Conquer” or “Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf.” But this is Korea, and so he decides to publish a series of books under Mari’s name (initially without her knowledge). He sees an article written by Chulsoo. He asks the young man to ghostwrite a travelogue on Mari's behalf about the Asuka region of Japan, a key historical region with links to Korea. Chulsoo, desperate for money, takes the job and flies to Japan after only a fleeting encounter with Mari, where something about her moves his sympathy.
Unfortunately for Mr. Seo, things go badly, and he is revealed to be ruthless and unscrupulous. This seemingly invincible man is the dragon of our fairytale. In standoff after standoff he comes out ahead, until it seems only a tremendous fool would try to best him. At the risk of giving too much away, let us remember that this is a romance, and romances always end well. Until this happens, Mr. Seo provides a formidable barrier to love and fulfillment.
Mr. Seo's problems would seem to signal the fall of Mari's final barrier to self direction, but this does not turn out to be the case. The person who has to free Mari, is Mari. The court of public opinion has its tentacles too deep into her life, and she must struggle for a long time to bring her story to a satisfactory conclusion. She has to overcome her own beliefs and the beliefs of others—her friends, employers and public—about her limitations. She has to change people's minds, and she has to save her own and Chulsoo's careers. But we're getting ahead of ourselves.
At the beginning, when Chulsoo accidentally finds Mari (their second meeting) in Japan, sparks fly. The two must fight. Their outlooks are miles apart; even their names are evidence of their differing personalities. The family name Kim is the most common in Korea, engendering an expression for having to perform a nearly impossible task: That's like looking for a Mr. Kim in Seoul.* And “Chulsoo” is a rather bucolic moniker. So our hero's name would be amusingly boring to a Korean, analogous to John Doe. “Mari,” being based on the Western name Maria, is Romantic in a literal sense. The ruling family of Korea was named Lee so, although it's also a common surname, it carries some cachet. When Lee Mari meets Kim Chulsoo, it's a portent of an odd combination, and the script itself calls attention to this name business. Much of the charm of the story lies in the differences in their personalities. Chulsoo opens up worlds formerly closed to Mari, the deeply layered secrets of books. Mari flits around Chulsoo, making his head spin and dragging him out of the dreary rules wherein he is caged. They light up their own sky.
Sweetheart takes a long look at the effect of the celebrity industry on its main product--actors. The fact that Mari's face is so well recognized is a two-edged sword when she wants to hide. For when Mari's public turns on her, they do so with a vengeance. This has much to do with the whole concept of pretending to write something you did not.
The tempest arises because Chulsoo is bookish and Mari decidedly isn't. Although she has an extraordinary ability to memorize instantly, she does not read anything more difficult than fashion magazines. All her knowledge of the classics comes from movies. Chulsoo, however, is fond of literary allusion. This is a problem, for Mari cannot fake knowledge when interviewed about “her” best-selling book. Discovery appears inevitable, but they are just about to pull off the impossible when disaster strikes. Mari’s public turns on her overnight. She falls from grace.
Americans are used to their celebs hiring ghostwriters. Even those who don't, are generally supposed to have done so. The wide availability of "as told to" or "with so-and-so" autobiographies is testament to the fact that such a situation is not only expected, it can be immensely profitable. But in the world of
Sweetheart, not only is the false author a vile liar; the ghostwriter is considered a villain of the darkest dye. Such a person, we learn, is in the interesting position of "not deserving to write novels"--the implication being the ghostwriter doesn't deserve to live. Only one character, Chulsoo's mentor (Yoon Joo-sang), calls this idea into question. Even though westerners may think of ghostwriters as hacks, it isn't usually believed the secret authors have no right to an oeuvre of their own. But
Sweetheart says it is different in Korea, and so Chulsoo also holds this low opinion of himself.
The bottom-feeders of the cult of celebrity are, of course, celebrity reporters, busily digging up dirt and spreading rumors about their famous targets. One of these reporters is Chulwoo's best friend, Byungjoon (Jung Woon-taek), a major contributor to Chulwoo's troubles. Geeky, clumsy, credulous and too impressed with himself, Byungjoon is first used by his own boss (Lee Seung-hyung) and then by Mari's boss Mr. Seo, to their own ends. But Byungjoon twice rises in brief, heroic splendor, surprising even himself.
The implication that Mari may be “not quite nice" as the Brits say--she seems to have had intimate relationships, as any normal woman of her age--comes around to bite her in her times of trouble. Because she is honest, she is considered brash. Because she cannot live without being loved, she is considered weak. She is, in fact, a more successful, far less selfish version of Chulsoo's errant mother (Kim Ji-sook), who eventually returns to the bosom of her mainly suspicious family. Even mother seems oblivious to the parallel.
A word about Yoo Ji-tae, who plays Chulsoo. This was his first drama in nearly ten years, which sounds odd until one finds out he was busily acting in movies that whole time, including directing a script he wrote (
Out of My Intention, 2007). One of the reasons the role of Chulsoo does not descend into turgid self-righteousness is Mr. Yoo's sensitivity to Chulsoo's personal position in the dichotomy of love and longing versus fear of rejection. Also, this actor is just funny, expressive and possessed of subtle timing. He and Ms Choi make a good comic, romantic team.
The thankless role of Chulsoo’s long-suffering first love is piquantly inhabited by Cha Ye-ryun. Shin Min-hee plays Chulsoo's sweet young sister, and his three adoptive aunts (Kim Ji-young, Lee Jong-nam and Kim Ye-ryung) lighten up the proceedings considerably.
At Mr. Seo's agency, his sister/fellow agent is gently portrayed by the lovely Shim Eun-jin. Lee Joon-hyuk appears as Mari's bodyguard and ardent admirer. Finally, the fantastic, surprisingly luminous Yang Hee-kyung plays Mari's best friend, personal stylist and the person who first gave a runaway orphan a chance to find her own way, beautician Seungyeon. Seungyeon gets this reviewer's vote as the character most deserving of more storyline.
As Shakespeare reminds us, “The course of true love never did run smooth.”
Celebrity Sweetheart is about what it takes to find and keep love. But it's also about people eventually getting what's coming to them, for good or ill. It's about finding that part of yourself that you never knew existed--the part that, in the end, is strong enough to save a hopeless situation. And of course, about what it means to be a celebrity in Korea--or anywhere else.
*See Looking for a Mr. Kim in Seoul (a Guide to Korean Expressions), S. Choe and C. Torchia (Infini Press NYC 2007) p.111PS to this board - the Kim Jisook who plays Chulsoo's mom is this woman, not that babyfaced pop singer. lol.