Look, Ideal Fatherhood in South Korea is in here: Korea Reality Show 'The Return of Superman'

Look, Ideal Fatherhood in South Korea is in here: Korea Reality Show 'The Return of Superman'

As a Korean student who is taking the TV Criticism class, almost all answers towards the question ‘Have you watched this show?’ Are, ‘No’. However, it doesn’t mean that I didn’t watch the television program at all. Even though I am not a TV person compared to the average Korean, I love to watch and analyze the Korea TV show and drama, like we are doing in the classroom. The reason why I’m interested in Korea television program scholarly is not only that I am a South Korean, but its popularity is also viral that there is a term that explains this phenomenon called 한류 (hallyu, Korean Wave).

Even Hulu has a separate section for Korean Drama

Entertainment in South Korea particularly have been getting a huge popularity in Asia region. For specific examples, TV series Jumong attract over 80 percent viewership ratings in Iran (Song, 2011), TV series Dae Jang Geum had over 180 million viewers from China (Tsai, 2005), and the TV series Winter Sonata brought 18 billion dollars from Japan alone, without counting the increasing Japanese visitors and their economic effects (Lee, 2005). This wide popularity through the Asia makes me more interested in the TV programs in South Korea. However, I can easily find the sources and articles that deal with ‘why the programs in South Korea appealed so well to the Asia region?’, whereas it is really hard to find how TV programs contains the culture or ideology of South Korea. This simple question made me to work on the blog that tries to explain the ‘Korean’ culturally through the TV program.

One of the trends that I have interests in the Korean TV show is the male celebrities and their kids. Starting from the 2013, it became a main trend throughout the nation. On these TV Shows, ‘famous’ father and their kids spent time by traveling and playing together, and people are crazed about these programs. Why this type of reality program became one big trend in Korea, which makes Korean addicted to them? What is the cultural background that makes this type of program coming out? For answering those questions, I picked and analyzed the Korea reality program ‘The Return of Superman’, which is the program that 4 male celebrities (Tablo -  Rapper / Choo sung hoon - Martial Artist and Model / Lee Hoi Jae - Famous  Comedian / Jang Hyun Sung - Actor) raise their kids without mom within 48 hours in every week. The ideal image of true ‘fatherhood’ is changing in the Korea because of economic development, improved status of women, and spreading Christianity. Formed new ideal image of fatherhood is dreamed of Korean in all ages, whereas it is too hard to be achieved in real families because of various reasons. ‘The Return of Superman’ helps Korean audience to feel and watch the ideal fatherhood that is dreamed of but cannot be achieved due to the limited leisure time of fathers. 

Before talking about the elements of ‘The Return of Superman’, explaining about the cultural and social background of Korea in terms of ‘Fatherhood’is essential to understand the thesis of this posting. Countries in East Asia like China, Korea or Japan interrelated with each other culturally because of geographical closeness. Japan and Korea were influenced by the China’s Confucianism, and China and Korea are invaded and was the colonies of the Japan (Shwalb, Nakazawa, Yamamoto & Hyun, p. 341). In the Confucianism, ideal family must have the “strict father, kind mother”. In other words, the father should take the disciplining role, whereas mother should take the emotional role, which makes the harmony in the family. And in Korea, Confucianism was adopted more genuine than in Japan since the Joseon Dynasty (1392 – 1897), which helped traditional Korean father to have more power over his wife and children. However, this traditional ideology was collapsed and rebuilt because of the radical change throughout the Korea society, such as the annexation of Korea by Japan and independence (1910 – 1945), rapid economic development, the spread of Christianity and increased status of women. According to the Dong A Ilbo, one of the major newspaper in South Korea, said “Absolute authoritarian and strict father no longer exists in Korea” (2005). Instead, new image of Korean father is emerging in the South Korea society. This is the mature personality who “loves, counsels, advices, and is a friend to his children; competent with finances; is family centered; not only do the house chores, but also satisfy the emotional needs of his family” (Shwalb, Nakazawa, Yamamoto & Hyun, p. 359). But the problem is, most fathers in South Korea could not fulfill this image because of their excessive work.

One of the Psy's songs 'Father' has touched lyrics that exemplifies the burden of Korean father.

