I’ve been kinda obsessed with K-dramas and Korean reality TV shows pretty much since the pandemic hit and I’m a better human being because of it. One of my guilty pleasures, without question, though, has been the Korean reality TV show, Single’s Inferno. Grammatical objections aside (shouldn’t it be Singles’ Inferno since all unpaired singles are stuck together on the island and no one, as Simon & Garfunkel warned, can be an island? ), this show is notorious for the (surgically enhanced) beauty of most of its contestants. Men & women. In Single’s Inferno, you see that classic Korean contradiction of sweet & soft but also hypermasculine & successful men & gorgeous & smart but also quietly talented & shy women all participating in the same mating ritual.
Along the way you’re introduced to a piano major undergraduate, an investment analyst, a theater undergraduate, a plastic surgeon, a YouTuber/model, an almost-famous barista, a Harvard undergrad, a former Special Ops member, an extrovertish artist, & a tailor. Even at a glance, it’s obvious that this cast has been constructed (both physically & conceptually) in a way that reinforces Korean notions of accomplishment, gender performance, professional achievement, & beauty: the men are all jacked, they all have successful and high-paying jobs (even the barista is the heir apparent of his family’s café), they hold their partners bags when walking up the stairs, they’re chivalrous, aggressive, & pretty while the women, OTOH, are ludicrously beautiful, younger than the men, and artistic, shy, and mostly students, they all downplay their intelligence, even Nadine Lee, the Harvard student (who ended up becoming one of my favorite people). In many ways that I found both troubling and predictable, the singles on this island epitomized traditional Korean gender roles. But where were the women surgeons? The male undergrad poets searching for the meaning of life? The women Tae Kwon Do champions? The male artists? The women lawyers?
I mean life is hard enough and our minds are our biggest enemies, so I consider it a tiny victory whenever two people can connect despite themselves.
When the rules of traditional Korean gender identity were violated, I cheered out loud. When, for example, Kim Jin-young didn’t carry Seul-ki’s bags on the walk to the helipad en route to Paradise, I was deliriously happy. And whenever Kim Jin-young bumped into a wall, dropped something, or made a mistake, I literally clapped at the TV because it was so refreshing to see his awkwardness, imperfection, & authenticity. OTOH, when Nadine Lee unpretentiously told Shin-Dong woo (the plastic surgeon) that she was a pre-med student at a university in Boston, I felt sad that she hadn’t asserted her intelligence or her accomplishments earlier, even though I understood that she was a little self-conscious about her Korean since she’s bicultural. When Kim-Se jun told his date that he was a tailor, this was the closest I came to being surprised at a male contestant’s profession. And to be fair, he had a strong sense of style, understood how to coordinate outfits, & created his own clothes. But that’s all we get!
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