Schadenfreude ❌️ The Pride Monster ❌️ & The Helicopter Crash °irony laden excellence°
In the end, it always comes back to the parents. In the end, S🏰 is a masterpiece.
Oh, these people are vile. “They say they love me, but they should be honest and say they need something to brag about,” says one kid. What's a rich, narcissistic, vapid, entitled mom to do?
S🏰 is an upscale gated community. There's a new family moving in. They're decent folk. The rest of the families are hyper-competitive moms next to (though successful professionally), worthless men as fathers. Then there's others around the edges who prop up the horrible, oppressive charade w/ everything they have.
Yeom Jung Ah plays Han “Seo” Jin / Kwak Mi Hyang. She's a woman who ruthlessly got what she wanted when she married. Her daughter, Yiseo, excels. She MUST be accepted at the best medical school. We eventually meet Seo's mother i/l and realize that she, herself, is a big disappointment. She's using her daughter to get her mother i/l's approval. It's very sad. The actress is phenomenal, as evidenced by my escalating stress over the fact that I couldn't strangle her. She would run over Buddha to get her daughter accepted. Nothing can turn her. Not if the world were to burn down would she change course. Pride makes people that delusional.
‘What do I do now? What do I do if the word gets out?’ A woman's less than what's-considered-respectable past (her father sold beef offal😱) is in danger of being exposed. Smoke & mirrors are everything to these people. It's all vanity. See how much effort they put into being phony to impress people that they don't even like! (Normies are insane). Meanwhile, the woman who knew her when they were growing up together is thinking: “I've only heard about collective selfishness. Now that I've experienced it, I realize that it's a nightmare.”
S🏰 is a 2018 release that is rated 88 on AWiki. It is 1 season consisting of 20 75-minute episodes. It's about the human tragedy of pride. Pride is a liar, pride is the opposite of love, and pride destroys. In ep15, everything ratchets up.
The themes are parenting, motivating kids to be their best, what that means, but most of all, pride. S🏰 features extreme competition, the same thing that motivated the author of Squid Game-8.4.“I've never let loose & had fun. I've never played 1 game in my entire life. We've never gone on 1 vacation,” says 1 top student. Everything has been about 1 goal.“ “Those women use their kids to fulfill their greed. They can act all high and noble, but to me, they're nothing,” an outsider opines. This is why SK has the 4th (now the 3rd?) highest suicide rate in the world. “Competition to get into college ends up killing so many kids every year. But our society isn't changing at all.” This is a country where its residents are under so much pressure it literally is too much., It makes one wonder why people don't rise up & demand change. I guess that takes too much energy.
The new neighbor (Lee Tae Ran portrays Lee Soo Im) doesn't fit in at all. She's genuine. She doesn't put pressure on her son b/c he's self-motivated. She wants him to be /happy/. The 1st thing she does is disrupt Book Club, quite inadvertently. She couldn't be more strange if she was a reptilian alien w/ a forked tail. Her husband, a surgeon, was plucked out of obscurity to (hopefully) run the dept. All the other denizens of S🏰 have been reduced to 2 emotions: gloating smugness & rageful jealousy.
Yoon Se Ah plays Noh Seung Hye. I thought she was really good in My Sassy Girl-8.5, an underrated show, imho. This performance only cemented my opinion. She's fantastic. Since 2005. most of her features round up to 8 with nothing under 6.9.. She's been fitting in at S🏰 & acquiescing to her husband, who excessively preens to compensate for his innate feelings of inadequacy combined w/ his yeasty ego. Personally, I think this dame can act her butt off. Her husband, Cha Min Hyeok, is a Law professor. He's smart, but not as smart as he fashions himself. That's the trap so many intelligent people fall into - believing they know everything. He runs Book Club, which is often just him and the toxic egotist, Kang Yiseo (Kim Hye Yoon) bantering. Her lens is so thick that she interprets everything she reads as an affirmation of her egocentrism. She's the worst type of person, & Cha is an insufferable know-it-all. He has no insight at all but gives us a nice demonstration of philosophical gymnastics. ‘What is being selfish?’ Cha queries. “It's doing something that will help you reach your objectives,” answers egotist, Yiseo. Prof. Cha concurs, asserting that being completely selfish is how you become selfless. (!?) All this is complete tosh, of course. It's what narcissists say to justify how they are. Selfishness is being self-focused to the neglect of others & what they want, & it usually involves a lack of empathy. It's being an @$$hole. It's also existing in lies.