In South Korea, father is a primary wage earner, and haven’t enough time to take a rest because of authoritarian corporate culture (Olson, 2008). Even though the government tried to regulate work hours by establishing the five-day workweek policy, they still did not have enough leisure time to spend, which means, they cannot spend time with their kids. Kids are busy, too. Competitive environment that social standing is heavily related to the prestige of the college led kids to start their academic training in early age instead of playing (Shwalb, Nakazawa, Yamamoto & Hyun, p. 351). Due to this complex reason, 42% of the children spent less than 30 minutes daily with their father, even though 87.7% of the children needs a father who does the active involvement with them (Shwalb, Nakazawa, Yamamoto & Hyun, p. 359). It is quite ironic that both father and kids want to spend time together, but they couldn’t. Consequently, fatherless – in other words, father as just a breadwinner – is a common situation in Korea.

 

With this current situation of South Korea in mind, ‘The Return of Superman’ shows the ideal image of fatherhood that is deficient in Korean society, which works to the audience as like a ‘fairy tale’. In the first episode of ‘The Return of Superman’, male celebrities are depicted as a common father in South Korea who is busy to spend time with their kids. They all confessed at first that, 'I am looking forward to spend time with my kid because I was too busy to play enough with my girl/boys'. In the first two episodes, kids were crying, or expressing an uncomfortable feeling about mother’s absence. Clumsy behavior that was made by a male celebrities as a father help audiences of all ages to sympathize in some ways. Male audiences who have siblings can understand what they felt difficulty with, and identify those celebrities with them. Why? They are poor at dealing with their kids, like most fathers in Korea do. Young audiences, including adolescence and twenties, see the kids and celebrities and think about them and their father. In the first episodes, the caption during the show depicted them as ‘immature, first step to their kids, and clumsy’. For specific examples, when the actor Jang Hyun-sung made the first breakfast for their sons, he scolded his son who asked Knife for spreading the jam on it, and every response he made towards his sons are coming with the caption named ‘건성 (careless)’, which represents the image of a stereotypical Korean father who is not used to deal with the needs of their children (Episode 2). 

Caption means: Joon Seo cries because he think his fault made his father hurt

Caption means: He concealed his wound because of worries that his son may hurt about it.

However, as the episode goes on, the audience can see the changing father's behavior when handling their children. As the time that fathers spent with their kids grows, the relationship between celebrities and their kids becomes more fruitful, and fathers start to hear the voice of their siblings carefully, which isfitted to the ideal image of fatherhood in South Korea. For example, in the episode 12, when the actor Jang Hyun-sung was wounded by his son Joon Seo during playing the ice skate, he kept saying to Joon Seo that “it is not your fault” because he doesn’t want to make his son hurt about the fact that his fault make father wounded (Episode 12).This showed how the male celebrities are changed into the ideal image of father as Koreans dreamed of, and audiences have been living vicariously through the ‘The Return of Superman’, like “It would be great if our family can spend time together like that” or “me and my kids should build relationship as celebrities do so”, which leads ‘The Return of Superman’ to get a highest viewership in the Sunday night time, which is defined as a prime time slot. 

To sum up, reality TV Show ‘The Return of Superman’ got a sympathy from audiences by showing the image of ideal father and ideal father-child relationship. This sympathy led the popularity throughout the South Korea. ‘The Return of Superman’ has highest viewership in the Sunday night time, which is defined as a prime time slot. On the other hand, the fact that many Koreans couldn’t spend time with their kids like celebrities did make me sad because that is the reason why ‘The Return of Superman’ got popularity in South Korea. Even though I love this program, I hope that this type of program becomes one of the many cable programs in the age that I have my siblings, instead of getting near 11% viewership in one nation.

References

Song, Sang-Ho. "Korea’s mark on an expectation-defying Iran." The Korea Herald [Seoul] 10 Aug. 2011: n. pag. The Korea Herald. Web. 21 Mar. 2014.

Tsai, Ting-I . "Korea swallows its pride in Chinese kimchi war." Asia Times Online [Hong Kong] 22 Nov. 2005: n. pag. Asia Times Online :: China News, China Business News, Taiwan and Hong Kong News and Business. Web. 22 Mar. 2014.

Lee, Diana. "Winter Sonata Fever." Winter Sonata Fever. N.p., 31 Jan. 2005. Web. 23 Mar. 2014. <http://uniorb.com/ATREND/Japanwatch/wsdramafever.htm>.

