{"id":16161,"date":"2026-11-14T02:19:52","date_gmt":"2026-11-14T02:19:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sotnews.agency\/?p=16161"},"modified":"2026-11-14T02:19:52","modified_gmt":"2026-11-14T02:19:52","slug":"are-you-my-friend-or-just-content","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sotnews.agency\/?p=16161","title":{"rendered":"Are you my friend or just content?"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\n \t<\/i> Read Time:<\/span>6 Minute, 17 Second <\/div>\n\n <\/div>


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A scene from the film “Possible Love”\/ Courtesy of Netflix<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In “Possible Love,” you know everything matters. When the camera moves from the front seat of the car to the back, when a hand rests on a table or a face stays on screen a couple of seconds longer than it should, you know it means something because you trust in director Lee Chang-dong and you know he\u2019s trying to tell you something. You just don’t know what. Not yet, anyway.<\/p>\n

Watching the film is rather like reading a poem in which line 27 suddenly changes your understanding of line eight, which itself only made sense after line 15. Everything is connected. Everything is deliberate. And if you\u2019ve seen “Poetry,” “Burning,” “Peppermint Candy,” “Oasis” or “Secret Sunshine,” you know something is going to happen and it\u2019s probably going to hurt you.<\/p>\n

And there’s something fantastically sexy about surrendering yourself to a master. Lee knows exactly what he’s doing, and he has absolutely no interest in making things easier for you.<\/p>\n

It’s exhausting. It’s also magnificent.<\/p>\n

Lee shows us a film about two couples from very different worlds. Mi-ok (Jeon Do-yeon) and her husband Ho-seok (Sul Kyung-gu) are struggling with the aftermath of industrial layoffs and a violent labor dispute. Ye-ji (Cho Yeo-jeong) is a documentary filmmaker married to the wealthy Sang-woo (Zo In-sung). She wants to capture the lives of the working class.<\/p>\n

What follows is the best exploration of class, power and human relationships I’ve seen in years. It\u2019s certainly far more complicated than Bong Joon-ho\u2019s going upstairs and downstairs symbolism of “Parasite” or whatever “Squid Game” eventually tried to say among the machine guns, drugs and transgender character. Lee’s film is not the Disney version of capitalism=bad that rich people like to sell us. Here, all four central characters are intelligent, complicated and fully realized human beings. They are beautiful, selfish, generous, frightened and contradictory. Just like us.<\/p>\n

At times, like with his other work, you feel as though you’re watching a documentary. Which is weird because you’re watching a film about somebody making a documentary. And it feels like a cinematic hall of mirrors that would give a film studies lecturer a migraine (or a hard-on).<\/p>\n

The power of Edward Said’s “Orientalism” has been enthusiastically kicked around by people on both sides of the ideological divide. But I think one of Said’s most important insights is in the relationship between power and representation. Who gets to describe the world? Who gets to define other people? Whose story becomes truth? Power is narrative and the ability to construct and disseminate it. And this, I think, is one of the things Lee is exploring.<\/p>\n

Both women are obsessed with capturing things. Ye-ji works to document the lives of the working class. She has her camera, her artistic ambitions and the financial means to turn their experiences into something that can be distributed across the world. She is, I think, Lee Chang-dong at times. But Mi-ok also wants to capture things. She photographs Ye-ji’s expensive handbag. She leans awkwardly over tables to photograph food. But her photographs remain largely confined to her phone. At one point, she admits she doesn’t really have anyone to share them with. Only one has the power to turn those recordings into a public narrative. Mi-ok\u2019s struggles will be seen by millions. Yeji lives life unaffected.<\/p>\n

Over the course of the film, the relationship between the two women slowly transforms from friendship into exploitation. At the beginning, we sense (though not absolutely) genuine warmth. Fueled by soju and smiles. Ye-ji doesn’t appear malicious. She wants to help. She wants to understand. She perhaps even loves the people she’s filming. But there is a line. And at some point, that line is silently crossed. And isn’t that how exploitation sometimes works?<\/p>\n