Oh Na Ra has quietly been in some of the best stuff ever. She usually plays a sweetheart, but here she begins as the most shallow and toxic sort. She's has room for growth and she will grow during S🏰. Kim Seo Hyung plays Kim “Joo” Young, an austere academic coach. She's a supreme ice queen. She's wonderful in Mine-8. Stern, and rigid, she's all-business. In ep10 she has a fit of laughter and it's actually a bit chilling. Her smile is terrifying, oily and creepy. She should do horror.
Song Geon Hee is one of the most miserable kids, Park Young Jae. Park You Na portrays Cha Seri, an older sibling, back from the States on break from Harvard. Cho Byeong Kyu of The Uncanny Counter plays Cha Ki Jun, one of the Cha twins. (About TUC, S1 is 8.4 and it's fabulous. S2 is insultingly awful. It's one of the worst cases of second season syndrome I've ever seen).
Kim Bo Ra is Kim Hye Na, a classmate who Woo has his eye on. She's a cutie. She was also in My Only Love Song-8.7, a hilarious show that I adore. Director Jo Hyun-Tak gave us The Atypical Family & Snowdrop, while writer, Yoo Hyun-Mi penned Snowdrop & The Bridal Mask. I'll watch anything of theirs. Every shot, the decorating, the lighting, the costume ~ everything ~ is carefully orchestrated in S🏰. The use of music is also skillful. Endless Night is particularly sad. They found a balance between decorating the houses with upscale decor and making them look institutional and impersonal. Everyone seems to have partition walls in their house. Does it signify cages, division, and the illusion of privacy? These partitions are beautiful but we can see right through them.
The Cha household is excessively dark and there's prison bar imagery everywhere. Hye & Min are in a tense argument over the design of the Study Room and have a showdown. He has already cut up her credit cards. He sits for dinner. It's instant ramen. The dining area is underlit shades of industrial grey & almost every element is a straight vertical or horizontal. We're in a very rigid household. His drab jacket is the color of excrement. She's spectacular in a form-fitting scarlet lace dress. The revolutionary? They work out a deal. The tea kettle 🔊💨 in the background. “Enjoy your dinner.” Magnificent.
Many touches make for superb filmcraft.There's a touching moment in ep6 when a mom cuddles her son and admits that she's not sure if all the pressure she's been putting on him is the right thing. “There's no answer,” she (too casually) surmises. The camera pans out & we finally see what the blue & white figurine really is. There's overly bright shots that are not flattering to the skin. I can't tell if that's deliberate or not, but I suspect it is to show that under the bright lights we are all flawed. None of them are as perfect or special as they believe. Despite the heavy subject matter, they even manage quite a bit of humor..
The pyramid. Life is a pyramid for Prof. Cha. Only 1 reaches the top. He's done okay, but he wants his kids to surpass him. Pyramids can be a scheme. Education has become a pyramid scheme. Large student loans enslave graduates. Colleges believe they have a monopoly and they have resorted to chain restaurant mentalities. They are overpriced, they serve up junk food, and they also are quite the propaganda machines. Education is vitally important, but that isn't what's going on at most colleges. They are doing everything but teaching useful skills and critical thinking. They are bankrupting us at the same time. If your child is interested in tinkering with h/h hands, don't discourage it out of hand. Plumbers, electricians, and other handy people are the new millionaires. There will always be a need for them.
“Do you know why God gave us kids? You should learn that there's something you can't always control.” Control. It's the biggest illusion of them all. One family reached the point where someone had to give in or someone had to die. “I don't want to be your son anymore… I don't want to live in hell anymore.” “We've wasted our lives,” yells dad. “Love one another. As I have loved you. John 13:34,” reads the plaque on the wall. It's interesting that the person who committs suicide receives a Christian funeral. We're to infer that s/he didn't even believe s/he was going to get another chance. People who ascribe to reincarnation are often shown as using suicide for a reset. It makes it even more tragic, from one perspective, b/c this person had given up all hope.