Shwalb, David W., Jun Nakazawa, Toshiya Yamamoto, and Jung-Hwan Hyun. "Fathering in Japan, China, and Korea." The Role of the father in child development. 5th ed. New York: Wiley, 2010. p.341-387. Print.

DongA Ilbo (2005, May 12, p.A9). The shrinking Korean man.

Olson, Parmy. "The World's Hardest-Working Countries." Forbes. N.p., 21 May 2008. Web. 26 Mar.2014. <http://www.forbes.com/2008/05/21/labor-market-workforce-lead-citizen-cx_po_0521countries.html>.

The Return of Superman, Ep.2, “They’re Just Like Me”, Aired Dec, 15, 2013.
The Return of Superman, Ep.12, "If we haven't met then...", Aired Feb, 9, 2014.

Play and Watch The Simpsons– Smartphone Game as an Innovative Way of Promoting the TV Show

Originally Posted @ TV Criticism 2014 Blog

Um...Banana...

Doughnut is quite overpriced, but...

As one of The Simpsons fans, finding new stuffs related to this TV show always make me excited. I even loved to drink banana flavored milk with the illustration of Bart when I was in the South Korea. This excitement reached the peak when I visited the Universal Studio in Orlando this winter break. In the Universal Studio, there is Springfield, USA that embodied village appeared in the Simpsons. Even though I paid an overpriced ticket for this theme park, I literally forgot everything and obsessed with looking around everything that appeared in the ‘Springfield USA’. I bought the pink doughnut that Homer always loves in every episode, and took a photo with the chief Wiggum. After coming back to the Iowa City, I checked my bank account status, then just screamed with saying, “Oh gosh, it made me spend the money like water!” This multiple experience on one TV show does not only apply to my case. Starting from the Weddings of a Lifetime in late 20th Century, it is an ongoing trend that TV show and related byproduct appeared in both on-screen and off-the-screen, for maximizing their profit and making synergy effects. On behalf of that, Smartphone game that is co-developed by the EA Mobile, Fox Digital Entertainment and Gracie Films, The Simpsons: Tapped Out did not only make the profit as a game, but also used as a tool to promote the TV show The Simpsons. This attempt didn’t end in the case of The Simpsons, but become a great example of how media companies try to promote their product - especially TV shows - in diverse ways. 

Before we talked about The Simpsons case, knowing about the former case of synergy effect will be helpful to understand The Simpsons’. TV show Weddings of a Lifetime is one of the great examples that showed TV Show's synergy effect with byproduct. As Levine mentioned, the audience of this TV show is young to middle-aged women and Lifetime considered it as a marketing strategy during the Weddings of a Lifetime (p. 77). Lifetime helps Disney to promote products that are heavily related to women in that age through the Weddings of a Lifetime. Promoted products included Walt Disney World, their cruise vacation and even pricy fairy tale styled wedding package (Levine, p. 72). Even though there are no exact statistic data about the effect of this promotion method, their attempted strategy is more effective than promoting the related product to the general audience because this is more focused and headed to the niche audience who really wants specific products that is advertised.
                       

When we look through The Simpsons Tapped Out game with considering the case of Weddings of a Lifetime, it is obvious that EA, Fox and Gracie Films are trying to promote the TV show The Simpsons via this Smartphone game. It is true that the difference between Tapped Out and other social games is hard to find at the first glimpse because of the same basic structures like an in-app purchase. Of course, they make the profit by selling the premium characters and decorations, too, and the results are even pretty impressive. According to the Jordan (2014), The Simpsons: Tapped Out made $130 million in lifetime revenue with “hitting a record level of daily active users” and helped EA Mobile to boost their sales. But other than that, what Tapped Out make different to other social games is its long history and reputation of the original story. Tapped Out was created based on the TV show The Simpsons, which is a famous TV show that lasts 25 seasons until 1989, which means that its story and character is quite well known, and the majority of users of the Tapped Out is the fan of The Simpsons. If not, users will familiar to The Simpsons and its character at least. Like Lifetime knows about their audience’s demographic and used it as a benefit to promote related products, these companies who developed the Tapped Out know about their audience; Users have interests in the TV show The Simpsons (or know about The Simpsons at least), which means promoting the TV show The Simpsons would be perfectly matched to the Users of Tapped Out. Compared to the TV show Weddings of a Lifetime example, Tapped Out took a role as a Weddings of a Lifetime itself. Like Weddings of a Lifetime promotes Disney products through constant exposure, Tapped out encourages people to watch the TV show The Simpsons more by repeating the episode that was aired a few years ago via events, or embodying the detailed decorations that appeared on the Simpsons episode, from house to newspaper dispenser.

