Karma: Seven Joseon Notices (2023)

Laughter is the best medicine

We might think it odd that comedy and mystery share anything in common. Mystery excludes comedy and comedy excludes mystery. To put it more succinctly, mystery excludes raucous laughter and comedy excludes seriousness. But the playfulness of Joo Won (Hwang Dae Myung), the Korean spideypool, is never frivolous or decorative. The mystery is reconciled with comedy. The compulsion of the comedy to transform problems of cultural heritage crime into solutions adumbrates its larger purpose, which is to explore and then contain fraught social issues within a lithesome and orderly performance narrative

It makes a spectacle out of the folly of the species. Through laughter, we behold ourselves as the subject of great folly in order that the folly might be recognized and corrected

My ratings would have been higher if not for the so-called "romance"

"Stop getting into fights. Why did you help her? Tell me, do you have a crush on her?"

Kissing, hand-holding, and acts of rescue between two men or two women are seen as "platonic" gestures devoid of sexual undertones. The desexualization of same-sex interactions stands in contrast to the hypersexualization of opposite-sex interactions, where the slightest physical contact is sensationalized and fetishized. This is a poignant illustration of the biases and prejudices that permeate our social fabric. It's a tragedy to those who think

Luckily, the possession of a sense of humor ranks high on my list of essential personal attributes. Joo Won (Hwang Dae Myung) possessed that sense of humor. I was patient with him, for although Joo Won (Hwang Dae Myung) lost his wisdom to a woman, he retained fragments and remnants of his humor

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