“There's no such thing as friends. There is only self & self-achievement.” Prof Cha spent a fortune on a test prep booklet, & his sons shared this info w/ their mates. “You mindless idiot, they're your competitors. It's the same as sharing your bullets w/ your enemies! Didn't I tell you to think of your school as a battlefield? Everyone beside you is the enemy!” By the end he was screaming. “I don't agree w/ your dad,” their mom tells them later. “You did the right thing. Competing w/ others makes you lonely. I believe true success is living a life that's not lonely.”
If one puts too much pressure on the kids they will be driven underground, we'll see. Oh the irony! In ep9 a father is exultant with celebratory pride. The /truth/ will devastate him. But the other S🏰 denizens enjoy their schadenfreude, or a feeling of enjoyment that comes from seeing or hearing about the troubles of other people. “I know people in Washington who will cut off your life support in order to charge their cell phone,” I read once, and find it totally believable. These people embody that coldness. They're absolute ghouls. There's no tragedy that they don't think about turning to their own benefit. And it all comes back on them, ironically.
The moms are held in direct contrast. “You can't stand by and do nothing while your kids are being tormented. You have to protect them.” says the unselfish mother; the one who only wants happiness for her family. “I cannot give up on your life... No matter who yells at me or throws stones at me… I will do anything," says a mother who has been singly obsessed w/ her child's college admission. Her child is melting away in front of her, yet she still believes her own lies about herself, what she wants, and what /really/ motivates her. Meanwhile, her progeny is fast becoming NOT her disciple. For just a moment, her child paused & started to appreciate what really matters while realizing how revolting her family's values are.
Two characters start to channel Reverend Dimmesdale from The Scarlet Letter. Their guilty consciences are eating them alive. “Cut out the rotten parts now. You must do it while you still can.. life is long… Think about 10 or 20 yrs from now. University? … it's no big deal. But the guilt of {spoiler🚫} will haunt her …You reap what you sow.” In the wake of his own family tragedy, rather than schadenfreude, this speaker tries to help his friend avoid mistakes.
“When will you stop obsessing about what other people think of you?” A grown man demands answers of his mother, because this problem is multi-generational, and continues into adulthood. Pride is always hungry. It's never sated. “How can you call yourself human?” When one hears that from 2nd and 3rd parties, one should stop and reflect, croche? Don't dismiss all feedback on autopilot. “I thought I was a rational person, but I found out that I was very biased,” we hear one character reason out. We see the first cracks in their inhumane resolve. Finally.
“After this incident, I realized that being able to eat together w/ my wife & son is enough to make me happy.” Once they drop the pretense they can merely love one another. “That's why I'm going to try my best to be a good dad, & a good husband, & a good son. I don't want to end up regretting anything in the future.” 1-by-1, the parents see how off-course they've gotten. The theme is, ultimately, regret. All the above leads to regret. Pride is radon w/ no color, odor, or taste. We can't see how it poisons us. But it does poison us & makes us blind to all our stuff. It isolates us. Isolation doesn't make a good life.
“I believe true success is living a life that's not lonely.”
In order of ~lite&trite~ to ~heavy&serious~ you may also like:
Racket Boys-8.3,
Love to Hate You 8.9,
Reply 1988-8.6,
It's Okay Not To Be Okay 9,
Love Struck in the City 7.3,
Be Melodramatic-8.7
Familiar Wife-8.5,
Because This Is My First Life-7.7,
Birthcare Center-8.2,
Call It Love-8.4,
The Golden Spoon-8.1,
Revenge of Others-8.6
Itaewon Class-8.9
Law School -8, Why Her?-8,
Misaeng-9.1,
My Liberation Diary-8.9,
Mine-8,
Blood Free-8.5
My Mister 9.5,
I'll See You When the Weather is Fine 9
Anna-8.1,
Something in the Rain-8.6,
Wonderful World-7.8
Awaken-8.7
Oh, these people are vile. “They say they love me, but they should be honest and say they need something to brag about,” says one kid. What's a rich, narcissistic, vapid, entitled mom to do?