Oscar's Truck in the episode 'Yellow Subterfuge' (Season 25, 7th episode, Originally aired December 8, 2013)

Truck as a Decoration
@ Tapped Out

         

What is more, there are 2 episodes in the Season 25 that the developers of the Tapped Out explicitly tried to promote the specific episode, which shows the developer’s intention of promoting The Simpsons with the aid of Tapped Out. For example, after the updates of the Tapped Out are made on December 4, 2013, new events named ‘Clandestine Nerd’ appeared on the screen. Divided in 3 parts, conversations between Lisa and Skinner leak the part of the new episode. However, the game doesn’t reveal the whole episodes, but gave a message instead ‘Uncover all the answers on Sunday’s episodes of the Simpsons8/7 c on Fox! Or on your DVR any time afterwards!’ with giving free decoration that also relates to the episode. A few days after the update (December 8, 2013), episode named ‘Yellow Subterfuge’ aired on the Fox, with revealing the whole things that were concealed in the game. Of course, a decoration that was given as a reward in the game also appeared on the real episode. 

As we can see in the example of the 'Clandestine Nerd' events on the Tapped Out, it shows the developers intents on users through the game. Like the Weddings of a Lifetime become a tool to promote Disney's products throughout the whole episodes, The Simpson: Tapped Out started to work as a promoting tool to boost the viewing rates of The Simpsons. It is not sure that EA, Gracie Films and Fox keep using this strategy or not. But one evident thing that we can conclude is, that Tapped Out is not just a game for making extra money and media companies kept trying to expand their tools for promoting the TV show as much as they can, like Tapped Out did.

                                                        References

Jordan, Jon. "EA Mobile Sees Q3 FY14 Sales up 13% to $97 Million." PocketGamer.biz. Steel Media Limited, 29 Jan. 2014. Web. 20 Feb. 2014.

Levine, Elana. "Fractured Fairy Tales and Fragmented Markets: Disney's Weddings of a Lifetime and the Cultural Politics of Media Conglomeration." Television & New Media 6.1 (2005): 71-88. Print.
"Yellow Subterfuge." The Simpsons. Fox. 8 Dec. 2013. Television.


By Yongsoo Gweon

Passive Prostitute? True Lover! - Reversal Character Couldn’t Separate From the Novel – Review about Joe Hill's Horns

University of Iowa

Yongsoo Gweon

As one of the kids who was born in the 1990s, when I was asked the question “What novels do you think of when you hear the ‘fictional genre’?” this reminds me of the Harry Potter series. Like many fictional novels do, many stories in the Harry Potter series usually deal with the conflict between the character who is honest and gives positive effects– like Harry Potter, Dumbledore and Gryffindor friends – and the character who is greedy and gives negative effects-like Voldemort, Malfoy and Slytherin-. J.K. Rowling manages this main conflict well with building continued tension, which helped readers to concentrate on the events in the novel. However, the element that helped the Harry Potter series to be considered as a masterpiece is its dramatic turn of events. For example, when the novel starts, Professor Severus Snape was considered as a villain throughout the whole series of Harry Potter. However, as the series continues, it is revealed that the reason why he hates Harry is that Harry’s father bullied him a lot in school, and finally, in the last book of the series, readers could discover that he was the real helper of Harry Potter who sacrificed himself for helping Harry to get rid of Voldemort.

Even though Snape is the super extreme example, many writers install intended settings to create biased views of a specific character, then reverse these settings to create emotion, fun and even sympathy for this character. This reversal has a similar level of impact as the main conflict did in the novel. Joe Hill, as many writers do so, consciously confers negative prejudice on Glenna, and flips it gradually to create sympathy for her. Intended prejudice is made by presenting her first, then giving cheap images from past scenes. These images are later contradicted by Glenna’s voice message to Ig, Ig’s self-examination, and Glenna’s saying to Ig. Ultimately, reversed image that was developed by the above factors is solidified by Ig’s spell on Glenna, and leave a message ‘love yourself’ to not only Glenna, but also to the readers, which helps to expand from sympathy for Glenna to sympathy on ourselves.

