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I have never seen a Korean movie where the police played a role of any significance in which they didn�t engage in police brutality, mind-boggling displays of incompetence, or some combination thereof. I think this first really clicked with me when I watched Na Hong-jin�s The Chaser, but it was already there with Bong Joon-ho�s Memories of Murder: I was all like, �Shit, do these cops ever not beat up the suspect?� And the answer was no, no they do not. I have no idea what the actual incidence of police brutality is in South Korea, but Korean filmmakers pretty universally hold their cops in contempt (with the possible exception of Lee Chang-dong; I have seen two of his films, Secret Sunshine and Poetry, and although the cops had minor roles in these movies, they were still visible, and they did not beat anyone up, at least as far as I remember.)
Which brings us to Howling (2012), which�let�s find an American comparison here�is sort of like Serpico if Serpico�s problem wasn�t his integrity, but that he was a woman. Or it�s like Samuel Fuller�s White Dog, if the dog attacked pimps and drug dealers instead of black people (I haven�t actually seen either of these two movies, what with my prejudice against American films; I should probably at least see White Dog; Jonathan Rosenbaum seems to think so highly of it that I suspect Mr. Fuller may very well have transcended his American-ness). Howling is about a rookie detective (Jesus Christ, is it ever not about a rookie detective) name Cha Eun-young (Lee Na-young) who carries within her a terrible burden: ovaries; two of them, to be precise, and all the other female sexual paraphernalia that typically accompanies them. Now, it may be 2012, but apparently most male Korean detective have never worked with a woman before and they would find the whole notion of a female detective laughable were it not so baffling. Detective Cha is partnered with the older�and of course bitter and hardened by experience�Detective Jo Sang-gil (played by Song Kang-ho, who, as I�ve mentioned in previous posts, is in virtually every Korean movie, but for good reason, because he�s always fantastic). Detective Jo is a misogynistic asshole and so are all his male colleagues and the first half hour or so of this film is focused largely on them treating Eun-young like shit; one almost forgets that the movie is called Howlingand that the Netflix summary led one to believe that the movie would be about a canine serial killer.
And by the by, as I point out how horribly sexist these Korean cops are, I should observe that (a) I have no idea what they�re like IRL, and (b) I don�t know what it�s like in other countries� police forces either. I know the United States has had female detectives for a while now (several decades, I think), and although I�m sure they�ve faced plenty of discrimination, I�d like to think that it wasn�t as egregious as what Eun-young has to put up with (because seriously, within her first five minutes in the office, she already has grounds for like ten sexual harassment and hostile workplace lawsuits).
Oh, but then the movie shifts into serial killing dog territory, and let me assure you, it�s a much less stupid premise than you might think. Because�and I don�t think this is giving too much away�dogs don�t go around killing pimps and drug dealers on their own; they do so because they�ve been trained to do so. And so sexist Detective Jo Song-gil and put-upon rookie Cha Eun-young must try to overcome their differences (well, really just Song-gil, he�s the sexist asshole) to try to solve the case while dealing with the competitive in-fighting and back-biting that seems to make every cinematic Korean criminal investigation a catastrophic ordeal for all involved.
Several points to make in general about the film: first, and this is vague, but that�s because I don�t want to give away plot details, because this is, after all, a police procedural, and so the plot is important to the pleasure of watching it; but let me say that this was an enjoyable movie. Now, that�s a thoroughly useless critical appraisal, but I want to put it out there.
Second, I generally don�t go in for �animal movies� or �movies where we�re supposed to feel an emotional attachment to animals,� but that�s probably because so many of them are mawkish shit. This movie isn�t mawkish shit; Amores Perros may have been mawkish�maybe�but it wasn�t shit. Howling and Amores Perros are both movies that are arguably �about� dogs, but it�s never just about the dogs as an end in themselves (�Will Fido overcome his injuries to reach the cancer-stricken orphans in time?� (I don�t know what American �animal� movies are about, clearly.)) These movies are about what humans do to animals and what this says about what they do to each other. I suspect that�s the case with Fuller�s White Dog as well.