S🏰 is an upscale gated community. There's a new family moving in. They're decent folk. The rest of the families are hyper-competitive moms next to (though successful professionally), worthless men as fathers. Then there's others around the edges who prop up the horrible, oppressive charade w/ everything they have.
Yeom Jung Ah plays Han “Seo” Jin / Kwak Mi Hyang. She's a woman who ruthlessly got what she wanted when she married. Her daughter, Yiseo, excels. She MUST be accepted at the best medical school. We eventually meet Seo's mother i/l and realize that she, herself, is a big disappointment. She's using her daughter to get her mother i/l's approval. It's very sad. The actress is phenomenal, as evidenced by my escalating stress over the fact that I couldn't strangle her. She would run over Buddha to get her daughter accepted. Nothing can turn her. Not if the world were to burn down would she change course. Pride makes people that delusional.
‘What do I do now? What do I do if the word gets out?’ A woman's less than what's-considered-respectable past (her father sold beef offal😱) is in danger of being exposed. Smoke & mirrors are everything to these people. It's all vanity. See how much effort they put into being phony to impress people that they don't even like! (Normies are insane). Meanwhile, the woman who knew her when they were growing up together is thinking: “I've only heard about collective selfishness. Now that I've experienced it, I realize that it's a nightmare.”
S🏰 is a 2018 release that is rated 88 on AWiki. It is 1 season consisting of 20 75-minute episodes. It's about the human tragedy of pride. Pride is a liar, pride is the opposite of love, and pride destroys. In ep15, everything ratchets up.
The themes are parenting, motivating kids to be their best, what that means, but most of all, pride. S🏰 features extreme competition, the same thing that motivated the author of Squid Game-8.4.“I've never let loose & had fun. I've never played 1 game in my entire life. We've never gone on 1 vacation,” says 1 top student. Everything has been about 1 goal.“ “Those women use their kids to fulfill their greed. They can act all high and noble, but to me, they're nothing,” an outsider opines. This is why SK has the 4th (now the 3rd?) highest suicide rate in the world. “Competition to get into college ends up killing so many kids every year. But our society isn't changing at all.” This is a country where its residents are under so much pressure it literally is too much., It makes one wonder why people don't rise up & demand change. I guess that takes too much energy.
The new neighbor (Lee Tae Ran portrays Lee Soo Im) doesn't fit in at all. She's genuine. She doesn't put pressure on her son b/c he's self-motivated. She wants him to be /happy/. The 1st thing she does is disrupt Book Club, quite inadvertently. She couldn't be more strange if she was a reptilian alien w/ a forked tail. Her husband, a surgeon, was plucked out of obscurity to (hopefully) run the dept. All the other denizens of S🏰 have been reduced to 2 emotions: gloating smugness & rageful jealousy.
Yoon Se Ah plays Noh Seung Hye. I thought she was really good in My Sassy Girl-8.5, an underrated show, imho. This performance only cemented my opinion. She's fantastic. Since 2005. most of her features round up to 8 with nothing under 6.9.. She's been fitting in at S🏰 & acquiescing to her husband, who excessively preens to compensate for his innate feelings of inadequacy combined w/ his yeasty ego. Personally, I think this dame can act her butt off. Her husband, Cha Min Hyeok, is a Law professor. He's smart, but not as smart as he fashions himself. That's the trap so many intelligent people fall into - believing they know everything. He runs Book Club, which is often just him and the toxic egotist, Kang Yiseo (Kim Hye Yoon) bantering. Her lens is so thick that she interprets everything she reads as an affirmation of her egocentrism. She's the worst type of person, & Cha is an insufferable know-it-all. He has no insight at all but gives us a nice demonstration of philosophical gymnastics. ‘What is being selfish?’ Cha queries. “It's doing something that will help you reach your objectives,” answers egotist, Yiseo. Prof. Cha concurs, asserting that being completely selfish is how you become selfless. (!?) All this is complete tosh, of course. It's what narcissists say to justify how they are. Selfishness is being self-focused to the neglect of others & what they want, & it usually involves a lack of empathy. It's being an @$$hole. It's also existing in lies.
