Norah Week 2 - Behind the Mask
One thing about me is that I love K-dramas. Whenever someone asks me what my favorite TV show or movie is, I usually can’t think of a single American TV show; my mind just goes straight to K-dramas.
Over the summer, I had time to binge a few K-dramas. Out of all of them, the one that stood out to me the most was Flower of Evil, a romantic thriller that centers around a hidden identity. This show had me staying up at night to binge this show because each episode left me wanting more.
Flower of Evil follows a seemingly perfect family consisting of a metal craftsman husband, a detective wife, and their young daughter. However, the husband is actually the son of a serial killer and is living under the identity of another person. A new string of murders leads his wife to start looking for him, not realizing that he is right next to her. As the husband tries to hide his identity to protect their happy family, his wife slowly realizes that her husband was the person she was looking for all along and begins to question his love for her. Although she initially struggles with the pain of being lied to by her husband, she eventually understands why he did what he did and goes out of her way to protect him, even with her career as a detective on the line.
Watching this show led me to wonder: if I was hiding a dark past and using a fake identity, would I also hide it from my partner? As much as I value honesty, I think I would make the same decision to protect the happiness I have. I’d rather live with the guilt of lying than lose my partner. It would only hurt my partner if they knew of my background, so I definitely understand why he did what he did in the show.
But then, if I look at it from the perspective of his wife, I’m not sure if I would’ve accepted him back as quickly as she did. It was a very serious breach of trust that would’ve been hard to repair, no matter how much they loved each other, but I guess that’s why it’s a work of fiction and not something meant to be realistic.
Overall, no matter how unrealistic and how many plot holes the online posts say there were in this show, I genuinely loved binging this show. I really liked this concept of having to hide your identity from your loved one in a K-drama and putting myself into the characters’ shoes to reflect on how I would react to these hidden identities. I would definitely recommend this show to anyone who’s interested!
Hi Norah, I really enjoyed how you connected Flower of Evil to a question that could actually apply to real life. Your point of choosing between honesty and protecting loved ones really made me think about how there are situations where lying is justified and seems like the only solution. I also do agree that rebuilding the couple’s trust would be much harder than what the show makes it seem, but it would also be interesting to see how their relationship would change if the secret was something that put the entire family in danger. The story also reminded me of another TV show, Dexter, where Dexter Morgan is a serial killer who hides his true identity from his family, and each time a new person finds out, it results in loss. I was able to draw parallels to this, but it seems that the main character in Flower of Evil had a much stable and happier ending than what Dexter had.
ReplyDeleteHi Norah! First of all, WOW, that is an absolutely insane plot. I’ve always known K-Dramas to be dramatic, of course, but that is truly another type of complexity. This show seems really similar to Death Note because of how the killer and the detective were working side by side. That is probably one of my favorite anime because of the suspense of when the detective will realize that the killer has been right beside him all along. In this plot, the two were simply friends that did not even know each other before the search for the anonymous murderer. But the addition of a romantic relationship, a marriage, between these two characters must make it so hard to antagonize the husband, because of how he may be originally portrayed as a loving partner. I love how you saw the message of this incredibly dramatic show and reflected upon yourself. I love doing that too, because it makes me wonder “what if?”, even though it is highly unlikely. I personally am not sure what stance I would take if I was in the wife’s position. What if I cannot trust my husband? What if I don’t speak out in time and he hurts me? But on the other hand, what if he truly is a changed person who only wants the best for me? What if I regret speaking out? Thank goodness this isn’t a common scenario, because that is one sticky situation.
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