Anya's Musings

--> THIS BLOG POST CONTAINS SPOILERS ABOUT A MOMENT TO REMEMBER AND BOYS OVER FLOWERS.
 
--> Of my list of the most absolute favorite movies, A Moment To Remember definitely comes in the top 5. I am a sucker for good romance stories and this film is an embodiment of that. But more on my views and reviews on the film later… I’m here to talk about memories right now. In A Moment To Remember, the female lead starts losing her memory one by one, the tragedy being that she forgets the love of her life. Of course, the love of her life, devastated as he is, tries to keep their memories alive for the both of them. There is a line in the movie that keeps coming more than once and it goes: When the memory dies, so does the person.

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--> The reason I talk about Boys Over Flowers is that in the very last episode, Goo Jun Pyo (ah, definitely one of my fav fictional characters till date…giggle!) meets with an accident and is critical for a while and all that but when he does wake up, he’s fine except that he doesn’t remember his girlfriend Guem Jan Di. Which wouldn’t have been such a big deal had the entire series not revolved around the true love and struggles in love of Jun Pyo and Jan Di. Anyways, I, like the F4 and Jan Di were shocked and vexed when Jun Pyo couldn’t remember her, fretting over their fate (he eventually does remember her…True Love is rewarded in all the K-dramas that I’ve watched till date, yay!). I remember reading a fan blog on that episode of Boys Over Flowers at that time. That post was written on the same date that finale episode was aired in South Korea, the internet was buzzing with the end of a series that had contributed so much in the Korean Wave. The blogger wrote about the part where Jun Pyo loses his memory and fails to remember only one person and I remember her critsising the plot saying that it was a fake disease.
 
--> And at that time, the only reason I didn’t like that comment was because of my loyalty towards Boys Over Flowers and anything that Lee Min Ho is associated with. But I never really did believe that this selective amnesia is a real thing and dismissed as a mere plot device. And I also remember thinking, oh well how convenient! If we could just happen to forget one thing or one event that pains us, or even person that even though we love truly, just is so difficult to keep loving. I had thought that. I wasn’t happy that he had forgotten her, I just wanted it for myself as a defense mechanism, just like I had wanted Son Ye Jin’s character’s Alziemer from A Moment To Remember.
 
--> I should clarify that never for a moment was I serious about wanting any of that. That was just me getting melodramatic and coping with the ongoing shit in my life, that’s all. I tend to do that. This is how I deal with stuff. I watch or read a lot of stuff and imagine myself in highly dramatic situations with the most bizarre and fantastical solutions and then when I’ve let out my steam, I am ready to deal with stuff practically.
 
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Women--how they should or should not be, what they should or should not wear, what they should or should not marry, what line of academics & careers they should or should not take--seems to be one of the most talked about topics right now. And maybe I've turned into somewhat of a pessimist in the last few years, but none of it is making me, a woman, feel any better about myself or my own position in the society I am forced to live in. I have to admit, it is not the easiest thing to be a woman (at least in the time and space I am inhabiting) not because I am powerless or lack resources, but because it is not socially acceptable for me to go and get those resources for myself. You know what I mean? Ironically, it is very much the social acceptable thing to do for everyone to talk about women as independent entities, capable of living their lives their own ways.

I think people are a bit confused over this issue, as is bound to happen with any topic that deviates from tradition even to the slightest degree. I'm not denying that the whole women's' emancipation topic hasn't evolved for the better...I am merely saying that we have a long, long way to go still. Take, for example, the 16th December, 2012 Delhi Rape Case. It was horrifying, inhumane to say the least. And I am happy that now it is politically incorrect to question what the victim in question was wearing, who she was with, and what time she was out. I say "politically incorrect" simply because since that day I have met quite a few people who still ask those questions but when they are safely hidden in their unquotable domestic circle. What did take me by surprise was the number of people--men and women--who seemed to have wanted protection for women because they are apparently weak (as opposed to horrible people roaming about out in the open).

Recently, a new ad campaign against female sex trafficking has got the entire country taking. There are three photographs of three women dressed up as three different Hindu goddesses. These goddesses are battered, they have been beaten up, are bruised. And the campaign has achieved two major objectives: it has evoked a sense of horror among the audience to get everyone taking about it.