Oh Na Ra has quietly been in some of the best stuff ever. She usually plays a sweetheart, but here she begins as the most shallow and toxic sort. She's has room for growth and she will grow during S🏰. Kim Seo Hyung plays Kim “Joo” Young, an austere academic coach. She's a supreme ice queen. She's wonderful in Mine-8. Stern, and rigid, she's all-business. In ep10 she has a fit of laughter and it's actually a bit chilling. Her smile is terrifying, oily and creepy. She should do horror.
Song Geon Hee is one of the most miserable kids, Park Young Jae. Park You Na portrays Cha Seri, an older sibling, back from the States on break from Harvard. Cho Byeong Kyu of The Uncanny Counter plays Cha Ki Jun, one of the Cha twins. (About TUC, S1 is 8.4 and it's fabulous. S2 is insultingly awful. It's one of the worst cases of second season syndrome I've ever seen).
Kim Bo Ra is Kim Hye Na, a classmate who Woo has his eye on. She's a cutie. She was also in My Only Love Song-8.7, a hilarious show that I adore. Director Jo Hyun-Tak gave us The Atypical Family & Snowdrop, while writer, Yoo Hyun-Mi penned Snowdrop & The Bridal Mask. I'll watch anything of theirs. Every shot, the decorating, the lighting, the costume ~ everything ~ is carefully orchestrated in S🏰. The use of music is also skillful. Endless Night is particularly sad. They found a balance between decorating the houses with upscale decor and making them look institutional and impersonal. Everyone seems to have partition walls in their house. Does it signify cages, division, and the illusion of privacy? These partitions are beautiful but we can see right through them.
The Cha household is excessively dark and there's prison bar imagery everywhere. Hye & Min are in a tense argument over the design of the Study Room and have a showdown. He has already cut up her credit cards. He sits for dinner. It's instant ramen. The dining area is underlit shades of industrial grey & almost every element is a straight vertical or horizontal. We're in a very rigid household. His drab jacket is the color of excrement. She's spectacular in a form-fitting scarlet lace dress. The revolutionary? They work out a deal. The tea kettle 🔊💨 in the background. “Enjoy your dinner.” Magnificent.
Many touches make for superb filmcraft.There's a touching moment in ep6 when a mom cuddles her son and admits that she's not sure if all the pressure she's been putting on him is the right thing. “There's no answer,” she (too casually) surmises. The camera pans out & we finally see what the blue & white figurine really is. There's overly bright shots that are not flattering to the skin. I can't tell if that's deliberate or not, but I suspect it is to show that under the bright lights we are all flawed. None of them are as perfect or special as they believe. Despite the heavy subject matter, they even manage quite a bit of humor..
The pyramid. Life is a pyramid for Prof. Cha. Only 1 reaches the top. He's done okay, but he wants his kids to surpass him. Pyramids can be a scheme. Education has become a pyramid scheme. Large student loans enslave graduates. Colleges believe they have a monopoly and they have resorted to chain restaurant mentalities. They are overpriced, they serve up junk food, and they also are quite the propaganda machines. Education is vitally important, but that isn't what's going on at most colleges. They are doing everything but teaching useful skills and critical thinking. They are bankrupting us at the same time. If your child is interested in tinkering with h/h hands, don't discourage it out of hand. Plumbers, electricians, and other handy people are the new millionaires. There will always be a need for them.
“Do you know why God gave us kids? You should learn that there's something you can't always control.” Control. It's the biggest illusion of them all. One family reached the point where someone had to give in or someone had to die. “I don't want to be your son anymore… I don't want to live in hell anymore.” “We've wasted our lives,” yells dad. “Love one another. As I have loved you. John 13:34,” reads the plaque on the wall. It's interesting that the person who committs suicide receives a Christian funeral. We're to infer that s/he didn't even believe s/he was going to get another chance. People who ascribe to reincarnation are often shown as using suicide for a reset. It makes it even more tragic, from one perspective, b/c this person had given up all hope.
