I saw an exhibition Tuesday about censored and self-censored satire. One illustration really struck me as relevant for K-drama. Even if SK at present is not a dictatorship, there are some very strict and often Joseon-ish ideas about what you can and can’t do, and like in the Sageuks, what you can do is often dependant on having and keeping powerful friends.
I think that making a succesful K-drama, and having funding for it, and also delivering a message with progressive ideas that emphasise solidarity and ecology over capitalism can be hard. And it’s frustrating to see the tracks laid out for possible innovative ideas, only to end up in the same old, same old, same old.
But sometimes I think we are meant to see those ideas, and then let the drama continue in a way so the ProductPLacers do not, as we say in Denmark, “get their coffee in the wrong throat” (i.e. down the respiratory tract) or, as they say in the UK, “don’t get their knickers in a twist”.
The illustration was the schematic outline of a satirical political joke. It would have been censored under the rules of that time in France, but in writing the rules were less strict, and so the illustrator asked the readers and viewers to finish the sketch in their (and now in our) own heads:

***
I don’t speak French except a few words (Someone “holding a pair of scissors”, “A woman representing France”), but I understand the idea of having to do the rest of the work myself.

Tag Knights!
@claire2009 (Healer’s) @seeker (Cera) @Reply1988 @jls943 (unaspirated) @coffeprince4eva (RenOlshi) @DncingEmma @lapislazulii @sonai @IsaGC @Gikata @vienibenmio
@marysadanaga @sp2022 @darkcc @GhostofTim @elinor @indyfan @zindigo
and @hacja with whom I was talking about this today.