Beverly Hills Kids
I was a good kid. How good? I was good enough to eat spinach because Popeye told us to. Micky Mouse, Tom and Jerry were all my childhood friends. But I grew out of them quite quickly. I was inquisitive enough to enjoy watching Indiana Jones. I supported the good, watching Six Million Dollar Man and Sommers. Those were my childhood friends. But the best of all was ‘Beverly Hills Kids’. It showed us the ‘real’ life, instead of some sort of super powers. I dreamed of growing up quickly to dress up like them. I wanted to date boys like they did in the program, until….. I realized that they do not speak Korean!
All those foreign TV shows were dubbed in Korean, and without a doubt, I thought that all those people were speaking in Korean! Looking back, it was weird enough to believe it, because if you had a look into the mirror, it was quite obvious that those people did not look anything like myself. But I strongly believed that I would ‘be’ like them when I grew up. I strongly believed that they spoke Korean. When I realized that they didn’t just not speak Korean, but also they didn’t even know if there was a country called Korea, it shocked me gravely. I was different from them. Then who was I?
I learned Plato, Aristotle, Hegel and Kant in my philosophy classes. I read Little Women and Anne of Green Gables and it proved me that I was a person of culture. Soon I started listening to Elton Jones and Beatles, and always insisted to wear tight jeans. I thought all of them were part of myself… until they were not really ‘mine’. I was confused. Who was I then, a fake American?
Whenever I go abroad, I had to put an effort to emphasize the differences between Chinese(or sometimes Japanese) and Korean culture. ‘They’ spit so easily that Korea is the part of China and under the Chinese cultural umbrella. I actively fought that Korea has our own culture, but not just me but also them, we all neglected the fact that actually the cultural umbrella wasn’t from China, but from the U.S.A.. That’s why I started to track back the Korean history… When and why has it become like this?
Most of the cultures that I’ve lived in….were not uniquely Korean…. Then I wondered, if I really ‘had’ to have something uniquely Korean when I already am Korean….. Still, what makes me feel slightly uncomfortable is the thought that I might be the result of the cultural colonization without my knowledge…. Those were the moments that made me step out of where I was, but to see things in a bigger context. I, myself, might be a myth, but a result of the society’s layered choices….
Many years have passed, and it was one of the days that I was in Berlin. I met one of the German playwright to import his play to Korea. He was intelligent, kind, humorous and even good-looking. We had a profound conversation about German theater scenes including the directors like Ostermeier and Castorf. The city of Berlin was filled with culture and art and this guy was, too. It couldn’t be better. When we departed, he kindly closed my coat, saying that he was surprised that there existed a theater in Korea. I did not understand what he meant at first. He was curious if theaters in Korea had the same shape like the western theaters, such as playing on the stage, etc… He mumbled away saying that theaters seemed so European to himself….. At first, I guess I was angry, thinking that he was kinda ignoring Asian culture…. “Of course, we have stages and theater buildings in Korea. It’s basically the same shape, because modern Korean theaters are imported from western cultures.” Ouch! By the time I spit out that sentence, I, myself got confused…. I was grown in a theater… I’ve seen theaters since I was very small, even before Micky Mouse… and I just said that theaters were not something Korean…. Then who am I….? A fake European…?
