"Dark Glory": From the cruel reality to the Mary Sue

[There are spoilers in the full text, please read it after watching the finale]

The second season of "Dark Glory" opened a high score of 9.3 on Douban on the day it was launched, probably first because it could satisfy the audience on the "Revenge KPI". At the very least, this is true revenge rather than a dream (gently stepping on her ex-husband), the bullying five have been punished with dramatic, standard Shuangwen, and the heroine Dong Eun can watch Yeonjin go to jail.

If the first season was still anxious on the revenge progress bar, the second season is not only cool, but also adds coolness in technique - Yeonjin is finally (partially) wronged.

The heroine of the whole drama does not break the law and does not get her hands dirty, it is a delicate revenge, but it is a little empty after all. And the last big terrier makes up for this emptiness. Revenge also has a part that wanders outside the law, and another victim does what the audience wants the heroine to do, punishing the abuser with his own hands, and completing the reincarnation of cause and effect with the original blood for blood. It is even more elusive for Yeonjin to die, what more she has endured in addition to the punishment on the surface.

In reality, we want to talk about law and procedural justice, but in the story, people always want to be cooler, more direct, and more "retribution". Even if he takes revenge, Don Eun will never be the original Don En, scars exist, delayed time exists, and hell memories of being bullied exist. Only by letting Dong Eun or his allies also cross the line, only by letting Yeonjin also have a heart demon, and it can even be said that only by taking such an extra step and playing one more round, constituting the essence of "completing the punishment outside the law" and "making the punishment deserved another layer of punishment", can the audience really spit out that evil breath.

This setting is also reflected in the ending where the male protagonist also has revenge. Don's revenge is not the end, she has to help the male protagonist take revenge again to constitute the expression of the screenwriter: if there are rich people, antisocial people, think that there is no karma in the world; Accomplishing 100% karma is the mission of kindness.

This conception may be wrong in a legal or sociological sense. But in folk sentiment, in fictional stories, there is no reproach. It is precisely because of this that "Dark Glory" firmly grasps the "cool point".

Technically, the revenge plan of "Dark Glory" has many slots, and the logic does not really make sense. But I still feel that the screenwriter captures the focus of a popular sentiment: the trauma caused by "bullying" cannot be calmed by legal punishment. Some stories may focus on reconciliation, progress, and the importance of ethics ("Our Distance from Evil"), but others are right to fulfill the appeal of "retribution".

"Dark Glory" captures the audience's emotions, starting with real events.

The girl burned a female classmate with a straight hair stick, which was a real "Cheongju Female High School Student Violence Incident" in South Korea in 2006, and after checking the original incident, I even felt that it was more cruel than what was presented in the play.

In recent years, we have also often seen Korean celebrities who have been exposed frequently and have bullied classmates on campus. School bullying is indeed a serious social problem that has attracted much attention in South Korea. Even the director of this play is involved in the turmoil of being suspected of bullying others.

(△ The picture of Yeonjin being surrounded by the media apologizing reminds the audience of a lot of Korean entertainment news)

In addition, Korean film and television works in recent years are very good at portraying the extreme Mufu Muqiang caused by the huge class gap. "Dark Glory" also continues this telling habit.

The plot of the first season focuses on foreshadowing, and many details reflect the cruelty of "completely not treating people as human beings", and when the law of the jungle crushes the dignity and flesh of the poor, it also crushes the basic human ethics of society.

The children of the poor struggle to survive in small, dilapidated homes, but bullies enter with shoes and laugh at the poor and change their shoes when they enter the door.

Bullies will constantly look for the object of bullying, and Donn is not the first nor the last.

Bullying groups are divided into those who start and those who follow, usually followed by the weak, and are in a situation where they "can slip into bullies at any time."

Choi and Sun Mingwu are followers in the rich student bullying group, but Sun Mingwu can act as a "thug" and grow up to be a drug provider, so his position is actually higher than Cui Huiting.

The bullying group seems to be living wantonly, and there is also contempt for Cui Huiting, and everyone can slander and humiliate him.

And even if Whiting is humiliated, he will still adjust his expression, photograph himself in the high-class consumption place, post social networks, and mark his celebrity friends. This detail also means a lot.

