Samguk Yusa and drama watching
Dec. 23rd, 2004 03:07 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tarigwaemirBlair Hall Apts., on the Feast of St. John of Cantius
I am safely back at home, idling away my time by lounging around on the couch and reading an English translation of Samguk Yusa, a semihistorical account of the Three Kingdoms to United Silla era in Korea. I say "semihistorical" because it mostly concerns itself with legends and apocryphal stories about various kings and generals, and the last section of the book is devoted to stories about famous Buddhist monks. Samguk Yusa goes from the familiar to the very strange to the downright bizarre: I'm used to infants being hatched from eggs (a relic of sun worship, according to the translator), but not at all used to hearing about the unusual length of the king's phallus (apparently they had to find a wife who was seven feet tall in order to...um...accomodate him). There was also this weird, weird story about a nobleman's daughter who dreamed that she urinated on the capital city. Her sister offered to buy that dream from her for a skirt and ended up marrying the crown prince and...um..."flooding" the city with her children. So, er, liquid excretion = bearing offspring? Er...
But no, most of the stories are relatively sane and mostly relate heroic deeds and supernatural encounters. There is frequent mention of dragons. ^_^ Also, I've resolved that if I ever decide to do NaNoWriMo (hah!), I am going to write an extremely romanticized and historically inaccurate story about the Hwarangdo. Because they are such good fodder for "guilty pleasure" writing. The "hwa" stands for flower, "rang" for (male) youth, and "do" for way. Basically the Hwarangdo were selected from the cream of the crop among the aristocratic young men in Silla and taught not only how to fight and command armies, but learned history, poetry, politics, etc. In other words, the perfect aristocrats. Apparently, they were selected on basis of their talent, birth, and physical beauty. Ahahahaha. The Hwarangdo code of honor requires "the spirit of loyalty to King, filial piety to parents, sincerity to friends, bravery in war and mercy in killing animals" (according to the footnotes in the translation of Samguk Yusa). I think the associations with romantic chivalry are clear. ^_^
Last night, we watched the first four episodes of Love Story in Harvard, that drama I mentioned a month or so ago about two Harvard law school students caught in a dramatic love triangle with a Harvard med school student. (They also end up being chased after by a Harvard Business School graduate and a Harvard sophomore. Who is a biology concentrator. >_< Urgh. I think biology concentrators should sue for slander.) I have to say the actors are pretty, particularly the female leads, but their acting is terrible. It doesn't help of course that only one of them can speak English, and she has a relatively minor role. Most of the drama was filmed at USC, which apparently has a campus similar to Harvard, and they put in several aerial shots of Eliot and Dunster House (and sometimes John Harvard's statue) to be convincing. (Also, the two main male characters always wear Harvard t-shirts and sweatshirts, lest you forget that they are Harvard students, oh yes they are. >_>) Unfortunately, they failed rather miserably because they neglected to do their research.
One, there is more than one library at Harvard. In fact there are over a dozen, and you definitely can't expect the med students to study at the same library as the law students. Two, Harvard Medical School is across the river at Longwood, while the Law School is in Cambridge, north of the Yard. There's absolutely no way that the law student can accompany the med student to her classes and then make it back in time for his own. Three, I've seen the law school student dorms, and they are dinky and yellow. The law students in the drama though live in this luxurious little house with a kitchen the size of my suite and plenty of rooms to spare. And a bathtub! Who do they think they are, Apley Court? From which I conclude: either HLS students rent houses in Cambridge or USC has really, really nice student housing and the producers forgot to take note of the East coast/West coast housing differences. Four, admittedly I know nothing about law school, but I did hear from an HLS student that most classes in law school for the first year or two are these huge lecture hall classes with several hundred students. No way would a professor be able to remember the students personally enough to call on them by name to answer questions. Also, there's this whole subplot where the Korean law school student gets ignored by the professor who insults him in class and refuses to call on him even when he's the only one with his hand up--um, no professor is going to be so obviously discriminatory. >_> He could get sued after all. (Feel free to correct me on this point; I may place a little too much faith in the Harvard faculty.) Five, putting a Harvard sticker on your laptop is dorky. Six, um, I know it may sound cool to think that the best of the best are being secretly cultivated here at this institution and that businesses/law firms/what-have-you are hovering around monitoring the progress of outstanding students, but it would probably break quite a few laws to let recruiters have access to transcripts and stuff like that.
A more proper review later. I don't think I'll bother finishing the drama though--it isn't terrible, but I have absolutely no curiosity about what's going to happen next. Also, it isn't really finished yet, and we already rented all the videos available here so far. But we are going to finish a full drama during break this time (my mother promised! ^_^).
Yours &c.
