Tao of K-drama: Building as Cousin

My colleague Margaux Simmons and I share a belief that EVERYTHING on Earth is related, including the soil and the bricks and the toxic waste dumps and bluejays. Everything -- we're all cousins. I wouldn't have thought that a K-drama about a Mafioso would have so much to say about this topic. In fact, I watched because of the fascinating analysis of the building and the show done by Professor Eunju Hwang of Sogang University. I have just finished watching that drama -- Vincenzo -- and there is so much to say about this story of a Korean adoptee who grows up in Italy and, following the murder of his Italian parents, joins the Mafia and rises to consigliere. 

At the top of the list is the building, Geumga, which is a vulnerable and lovable presence throughout the show and a place I had the opportunity to visit with Professor Hwang. It is a real building known as the Sewoon Cheonggye Shopping Center, built in the 1960s as an electronics center. Vincenzo helped a Chinese gangster hide money under the building. Because the gangster has died, Vincenzo wants to get the money as well as a file of incriminating evidence on top business and political leaders, which is also hidden there. The valuables are protected by an elaborate security system and much of the show is about getting around the obstacles for its retrieval. But in that process, what is valuable shifts from gold to cousins, among them, Geumga, which ceases to be seen as a disposable building and is recognized as a treasure. 

The transformation of the inhabitants follows closely on the heels of the transformation in the understanding of the building. The people who live and work there also understood themselves to disposable, easily pushed around, barely making a living in a building that was not meant to endure. Vincenzo -- the gangster with a heart of gold -- impresses them with his ingenuity, fighting skills and unflappable demeanor. They quickly come to count on him to show up at the right moment and change the outcome of events. But this also inspires their own fighting spirit. Over the course of the show, the motley crew emerges as a powerful fighting force, capable of protecting their beloved Vincenzo and their beloved building. A corrupt politician wants to know who stands in his way and they shout, "The Geumga Cassano Family!" Of course, once they identified as part of his family, Vincenzo, who seemingly has an unlimited supply of money, sends them shopping for designer suits, worthy of the Cassano name and image. 

K-drama in general, I have argued, features an arc of restoration. What is the restoration for Vincenzo, who starts out murdering people and ends up murdering people? This is third of many astounding features of this show. Recapper Ren Buenviaje describes a scene in the last episode in which Vincenze seeks the advice of Jeokha, Buddhist monk,who is part of the Geumga Cassano, to think about his future. The monk notes that Vincenzo can't be a Buddha because he has sinned too much. But, he says there is another character in the Buddhist cosmology.  

The monk likens Vincenzo to Vaisravana, who he describes as the scary face at the front of temples that protects Buddha’s ways and all ways human. Vincenzo might not find enlightenment, but he’ll get compliments from Buddha from time to time.

This allows Vincenzo to have a different vision of what he is doing with his life: fighting evil while protecting the innocent. Part of what has been so helpful to the Geumga Cassano family is Vincenzo's explicit naming of evit throughout the show. He names his own actions as evil, and is careful to get consent from the growing team for participating. The naming has helped to solidify their own sense of harms and perfidies of the opposition, pharmaceutical chaebols, loosely modeled on the Sackler family and its promotion of oxycontin. At one point, an intelligence agent who is undercover at Geumga to see what Vincenzo is up to, says in adoration, "He is not Mafia -- he is Che Guevara!" For all those of us who grew up admiring the feats of the Commandante, that is just a perfect moment. 

I think we shy away from naming Evil -- Vincenzo calls us to task. The last word of the show is that evil is vehement and vast. 

But we have also learned that we have the capacity to fight back -- and win -- protecting all who are considerable "disposable,." In these challenging times, that is an important message. And we have learned much about our cousins -- buildings, evil companies, poisons promoted as medicines, designer clothes, people who can stand up to injustice, people who love each other and one another. The list of cousins is, to riff on the closing of Vincenzo, encyclopedic and precious.