Closely related to the theme of "bullying" is the law of the jungle and the social atmosphere of indifference and indifference. Bullying can be covered up because teachers and police stations can easily ignore the existence of victims because of money, connections, or pressure from powerful people.

Although we may not all have seen such cruel bullying in the play, the drama captures the extremely oppressive atmosphere and the despair of justice and no way, which is common.

But on the other hand, when I was curious about the real school bullying incident in South Korea after watching the series, I found that the presentation of "Dark Glory" was problematic.

The school bullying in the episode occurred between 2004 and 2006, and in 2006, the heroine Donn had dropped out of school, during which she tried to expose the bullying by calling the police and filling in the reason for "being bullied" to apply for withdrawal. According to the logic of the plot, because the abuser Yeonjin is a rich man, and her mother can always get through the joints, the matter is covered up.

The question is that at that time, the media and the Internet were already very developed, can a serious bullying incident be so covered up silently in the Internet age?

The episode prototype was actually reported by the media in 2006.

(△2006 report page)

Of course, in South Korea's school bullying reports, there are also perpetrators' powerful families that lead to cover-up crimes, and I have also found that some big websites will be accused of "being bought" and "not publishing the real situation".

(△ Quoted from: "Students from Hell: South Korea's Red Eyed "Student Violence Problem")

If you have to write the meme "the bullying justice of more than ten years ago cannot be done, the heroine must now come to take revenge", it is okay, but if I can lay the groundwork in detail that the media and online complaint mechanisms are failing, it may be easier to convince me.

In particular, the real starting point of Yeonjin's punishment in the plot of the second season, the moment when public opinion began to be in an uproar, or online posting, which will make me a little puzzled, so can Xiao Dongen post at the beginning? After all, the evidence for hair straightener burns is very clear.

Moreover, from my superficial understanding, school bullying in South Korea also includes at least two major factors: first, the Juvenile Law will treat juvenile delinquency lightly, resulting in juvenile offenders still having a bright future, victims and families suffering for life; Second, South Korea engraves the order of superiority and inferiority in its bones and in its language, which greatly promotes the atmosphere of bullying in schools and workplaces. This is reflected in other works about bullying, but not in Dark Glory.

At least as a foreign audience, I can't help but ask, why is Xiao Dongen bullied like that, and the whole society is completely standing by? Personal revenge must be because the social mechanism failed, but where the social mechanism failed, I feel that the plot is not very clear.

There is reality, there is cruelty, cruelty and delicate parts. But it's not entirely realistic either. Revenge is a kind of cool text, and the completion path of cool text is also different, and in the first season I thought that Don Eun was taking revenge by his own efforts and mutual help between female victims. In the second season, it was really a surprise, the male protagonist and Yeonjin's husband were put on a thick filter, and the male protagonist's rich, affectionate, and capable idol drama filter actually reduced the heroine's efforts, and to some extent pulled her back into the frame of the heroine of the Mary Sue story.

(△ The official poster illustrates this feature: Take my puppy boyfriend to revenge ~~)

The revenge plan of the first season is painstaking, and there is a tragedy of reclamation. In the second season, the male protagonist said that if he opened a clinic, he would open a clinic, so he successfully hypnotized Yeonjin to remove someone else's nail DNA from her wound, saying that if you buy a crematorium, you will buy a crematorium, so you can get the key evidence of the corpse. - Do these have to be done by showing off wealth? Isn't it okay to use wisdom and ingenuity? Why is it necessary to let the male protagonist exert his "banknote ability"?

In addition, the role of Yeonjin's husband, I personally think it is too much beautification. In the first season, I thought that the heroine used him to detect Yeonjin's problems to take revenge, but I watched Yeonjin's husband weaken his sense of existence and carry the unrealistic Holy Father affectionately. If his motives are strengthened as "my wife bullying makes me embarrassed" and "my daughter is not my biological and is known by the outside world", perhaps this role is closer to the social news we watch more. But the screenwriter's strokes seem to oscillate between the two routes, and the lines say that he is "a beast only if you look closely", but when he turns around, he protects his non-biological daughter as if he were his own, as if even the "green hat" cannot challenge this son of a chaebol who never really cares about others.

Actor Jung Sung-il (also translated as Jung Sungyi, Jung Sung Yi) is very good, that is, "the look of 17 pages of GQ magazine", but this appearance does not conflict with the well-dressed chaebol, as if the story is a little lighter on him after the actor becomes charming. No need, no need, really no need.