My third point is that I haven�t seen such a painful cinematic depiction of misogyny in quite some time. Now, I�ve seen a fair number of Lars von Trier movies, but they were more along the lines of Europaand Melancholia than Dancer in the Dark or Dogville or other movies where I understand that the female protagonists just suffer one misery after another, so much so that I�m not sure I�m �up for that.� I recall reading that Bjork was seriously emotionally upset after her performance in Dancer in the Dark (and she�s never made another movie since), and so I want to make sure I�m in the proper, non-depressive mindset before I see that movie. And as long as we�re on the topic, I don�t buy into the notion that von Trier is a misogynist. A depiction of something is not an endorsement. If it were, then we�d have to say that Steven Spielberg was a Nazi sympathizer, what with his depiction of the Holocaust in Schindler�s List. When von Trier made Antichristwhich, spoiler alert, features a graphic scene of female genital self-mutilation, the �von-Trier-is-a-misogynist� crowd seemed to think they�d found their smoking gun. But all it proved was that von Trier was willing to show the self-mutilation of a woman (rather than hiding it away off-screen); he was hardly endorsing it. If you�ve seen the movie, then you know that Charlotte Gainsbourg�s clitordectomy is infused with tragedy and horror; it�s hardly presented as a good thing or a desirable outcome. Somewhere I read an anti-von Trier piece which alleged that he�d hired a �misogyny expert� to assist him on Antichrist, and the writer seemed to think that this �proved� the case against von Trier. One wonders if the writer had actually seen the movie. Because in the movie, Gainsbourg�s character is writing a dissertation on violence against women in the Middle Ages, and so it makes sense that von Trier would consult a �misogyny expert� (whatever that actually is) in order to lend credibility to Gainsbourg�s character�s researches. I�ve digressed pretty far here, but I wouldn�t like to miss an opportunity to defend the much-maligned von Trier and a misunderstood masterpiece like Antichrist, which I frequently find myself returning to in my critical evaluations of other works.
But to return to Howling, which is a film about misogyny, first and foremost, before it becomes a film about what humans do to animals and therefore to each other. I�ve never read Stieg Larsson�s Girl With the Dragon Tattoo (because I�ve heard that it�s really, reallyshitty) but I�ve always been struck by the original Swedish title: M�n som hatar kvinnor. That translates as �Men who hate women.� Now, no surprise that the American distributors of the book gave it a less combative title, just as they took Primo Levi�s heartbreakingly titled Auschwitz memoir, Se questo � un uomo (If This is a Man) and gave it the banal and vaguely �inspirational� title Survival in Auschwitz. God, there�s something really insufferably American about that.
But Howling, I say, could quite plausibly have been entitled Men Who Hate Women. And that�s not what I was expecting going into this movie, and I don�t know to what extent the people who made it were aware of it, but that�s what it�s about, and it depicts it in a really effectively disturbing way.
My fourth and final point is that I�m not including pictures in this post because of this: When I post pictures to my blog, I usually post pictures that I find on the internet (because I don�t know how to do �screen capture� stuff on my laptop, in my technological na�vet�, for which I beg your indulgence). So if I need a still image from a movie, I�ll just do an image search and find a suitable image for whatever it is that I�m discussing and then I�ll use the URL to upload that to Blogger. I�ve never been in the habit of citing the sources of these pictures, because�this was my line of thinking�they�re just screen stills, and they no more �belong� to whatever website they come from than they do to me. The copyright holder is the owner of the film in question, and I�m merely using the image for purposes of criticism, which is certainly fair use. However, the other day, in my post on Warriors of the Rainbow: Seediq Bale, I found that one of my pictures had been replaced with a text which read, �I steal pictures from [censored, because I don't want to create a conflict with some stranger over the internet].� I�m not quite sure what [this fucking website] is�it appears to be a blog by an [nationality] living in Taiwan�but apparently that [nationality] felt that he �owned� the screen capture from Wei Te-Sheng�s film, and that I had somehow �stolen� it from him. And he felt this strongly enough to try to humiliate me by sabotaging the image on my blog with his [censored website] bullshit. Now, he only �owns� the picture in the sense that he did the screen capture (unless he borrowed it from elsewhere, I don�t know). The owners of the picture are whatever group of people produced Warriors of the Rainbow: Seediq Bale. The worst I can be accused of is a breach of blog etiquette, for which I will not admit any wrong-doing. How should I cite my fucking pictures: �This image from Film X, which is owned by the producers of Film X, was �screen grabbed� by Some Random [nationality] Guy, who deserves credit for it for some reason?� Well, I�m sure as fuck not doing that. So, until I work out a better system of getting images for my blog, I will refrain from posting pictures, not because I think I did anything wrong�I most certainly did not�but because I don�t want to deal with this kind of harassing bullshit from complete strangers.
Well, there we go, how nice to vent my spleen, like an adolescent bitching into his/her xanga (remember xangas? I know I generally don�t!) And on that note, allow me to conclude by recommending Yu Ha�s Howling, a bracing study of misogyny and the nature of human-animal-human relationships, which is now available to stream on Netflix.
Post-script: I have had "computer things" explained to me by a friend, and I almost understand my adversary. By "hotlinking" to the images hosted on his site, he bears the burden of their bandwidth while I get the page views. Had he just sent me a message explaining this, we could have come to an understanding, because I can see why this would be vexing. But he didn't. Instead, he just set up a mechanism to harass me. So I stand by all the venom that I directed at his fucking website.
Post-script: I have had "computer things" explained to me by a friend, and I almost understand my adversary. By "hotlinking" to the images hosted on his site, he bears the burden of their bandwidth while I get the page views. Had he just sent me a message explaining this, we could have come to an understanding, because I can see why this would be vexing. But he didn't. Instead, he just set up a mechanism to harass me. So I stand by all the venom that I directed at his fucking website.