The most important depiction about Glenna was the first chapter because it sets biased views on Glenna. When Horns begins, the story starts from the hangover scene of Ig Parrish. Even though the effect of Ig’s horns on other people become more evident as time goes, nobody knows the ability of the Ig’s Horn on others – that makes people confess about their inner sins – in the first chapter, except readers who had the ending spoiled by others. In this circumstance, this is not just a coincidence that an author picks Glenna as a first person who was affected by the Horn’s ability. It can be said it is meant to create a lot of prejudice on Glenna. As a reader’s situation reading the book from Ig’s perspective, the writer’s depiction towards Glenna doesn’t only discomfort, but also even disgusts. In the first chapter of Horns, Glenna said to Ig “I’d like to eat the whole box, and just want to stick my face in and start eating” then she

“began to eat, shoving in one chunk after another without swallowing. Soon, the whole doughnut was in her mouth, filling her cheeks. She gagged softly, then inhaled deeply through her nostrils……when she was done, she took a few panting, uneven breaths, then looked over her shoulder, eyeing him anxiously (p. 8).”

This passage shows directly how Glenna was depicted as a gross woman who devoured doughnut in her mouth by the author. Since this scene is the first depiction of the Glenna, readers just accept her as a paranoiac girl who is obsessed with food, not as a poor girl who was captured by horns’ abilities and acted weirdly.

Furthermore, Glenna’s clouded condition and confession about her shameful behavior with Lee and Ig’s response to these helped to reinforce a negative impression of Glenna, and eventually readers get low expectations of her. Without any shame or awkwardness, she just keeps saying that she wants to say something disgusting –that Glenna did oral sex to Lee last night— for making Ig feel gross about her and leave her because she “can’t stand waking up next to Ig anymore” (p. 9). Even as she said brutal things to her friend, she “was leaning over the box of doughnuts again, her expression placid, as if she just told him a fact of no particular consequence: that they were out of milk or had lost the hot water again” (p. 10). It is common sense that normal people don’t do oral sex in front of a bar. Moreover, Glenna’s confession in front of Ig without any hesitation or emotion and eating doughnuts again gives sufficient amount of shock to readers. Even prostitutes do not work in the public place. As mentioned earlier, since readers did not know that her confession is due to the horns’ abilities, readers are not as likely to wipe out ‘more than a whore’ image on her. This leads people to stick with negative views on Glenna.

Even after readers acknowledge that Glenna’s confession was due to the horns’ abilities, the passive and bumbling description of Glenna in past scenes consolidates negative looks on her. In every situation that was happening in the old foundry, she did not affect anything in front of a gang who sexually insulted her and Lee, and failed to persuade Lee to show his masculinity in front of a gang. When the gang said “Glenna, Lee’s got a bigger pussy than you”, Glenna just got hurt and her response “Fuck you” didn’t help her at all, and her shouting for cheering Lee up just ‘fist in the air’ (p. 68). Her passive behavior with weak presence in that circumstance helps readers to assume that she was passive, weak, and was ignored by others in the past. What is more, unlike Glenna’s thoughts on the relationship between Lee and her as “used to have a thing going, back in a high school” (p. 9), Lee’s thoughts on her is no more than a contract. When Ig asked “has she been your girlfriend for a long time?” Lee answered, “We are not a boyfriend-girlfriend thing. She just comes over now and then talk about boys and the people who are mean to her at school and stuff… the times she whacked me off were kind of a favor she did. It’s a good thing, too” (p. 92). This directly shows that Lee did not consider her as a girlfriend, but as a sexual outlet, and Glenna’s impulsive behavior is not only a recent thing, but also happened in the past. Even though Glenna was young at that time, her behavior is no different to a prostitute and in Lee’s situation, there is no reason for refusing it. This is directly revealed by Lee’s saying “What a fucking slut, huh?” (P. 114), and Ig’s agreement on that, which led readers to think ‘Glenna equals prostitute’.

