Is this the future - pretty, coy, well-behaved and insecure female leads?
How the times have changed! In "Absolute Boyfriend" (2008) the female lead tested one option of a custom-made artificial partner as alternative to real life dating - under financial duress and with a sense of shame. Now the female lead still feels shame to partner up virtually - and does so without telling even her closest friend - but has to test a lot virtual partners (900 are available) and one custom-made partner to feel strong enough to date in reality.There are the two things in the drama's scenario that seem really problematic to me:
1. I have problems with the way the drama constructing female relationship fantasies as virtual hands-on- and power-fantasies: Would you not consider it unethical when there were 900 life-like virtual female slaves catering to every need of their male customers? I didn't like this concept at all. It's degrading to all parties involved. The female protagonists don't really like that concept either - otherwise why would they be ashamed to use an app?
2. To construct romantic relationships as one-sided dominant-subservient relationships means that the producers never meant to portrait AI-relationships to be a real alternative for their female protagonists, be there postcards and telefon messages in real life or not. No, every girl will find her male partner in real life if she wills it to be - but only if she's pretty, well-behaved and well-dressed (extremely important, it seems, considering the amount of screen time for the female lead trying on dresses). For that end the producers include the one older single female who is the Nr. 1 manga writer. She is shown as single, demanding, not well-behaved and not pretty - and ridiculed every time she has screentime. But: The manga writer is working hard, she has a lot of stress staying on top - and she's considering her AI-Partner much more her equal than the younger girls and stays loyal to him. Relationships are not about clothes and shapely legs alone, drama writers!
Though in my opinion the acting in "Boyfriend on demand" is really good and carries a rather bad story I'd rather have less perfect pictures and blingbling and more of the depth of older Korean dramas like " Dalja's spring" (달자의 봄) of 2007.
Was this review helpful to you?