I personally would like to suggest that the screenwriter replace the male protagonist with a female ally (there are ready-made male protagonists' mothers; or aggravate the scene of landlords and school doctors), there is no need to use the power of money to open goldfingers, the revenge of ordinary people may move us more, and the women's alliance challenges bullies and antisocial personalities, is it also more meaningful to interpret at the moment.

However, I also saw the opinion on the Internet that "the heroine and Yeonjin's husband are very good and think they can have emotional lines". Perhaps Mary Sue is a fantasy consumption rigid demand, and "glamorous chaebol" and "loyal puppy boyfriend" are also a fantasy consumption rigid demand. I'm not against such emotional fantasy experiences, but it's important to distinguish between reality and fantasy. This fantasy also seems a little strange in bullying revenge dramas.

The screenwriter of this drama, Kim Eun-suk, has previously written a large number of high-rating idol dramas, even including the Double Song Dynasty work "Descendants of the Sun".

Looking at her full report card of selling fantasies, you may also understand that the dream filters of the male protagonist and Yeonjin's husband are her writing inertia, which is really smooth. The more unimportant the lines, the more you can see this feeling that you can't hold it when you get it easily, such as a powerful old lady secretly lamenting how good it would be if her son could marry Teacher Wen. What is the point of putting a halo on the heroine with this kind of recognition "from a rich man" and "from a rich chaebol lady (an unmarried woman's potential future mother-in-law)"? But just wear one by the way.

Another question is, is the same bullying, does the story punish female characters more severely than male characters? All three bully girls were punished with the nature of "social death", Yeonjin was discredited, Sarah video showed public, and Whiting was defined as "your crotch is public property", but the men were only dead.

The last girl who was bullied to death, and even raped by Jeon Jae-joon, there is still evidence of his assault in the body, such an important matter has not been made public, Yeon-jin said that the victim was a slander of "pregnant and faceless suicide", the plot was not explained and clarified, all Jae-joon was just dead.

Friends said that maybe male criminals are more faceless and skinless, and it is difficult for them to die, so they don't know how to shoot. But why are female offenders so easily photographed dead? Why is it more inclined to film their social deaths, rather than exploring "who is Yeonjin's mother and daughter shaped by" and "who is the so-called gold worship girl like Whiting shaped by"?

Writing here, about the "practice of the revenge plan is somewhat degraded", it may not be very important.

The key kick-off step for the second season of Revenge is "posting online", why not do it when you are young? Without Don't need Don'en's hand, there will be internal strife within the bullying gang, all relying on Whiting's mouth to instigate; But they looked down on Whiting and humiliated him at any time, why was it so easy to be instigated by her?

These memes can give the audience a sense of refreshment, and they already have practical effects. Just looking back and always feeling that something is wrong, the information points in Don's mind have not yet been connected, and the bullying gang has shown a trend of "top-floor self-explosion", so many pavings are actually unnecessary. The 16-episode plot is not long, but there may still be room for streamlining.

(△ I saw a set of pictures in the hot search, which is very "Penthouse")

But when I list the slots of this play, I can't help but say that this spit is a spit on the high-level requirements of excellent students.

When I think that Kim Eun-sook has written so many idol dramas, and when she turns around is the theme of school bullying and revenge, I still think she is very powerful. It can be seen that each drama is looking for new themes, new labels, and new ways, which is a veteran screenwriter in a mature film and television industry. Even Korean idol drama screenwriters have evolved into this, our sweet pet is still just industrial saccharin tablets, my God.

(△Screenplay by Kim Eun-suk)

Although I don't like the love scenes of "Dark Glory" (mainly because I think I don't want love scenes), I also have to say that the few gossip about falling in love, the mutual healing of getting along at home, and the tacit understanding of using chess as a code are all urban love scenes that the sweet pets in the mainland can never film.

There are many kinds of cool texts, palace fighting drama Niangniang returning to the palace is a kind, and female revenge is also a kind. Even if "Dark Glory" can't shake off some of the thinking inertia of idol dramas, it still quickly raises its creative consciousness to "bullying", "revenge", "mutual help of the weak" and "hope in the dark".

These things are not difficult to say, but they can be done skillfully, which is enough for us to envy the next door and harvest in the saline land.