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A scene from the film “Possible Love”\/ Courtesy of Netflix<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The exploited<\/strong><\/p>\n

Instagram once seemed like a wonderful way of sharing photographs with friends. Now our memories, desires, insecurities, relationships and fears are catalogued by companies whose only interest is how effectively we can be converted into advertising revenue. The transition happened so gradually that most of us barely noticed (except the people writing about Enshittification).<\/p>\n

The best or worst thing about watching “Possible Love” or any Lee Chang-dong movie is what it does to your own mind. It\u2019s like a therapy session you never asked for nor wanted. After being here for over 20 years, my job is now to understand Korea and communicate it to people. I lecture daily to hundreds. I host a podcast. I write this newspaper column. I like to think I’m doing these things out of genuine curiosity and a desire to understand other people.<\/p>\n

But sometimes when I visit a temple, I’m already thinking about how I\u2019m gonna use it to explain Buddhism. When I meet someone cool or weird, even attractive, part of my brain immediately wonders whether they might make a good podcast guest. I check their language skill, their research.<\/p>\n

Oh God. Am I Ye-ji? I am! F*ck.<\/p>\n

I’d much rather imagine myself as Mi-ok. The ordinary person, the one struggling bravely against oppression. I’m certainly not rich. But I have a certain access that allows me to tell stories about Korea and distribute them in a way that may never reach the people I’m describing. That’s a bloody uncomfortable thought to have when trying to watch a movie. But it\u2019s also why we should watch (good) movies and engage in the humanities. In three hours, I\u2019ve gone from being a middle-aged English man teaching Korean studies to an upper-class Korean woman with designer handbags and the unconscious ability to exploit others. And I didn\u2019t even have to change my pronouns. Others will, of course, find themselves in other characters. And, on repeated viewings, I will do the same. Becoming more beautifully complicated each time.<\/p>\n

Castaway on the moon<\/strong><\/p>\n

Lee ends the film with an uncomfortably long shot of the moon. And Mi-ok, who has spent the film photographing things, takes a picture of it \u2026 but she doesn’t send it to Yeji!! We see the unsent photo, idle on her phone.<\/p>\n

There is something about this. But what? To not pimp your butterfly. To not share. To leave the Tao unspoken. To let something remain yours. To allow a moment to exist without an audience (or an algorithm). To say that the love between classes is possible? Or impossible?<\/p>\n

Perhaps one of the possibilities of love that Lee is asking us to consider is the possibility of seeing another thing or person without needing to possess them. When the most humane thing we can do is put the camera down.<\/p>\n

This movie, like a great album, painting or book, has entered my consciousness and already slowly begun rearranging the things inside. It has changed not only how I think about cinema, but how I look at other people and my own place in the world.<\/p>\n

And, of course, having spent the best part of this film worrying about the exploitation involved in turning other people’s lives into material, I’ve now gone and written a newspaper column about it. The irony isn’t lost on me.<\/p>\n

But that’s what Lee Chang-dong does. He makes you question things you didn’t even realize needed questioning. A damn genius!<\/p>\n

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A scene from the film “Possible Love”\/ Courtesy of Netflix In “Possible Love,” you know everything matters. When the camera moves from the front seat of the car to the back, when a hand rests on a table or a face stays on screen a couple of seconds longer than it should, you know it…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"rop_custom_images_group":[],"rop_custom_messages_group":[],"rop_publish_now":"initial","rop_publish_now_accounts":{"facebook_2277560469115098_106292521332774":"","twitter_aToxNzczMzI3Njk4OTg4ODUxMjAxOw==_1773327698988851200":""},"rop_publish_now_history":[],"rop_publish_now_status":"pending","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_templately_pack_id":"","_templately_imported_at":"","_templately_source":"","_templately_import_session_id":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[16,14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16161","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-korea","category-trending-news"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t