Oh, it has been a while I have seen a series with Yu Seungho, the last one being Imaginary Cat, but it was worth waiting for - judging from the first four episodes.
The fact I was on hiatus helped immensely, true.
There's something deeply humane in this series, which deals with such horrific and twisted events. And before I go into ruminations about this one, I need to applaud whoever was responsible for the casting. I am happy to see Yu Seungho in a different role - more alive, mischievous, hot-tempered - but at the same time I know what he can do and I'm just waiting for the raw emotions he can summon and break our souls into thousands of pieces. Because not many people can make us feel their hurt and their despair as well as this one. (unintelligible cursing at Idiot Warrior Baek Dong Su).
Our main protagonist is a specific way of a "telepathic" person. Not the typical telepath because Dong Baek can read memories but only when touching a person. The more fumbled the brain, the fuzzier his readings are (hence, as he says, he can't read people in a coma). At the first glance it may look like the premise belongs more to The X-Files narrative than a series dealing with painfully actual social problems like extortion, religious cults, rape, prostitution, overreaching influence of politicians and businessmen, death and suicide. And yet, woven carefully into the fabric of the plot - it works (it worked also in the webtoon). It doesn't seem to stand out - it's actually a firmly established fact inside the story - our guy got his abilities, went through some celebrity phase and decided to use his powers for good, so he became a detective. There is a stigma coming with the gift (or a curse?) because people isolate him, because no one wants to have their memories read. A special law was enacted, prohibiting him from scanning people's memories without consent, so also criminals have to sign the consent form for that.
So on one end of the spectrum we have Dong Baek, an empathetic but a volatile component and on the other - Han Seonmi: a composed and competent woman, trying and failing but trying again. This tenaciousness is really admirable. Faced with a fail, she resorts to other variables, to other clues. It's not easy to be a woman in a field full of men and be taken seriously as a crime profiler (which is guessing for some parts). There is a rivalry between different branches of police force - and that also plays a part in the plot (it hampered the investigation) causing both Baek and Seonmi to come too late to save a kidnapped girl. The viewers usually expect a happy outcome of such situation, but Kdrama shows a middle finger lately (or webtoons, for that matter) to all the expectations. The whole episode was showing two girls living through indoctrination and facing death in case of failing the test. Then one of them, by the sheer chance (rotten wood breaking under the weight of her body when she tried to hang herself) has found a passage out of the underground building. She went through the hardship, avoided the pursuit and managed to crawl into the surface with sun shining at her face. And in that sun, a hammer glimmered... This was hard.
First four episodes deal with the
disappearance of a girl which quickly unfolds into multilayered and dark
story involving the intrinsic relationships between politics, law
enforcement and powerful, all-encroaching new religious movement.
Now, there is much discussion going on about the definition and ontological status of both "cult" and "new religions movement (NRM)". From the broadest perspective - the former is used in vernacular while the latter is mostly used by academics or in a more "serious" context, avoiding the pejorative connotations the "cult" usually has.
Historically
cults thrive in eras of social and political turmoil and unrest and the
thing that their leaders want the most is wealth and power (Singer
& Lalich, 1995), they criticize the current culture and promise a
better one - but only for the chosen.
According to Tom Robbins and Dick Anthony “cults” are consistently perceived to have:
(1) authoritarian leadership,
(2) totalistic communities,
(3) aggressive proselytization techniques,
(4) systematic indoctrination,
(5) relative novelty,
(6) a middle-class clientele.
All of the above fit the image of the group in Memorist that is led by a charismatic leader who's behind abhorrent and disgusting deeds. Now, I have to add one important bit - not all movements are dangerous. When we say "cult" most of the people think about Jones, Koresh(1), Asahara and others. Destructive, apocalyptic cults are just one of the many, many of them.
Some researchers argue to abolish the term "cult" altogether and propose instead "alternative religion" or mentioned above NRM. There are other problems stemming from this issue (new religion poses the question: new comparing to what, ie). The Church of Heavenly Veritas of Glory (or whatever its name is, I don't remember, reading from the pic below) on the surface may be called a new religion, having its own house of worship, and yet for some reasons it operates secretively. Despite the secrecy it has exerted an enormous influence on politicians and law enforcement though.
 |
| Blood red seats for blood red leader. |
Often rituals performed during the ceremonies employ paraphernalia and chants intimate only to those on the inside.This gnosis is one of the enticing elements - it means being on the inside, to KNOW the rules.This is true for any kind of a closed society - NRM followers speak in codes, Kdrama watchers speak in codes, thank you very kamsa.
Having said that, I hope the series will unfurl into other directions that seem to be hinted here and there and not focus solely on the very questionable morals of the church leader.
Having said that, I hope the series will unfurl into other directions that seem to be hinted here and there and not focus solely on the very questionable morals of the church leader.
There's a point to be made that the group here is fictional - its emblem (a mix between an ankh, Norse cross and a hammer), dogma and other paraphernalia are fictional, drawing however on the real world. But one thing needs to be mentioned that "[f]ictional cults frequently take widely held perspectives of actual religious movements and render them either more absurd or more frightening." (Laycock, 2013)
The prominence of NRM in the recent series (like in Nobody Knows) may signify a cognitive shift in the societal and cultural narrative of Korea. For a long time any religion (if any, because dramas rarely deal with explicit religious issues, save for, say, a series about a Buddhist monk) or belief system (Daoism, Muism) was, for the most part, shown as either neutral or positive player.
