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Showing posts with the label Television

Korean Dramas Take an Honest Look at Systemic Corruption and the Individual

  Netflix, CC BY-SA 4.0 < https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0 >, via Wikimedia Commons It takes a special effort to watch a subtitled drama, especially one that relies heavily on dialogue, not only as spoken between the characters but as thoughts taking place in their minds.  The Korean Drama, Stranger, is well worth the effort as it takes on systemic corruption, the psychology of cultural hierarchies, and the impact of individualism through well developed characters. Two central characters in Stranger represent what we naively expect from a system of justice as they go against the grain in which corruption has become the acceptable norm. A series speaks as much through its visuals as it does through the action of the plot. Stranger effectively uses peacefully designed Asian interiors as a subliminal rest-bit. Perhaps this is more evident to those of us exercising our intellectual capacities to read the subtitles in the rapidly evolving dialogue. In an increasingly g