I am safely back at home, idling away my time by lounging around on the couch and reading an English translation of Samguk Yusa, a semihistorical account of the Three Kingdoms to United Silla era in Korea. I say "semihistorical" because it mostly concerns itself with legends and apocryphal stories about various kings and generals, and the last section of the book is devoted to stories about famous Buddhist monks. Samguk Yusa goes from the familiar to the very strange to the downright bizarre: I'm used to infants being hatched from eggs (a relic of sun worship, according to the translator), but not at all used to hearing about the unusual length of the king's phallus (apparently they had to find a wife who was seven feet tall in order to...um...accomodate him). There was also this weird, weird story about a nobleman's daughter who dreamed that she urinated on the capital city. Her sister offered to buy that dream from her for a skirt and ended up marrying the crown prince and...um..."flooding" the city with her children. So, er, liquid excretion = bearing offspring? Er...
But no, most of the stories are relatively sane and mostly relate heroic deeds and supernatural encounters. There is frequent mention of dragons. ^_^ Also, I've resolved that if I ever decide to do NaNoWriMo (hah!), I am going to write an extremely romanticized and historically inaccurate story about the Hwarangdo. Because they are such good fodder for "guilty pleasure" writing. The "hwa" stands for flower, "rang" for (male) youth, and "do" for way. Basically the Hwarangdo were selected from the cream of the crop among the aristocratic young men in Silla and taught not only how to fight and command armies, but learned history, poetry, politics, etc. In other words, the perfect aristocrats. Apparently, they were selected on basis of their talent, birth, and physical beauty. Ahahahaha. The Hwarangdo code of honor requires "the spirit of loyalty to King, filial piety to parents, sincerity to friends, bravery in war and mercy in killing animals" (according to the footnotes in the translation of Samguk Yusa). I think the associations with romantic chivalry are clear. ^_^
Last night, we watched the first four episodes of Love Story in Harvard, that drama I mentioned a month or so ago about two Harvard law school students caught in a dramatic love triangle with a Harvard med school student. (They also end up being chased after by a Harvard Business School graduate and a Harvard sophomore. Who is a biology concentrator. >_< Urgh. I think biology concentrators should sue for slander.) I have to say the actors are pretty, particularly the female leads, but their acting is terrible. It doesn't help of course that only one of them can speak English, and she has a relatively minor role. Most of the drama was filmed at USC, which apparently has a campus similar to Harvard, and they put in several aerial shots of Eliot and Dunster House (and sometimes John Harvard's statue) to be convincing. (Also, the two main male characters always wear Harvard t-shirts and sweatshirts, lest you forget that they are Harvard students, oh yes they are. >_>) Unfortunately, they failed rather miserably because they neglected to do their research.
One, there is more than one library at Harvard. In fact there are over a dozen, and you definitely can't expect the med students to study at the same library as the law students. Two, Harvard Medical School is across the river at Longwood, while the Law School is in Cambridge, north of the Yard. There's absolutely no way that the law student can accompany the med student to her classes and then make it back in time for his own. Three, I've seen the law school student dorms, and they are dinky and yellow. The law students in the drama though live in this luxurious little house with a kitchen the size of my suite and plenty of rooms to spare. And a bathtub! Who do they think they are, Apley Court? From which I conclude: either HLS students rent houses in Cambridge or USC has really, really nice student housing and the producers forgot to take note of the East coast/West coast housing differences. Four, admittedly I know nothing about law school, but I did hear from an HLS student that most classes in law school for the first year or two are these huge lecture hall classes with several hundred students. No way would a professor be able to remember the students personally enough to call on them by name to answer questions. Also, there's this whole subplot where the Korean law school student gets ignored by the professor who insults him in class and refuses to call on him even when he's the only one with his hand up--um, no professor is going to be so obviously discriminatory. >_> He could get sued after all. (Feel free to correct me on this point; I may place a little too much faith in the Harvard faculty.) Five, putting a Harvard sticker on your laptop is dorky. Six, um, I know it may sound cool to think that the best of the best are being secretly cultivated here at this institution and that businesses/law firms/what-have-you are hovering around monitoring the progress of outstanding students, but it would probably break quite a few laws to let recruiters have access to transcripts and stuff like that.
A more proper review later. I don't think I'll bother finishing the drama though--it isn't terrible, but I have absolutely no curiosity about what's going to happen next. Also, it isn't really finished yet, and we already rented all the videos available here so far. But we are going to finish a full drama during break this time (my mother promised! ^_^).
Yours &c.
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(no subject)
Date: 2004-12-23 09:03 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-12-23 09:03 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-12-24 12:15 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-12-24 04:50 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-12-25 09:04 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-12-26 02:31 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-12-28 08:37 pm (UTC)And I have not yet met Koreans that smart AND that pretty. Gorgeous Korean students who go to Harvard med or law school? Please. Really smart Koreans going to such schools -- very possible. But pretty to boot? C'mon now!
Anyway, sorry for the rant, but I had to get it off my chest! ^__^;
(no subject)
Date: 2004-12-30 05:42 pm (UTC)Also, if K-drama casts focused less on casting pretty people and actually tried to find good actors, there would be more K-dramas worth watching. >_>