Given the amount of different NRM and their sectarian fragmentation in Korea, it was just a matter of time when popculture would knock on that door.
The prominence of NRM in the recent series (like in Nobody Knows) may signify a cognitive shift in the societal and cultural narrative of Korea. For a long time any religion (if any, because dramas rarely deal with explicit religious issues, save for, say, a series about a Buddhist monk) or belief system (Daoism, Muism) was, for the most part, shown as either neutral or positive player.
Given the amount of different NRM and their sectarian fragmentation in Korea, it was just a matter of time when popculture would knock on that door.
The scene above was the clinical display of how cult leaders gain control - they feed on people's complexes and try to exploit them, even resorting to denigrating and twisting their words. At the same time they portray themselves as benevolent people who'd rather put the second cheek to be slapped, they offer the words of forgiveness. This all paints a clear picture - it's the leader who is a moral person, trustworthy and wholesome and the other one is clearly an evil, ignorant gnat who needs to be reprimanded like a child. Or squished. Personally, that was one of the best scenes in the series, the threat palpable but never explicit, the devotion of followers - almost on zealots' level, the exasperation of the law enforcement - visible and painful. Park Gidan embodies what popular culture and its narrative attributed to religious leaders (and serial killers) - charisma. And, as Max Weber states, it is "a certain quality of an individual personality by virtue of which he is set apart from ordinary men and treated as endowed with supernatural, superhuman, or at least exceptional powers and qualities. These are such as are not accessible to the ordinary person, but are regarded as of divine origin or as exemplary, and on the basis of them the individual concerned is treated as a 'leader'" Which has to be always validated by the followers.
 |
| If you lay a finger on either of them, tvN, we're gonna talk. Me with bullets. |
The first thing that not everything is as it seems comes when Baek realizes that some memories were missing from Park Gidan's head when he scanned him. And that is actually a very dangerous realization - first, it means that it IS possible to remove some memories and therefore hide a potential crime, and second - it renders the whole memory scanning unreliable.
I like the characters - imperfect as they are, but so human, so relatable. The dynamic between Baek and his loyal team is amazing - they are not afraid of touching him despite the fact their memories might gleam from the depths of their subconsciousness.
Some of us would want to have some super skills and reading somebody's thoughts may seem like a voyeuristic pleasure, but Dong Baek clearly paints a horror picture of having such "gifts" - he sees ugly things, memories of rape, of murder, of many little hideous things people hide in the back of their heads - and he has to live with those images. They don't leave him. That is his tragedy that no one, actually, can help him to deal with. No wonder he's on the verge of exploding, especially after seeing horrific things and feeling powerless.
Some of us would want to have some super skills and reading somebody's thoughts may seem like a voyeuristic pleasure, but Dong Baek clearly paints a horror picture of having such "gifts" - he sees ugly things, memories of rape, of murder, of many little hideous things people hide in the back of their heads - and he has to live with those images. They don't leave him. That is his tragedy that no one, actually, can help him to deal with. No wonder he's on the verge of exploding, especially after seeing horrific things and feeling powerless.
I also like how the series if filmed - switching between cold and warm palette. There is also a lot of shots from above the head level.
And since I haven't seen ep 5 yet, I can only presume that the leader was killed by either Dong Baek or Seonmi since they were both captured on site and Baek is missing time from his memories. Or they witnessed it. Or they committed something else so that the group would have something on them. Or...
The possibilities.
(1) there is much discussion whether what happened in Waco was in fact caused by the group members or FBI agents.
Sources:
Sources:
- E.V. Gallagher,“Cults” and “New Religious Movements”, "History of Religions", Vol. 47, No. 2/3 (November 2007/February 2008), pp. 205-220;
- J. Laycock, Where Do They Get These Ideas? Changing Ideas of Cults in the Mirror of Popular Culture, "Journal of the American Academy of Religion", Vol. 81, No. 1 (MARCH 2013), pp. 80-106;
- L.J. Richmond, When Spirituality Goes Awry: Students in Cults, "Professional School Counseling", Vol. 7, No. 5, SPECIAL ISSUE: SPIRITUALITY AND SCHOOL COUNSELING (JUNE 2004), pp. 367-375;
- M.T. Singer, J.L Lalich, Cults in our midst: The hidden menace in our everyday lives, San Francisco: Jossy Bass 1995;
- M. Weber, The Theory of Social and Economic Organization, trans. A. M. Henderson
and Talcott Parsons, ed. Talcott Parsons, New York, Free Press, 1947, p. 358. - P.J. Olson, The Public Perception of "Cults" and "New Religious Movements", "Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion", Vol. 45, No. 1 (Mar., 2006), pp. 97-106;
- T. Robbins, D. Anthony, Deprogramming, Brainwashing, and the Medicalization of Deviant Religious Groups, "Social Compass" Vol. 29 (1982): 283–97.