However, the reversal starts when Ig checks Glenna’s voice message in the old foundry in the Chapter 24. After Ig meets the herd of the snake at the old foundry, there are many voice messages coming from his families, and Glenna. However, the contents of a message and its response from Ig are quite different. Messages from families just contain grandma’s hospitalization and their blackout. Additionally, Ig’s response towards these messages is full of sarcasm. For example, when Ig heard the “I love you” from his mom, he laughed at that, with thinking, “The things people said. The effortless way they lied to others, to themselves” (p. 175). His laugh connotatively showed Ig’s scornful and disgusted emotions towards many people’s duplicity, which makes him tired. However, Glenna’s message is quite different to others. She said

“You’re the nicest guy in the world, Ig. But I think deep down you’ve always been sort of ashamed to be with me after all those years with her…. I’m all mistakes and bad habits…… For what it’s worth, I don’t think too much of me either. I’m worrying about you, bud. Take care of your grandma. And yourself.” (P. 175)

Compared to other messages, this message from Glenna is not only quantitatively long –three times longer than others– but also filled with concerns on Ig and reproach herself. Even though she didn’t do any wrong, she didn’t have confidence in herself, but just kept blaming herself for everything with worrying about his situation. Her dedicated but weak presence appeared in the voice message, and this induced readers who were filled with the negative views of Glenna to think that she is poor.

What is more, Even though Ig knew that all people’s confessions or horrible thoughts are due to the horn’s ability, Ig’s judgment on Glenna’s message is quite different to others’. Her message caught Ig

“off guard…He had been prepared to hold her in contempt, to hate her, but not to remember why he’d liked her. Glenna had been casually free with her apartment and her body, had not held his self-pity and his wretched obsession with a dead girlfriend against him…Glenna was a sweet, shabby mess…she’d been in a half-dozen relationships, all of them bad.” (P. 175-176).

Even though she had told her horrible inner minds to Ig like his families did, he accepted her message with full of sympathy and introspection about his attitude towards Glenna, whereas he evaluated others’ as two faced. This is the intended setting for changing Ig’s negative views to sweeter, and positive images, which ultimately aims to change readers’ views of Glenna. Thanks to this setting, views towards Glenna start to reverse well with emphasizing her pitiful presence.

This appreciative mind towards Glenna and her dedication soon induced Ig to think about what he did for her, which helped to build more sympathy on Glenna. Ig soon realized that he didn’t give anything great to her, nor treated her nicely. He remembered that Glenna “had mentioned to him now and then that they needed new dishes, but Ig hadn’t taken the hint. He tried to remember if he had ever bought Glenna anything nice. The only thing that came to mind was beer” (p. 185). This shows how he was indifferent to her. He enjoyed her body and apartment freely, but he didn’t make her happy at all and didn’t even think about it before. This realization elicited guilt about Glenna. What is more, in spite of Ig’s mistreatment of her, her devotion on Ig was revealed again in own word “ You’d close your eyes and I’d know you were thinking of her, but I wouldn’t care because I could make you feel good and that was all right…you seemed like you’d be happy to sit by me all day. But I hated knowing I’d never matter” (p. 322). This confession shows Glenna is really thirst of being loved by people, so she just put her heart and soul into Ig. This emphasized how dedicated Glenna was to Ig with significant contrast, which reverses the readers’ first impression of Glenna and put more sympathy on her images.

Dramatically, this reversal peaks when Ig sees her entering into the old foundry in chapter 44, which led Ig’s advice and gift for her. After all descriptions about her looks are ended, the author wrote “She had on too much makeup…… It hurt Ig, looking at her and seeing how it was all put together in a kind of desperate plea: Want me, somebody want me” (p. 319). Even though physical description of Glenna was described several times throughout the novel and was always same, Ig’s interpretation of her look is quite sympathetic and even desperate. He found her inner mind yelled at people, for seeking attention, which stimulated reader’s mind and led sympathy for her. Furthermore, this interpretation leads Ig’s advices on her life by using horns’ abilities. By using horns’ abilities, Ig said to Glenna, “You’re people, too. Do something nice for yourself… You got a little revenge… and give yourself a vacation” (p. 323). In this novel, Glenna firstly seemed as a minor character who was nothing more than a street girl. However, Ig’s advice on her helps to build a great amount of sympathy for her because readers acknowledged the fact that all her elements that looks negative at first were due to the lack of self-esteem and love, so building the self-esteem with ‘give less and take more’ will be the best solution. With Glenna’s crying as a response, this represents the author’s ultimate attitudes on Glenna that she is not a bad person nor a prostitute, but a pitiful person who needs affection from others and self-esteem.

