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Post by mzkiss25 on Jul 30, 2008 0:14:36 GMT -5
At first I couldn't wait to watch this show either until in the first ep the rich wife made a bad comment to the doctors mother she said, I hope your daughter doesn't come back tan like the ones that she helps. its was something like that because the daughter was a doctor in Africa. I am an African American and I love to watch Korean dramas. I know this is a free country and you can say what you want but many different viewers watch this show. I just don't know how to take that.
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Post by TheBo on Jul 30, 2008 13:00:02 GMT -5
I agree, mzkiss, that is a disconcerting remark and I've heard similar ones on other Korean shows (but not very many). It's not an excuse, but I think until recently the only experience most Koreans had with black people was with American servicemen, and that seems to be an uneasy relationship (with any American serviceman), so maybe it spills over. Also, it sounds (from your description) like the rich wife was given that line specifically to show that she was a negative or prejudiced person, so maybe the writer wrote it on purpose, fully knowing what a jerk she sounded like. On the other shows where I heard such remarks, they were introduced for the purpose of discussing how wrong it was to think that way, so maybe the answer is, it's a good thing the subject is addressed. There's a guy who lives in Korea--I don't actually know his name, now that I think about it--but he is African-American and has a podcast/blogsite. Calls himself "the Seoul Metropolitician"--here's a link: metropolitician.blogs.com/scribblings_of_the_metrop/2008/01/feetmanseoul-in.htmlHe is really a social critic. I don't think he "hates" Korea, or he wouldn't live there, but some people find him unduly negative. I have found some of his commentary on this subject very illuminating, you might want to check him out. He also discusses such things as women smoking in Korea, how to take a bus/taxi in Seoul, the opening of the new Krispy Kreme...I like him. Bo
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Post by TheBo on Jul 30, 2008 13:01:30 GMT -5
Oh, PS, it's not a spoiler if it's in the first episode. LOL. If we saw it in Chicago already, you can post remarks freely without spoiler warnings. However, real spoilers belong in the spoiler thread.
Bo
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Post by mikey on Jul 31, 2008 7:28:51 GMT -5
I think Bo is pretty much on the ball (and that dark-skin comment made me wince, too) but I’d also add that in my understanding of the Japanese culture (which, I think, probably also extends at least to some extent to Korea) dark skin has been considered undesirable for thousands of years. And the Japanese had this mentality a long time before they ever saw their first African.
The reason? If someone had dark skin, it meant that they were likely a peasant who had to work all day in the fields. But if they had light skin, then they obviously had the luxury of spending all day indoors, so they were probably from a wealthy, aristocratic family.
It’s a prejudice, to be sure (and there’s also almost certainly a racial angle to it today) but I think this Asian mentality originated much more from social class attitudes than it did from racism.
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Post by Lucy on Jul 31, 2008 12:22:18 GMT -5
I changed the title of this thread so that people would not use it as a spoiler thread in future. That's what the real spoiler thread is for.
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Post by Lucy on Jul 31, 2008 12:24:28 GMT -5
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Post by mzkiss25 on Jul 31, 2008 20:11:57 GMT -5
Thank you Lucy for changing the thread.
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Post by soapygrams on Aug 1, 2008 8:41:37 GMT -5
I heard it too and I thought that she was being a snooty beech and purposely said it to upset the mother. I thought she said it t because she was jealous of the daughter being a doctor and volunteering and none of her own children had done such a thing. I agree with Lucy - we light-skin people brush off such remarks because we have never experienced that type of prejudice; that's why we don't pay much attention to it. Unfortunately, there does exist some prejudice created over the years by the American armed forces, from the war and later the forces stationed there. The origin of such skin color prejudice originating from ancient times in Japan and most other ancient civilized countries by the lighter skinned people who did not labor outside getting "tan" indeed seemed to be on the basis of class, since these people were all the same race. The oddest thing to me is how a nation such as ours still has a racist attitude regarding dark skinned people when so many TANNING SALONS are doing a booming business and the self-tanning products are flying off the shelves so that white/light skinned people can get dark skin. What a country we are!
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Post by brooklyn on Aug 1, 2008 17:01:34 GMT -5
I immediately hated the character after she uttered that line, even though my boyfriend didn't seem to mind and he's dark lol. I also notice that in many of the dramas I've seen so far, they refer to their skin colour as white... am I missing something here? I'm chinese and Korean and I'm no where near white, more like beige or something lol o.o
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