“There's no such thing as friends. There is only self & self-achievement.” Prof Cha spent a fortune on a test prep booklet, & his sons shared this info w/ their mates. “You mindless idiot, they're your competitors. It's the same as sharing your bullets w/ your enemies! Didn't I tell you to think of your school as a battlefield? Everyone beside you is the enemy!” By the end he was screaming. “I don't agree w/ your dad,” their mom tells them later. “You did the right thing. Competing w/ others makes you lonely. I believe true success is living a life that's not lonely.”
If one puts too much pressure on the kids they will be driven underground, we'll see. Oh the irony! In ep9 a father is exultant with celebratory pride. The /truth/ will devastate him. But the other S🏰 denizens enjoy their schadenfreude, or a feeling of enjoyment that comes from seeing or hearing about the troubles of other people. “I know people in Washington who will cut off your life support in order to charge their cell phone,” I read once, and find it totally believable. These people embody that coldness. They're absolute ghouls. There's no tragedy that they don't think about turning to their own benefit. And it all comes back on them, ironically.
The moms are held in direct contrast. “You can't stand by and do nothing while your kids are being tormented. You have to protect them.” says the unselfish mother; the one who only wants happiness for her family. “I cannot give up on your life... No matter who yells at me or throws stones at me… I will do anything," says a mother who has been singly obsessed w/ her child's college admission. Her child is melting away in front of her, yet she still believes her own lies about herself, what she wants, and what /really/ motivates her. Meanwhile, her progeny is fast becoming NOT her disciple. For just a moment, her child paused & started to appreciate what really matters while realizing how revolting her family's values are.
Two characters start to channel Reverend Dimmesdale from The Scarlet Letter. Their guilty consciences are eating them alive. “Cut out the rotten parts now. You must do it while you still can.. life is long… Think about 10 or 20 yrs from now. University? … it's no big deal. But the guilt of {spoiler🚫} will haunt her …You reap what you sow.” In the wake of his own family tragedy, rather than schadenfreude, this speaker tries to help his friend avoid mistakes.
“When will you stop obsessing about what other people think of you?” A grown man demands answers of his mother, because this problem is multi-generational, and continues into adulthood. Pride is always hungry. It's never sated. “How can you call yourself human?” When one hears that from 2nd and 3rd parties, one should stop and reflect, croche? Don't dismiss all feedback on autopilot. “I thought I was a rational person, but I found out that I was very biased,” we hear one character reason out. We see the first cracks in their inhumane resolve. Finally.
“After this incident, I realized that being able to eat together w/ my wife & son is enough to make me happy.” Once they drop the pretense they can merely love one another. “That's why I'm going to try my best to be a good dad, & a good husband, & a good son. I don't want to end up regretting anything in the future.” 1-by-1, the parents see how off-course they've gotten. The theme is, ultimately, regret. All the above leads to regret. Pride is radon w/ no color, odor, or taste. We can't see how it poisons us. But it does poison us & makes us blind to all our stuff. It isolates us. Isolation doesn't make a good life.
“I believe true success is living a life that's not lonely.”
In order of ~lite&trite~ to ~heavy&serious~ you may also like:
Racket Boys-8.3,
Love to Hate You 8.9,
Reply 1988-8.6,
It's Okay Not To Be Okay 9,
Love Struck in the City 7.3,
Be Melodramatic-8.7
Familiar Wife-8.5,
Because This Is My First Life-7.7,
Birthcare Center-8.2,
Call It Love-8.4,
The Golden Spoon-8.1,
Revenge of Others-8.6
Itaewon Class-8.9
Law School -8, Why Her?-8,
Misaeng-9.1,
My Liberation Diary-8.9,
Mine-8,
Blood Free-8.5
My Mister 9.5,
I'll See You When the Weather is Fine 9
Anna-8.1,
Something in the Rain-8.6,
Wonderful World-7.8
Awaken-8.7
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