Like Snape led Harry Potter fandom to turn their hatred towards him into love through his reversal, changed descriptions on Glenna turned my mind on her into strong affection. Through her, I could see myself. Her looks—tattoos or clothes—helped her to look strong superficially, and her behavior helped others to consider her as a whore, but what she really wants from this looks and behavior is a true love and concerns from others, which I could sympathize with her. Like her, I always care about my physical looks for getting positive images from others, not for myself and I always feel the thirst of getting great amount of attention. So when I read her “desperate plea: Want me, somebody want me”, it felt like my mind was also screaming to others, and when Ig ordered Glenna by using horns’ abilities that “Do something nice for yourself”, this convinced me that Joe Hill presents this message to the readers including me through Ig’s voice. Perhaps, the real message of this novel that was hidden by Joe Hill is not the conflict between the good and evil that is revealed to the eye, but Ig’s cry that we should concern more about loving ourselves.

Net Neutrality (망 중립성) (Korean)

국내에서는 논의가 활발하게 이루어지는 편은 아니지만, 미국등지에서는 활발하게 논의되고 있는 개념이다.

우선 망 중립성을 이야기 하기 전에, 우리가 일상적으로 사용하는 웹서비스가 어떤식으로 작동이 되는지를 생각해보자.

우선 인터넷을 사용하는 사용자 (User)들이 있고, Google이나 Naver, Yahoo같은 웹사이트들이 있을 것이다. 그리고 그 사이에는 개인 사용자들이 웹사이트에 접속할 수 있도록 도움을 주는 서비스 제공자(Internet Service Provider, 이하 ISP)들이 있을 것이다. ISP들의 예로는 우리나라의 경우 KT, SK 브로드밴드정도를 들 수 있겠고, 미국의 경우는 Mediacom, Time Warner Cable 혹은 AT&T등을 들 수 있겠다. 

우리는 ISP들에게 일정 금액을 지불하고서야, 웹사이트에 접속할 수 있게 된다. 따라서 우리가 웹사이트를 접속하기 위해서는 ISP들의 회선을 꼭 타고 들어가야만 한다는 뜻이 된다.

그런데, 이러한 ISP들이 쓸 수 있는 '무기'가 있으니, 다름아닌 데이터 패킷 통제기술 (Data Packet Inspection)이다. 이 기술을 이용해, 서비스 제공회사들은 사용자들이 접속하고 사용하려는 모든 데이터의 흐름을 통제할 수 있다. 특정 웹사이트에 접속하는 속도를 느리게 할 수도 있고, 아이에 차단시킬 수도 있다. 유저들이 사용할 수 있는 속도를 구간별로 나눠서, 요금표를 만들고 빠른속도를 원하는 사람들에게는 더 많은 요금을, 느린속도로도 충분히 만족한다면 좀더 저렴한 요금을 부과하기도 한다.

하지만 이 때, ISP들의 통제에 반하여 비판적인 시각이 등장한다. "과연 ISP들이 사용자의 데이터 흐름을 제한하는 것이 옳은가? 그들이 이를 악용할 수 있지는 않을까? 이윤을 추구하다 결국 사용자들의 권리를 침해하는 것은 아닌가?" 이러한 질문에서 시작되어 등장하게 된 개념이 망 중립성이다. 

망 중립성은 ISP들이 모든 데이터를 동등하게 취급해야 한다 - 즉, 특정 데이터를 통제해서는 안된다 - 고 말한다. 이를 주장하는 사람들의 주된 논리는 이러하다.

*아래 예시는 예시일 뿐이며, 절대 사실이 아님을 미리 명시한다.

- 많은 한국 사용자들이 주로 이용하는 포탈 사이트는 네이버이다.

- 이중에 KT(ISP)의 인터넷을 사용하는 유저들이 상당수를 차지한다. 

- 그런데 유명 포탈사이트 중 하나인 다음은 그들의 점유율을 높이고자 KT와 비밀리에 계약을 한다.

- KT는 서비스 공급자로써 네이버의 서버로 접근하는 속도를 의도적으로 늦추고, 다음의 서버로 접근하는 속도를 빠르게 한다.

- 직간접적으로 다음은 이득을 보고, KT또한 이득을 보지만, 소비자들은 원하는 인터넷사이트에 접속하는데 불편함을 겪는다 (궁극적으로 손해를 본다).