young – REEL K-POP

The Vincenzo Villain Saga – Part I

on October 24, 2021October 24, 2021 By francesca_ohop

NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: Yes, I know I have been inactive for a very long time. I was finishing my schooling at NYU and starting a new job, and it was impossible to work on this blog. Personal reasons also kept me away for a while, which I may talk about at some point. Now that I have graduated and am gainfully employed, I can dedicate more time to this, and I fully intend to do so. Some projects that are on the horizon include a video essay series and a podcast, which will see updates in the near future.

If you told me that my favorite show of the last five years would have been a mafia drama where people used parties, bees, pigeons, shamans, and zombies to stop a capitalist overlord from tearing down an apartment building, I would have told you to stop reading fanfiction.

But, here we are.

Studio Dragon’s Vincenzo (2021) has been out for a few months, and it was an absolutely wild ride beginning to end. There’s something about it that keeps you watching, and it somehow delivers on both a satisfying conclusion and making you want the show to never end. It is honestly the most surprising show I’ve watched in a long time. I was here for typical K-Drama shenanigans in mafia framing, but what I got was much, much more. The acting was great, the cinematography was incredible, and the writing – oh my god the writing.

However, what gives the show a special place in my heart is the villain. I have to say, I can’t remember the last time I was this compelled by a villain. Even Orphan Black, my favorite show of all time, took its extremely compelling Season 1 antagonist and redeemed them – the character stayed compelling, but the reasons completely changed over time. I have not seen a show in a long time where the focal point is a character who is genuinely irredeemable.

And, to be honest, I love Vincenzo’s pure-evil reprobate with all my heart.

Villains who lack good qualities are hard to write. They often turn out like omnipotent superpowers or emotionless cardboard cutouts (or caricatures of real people with real issues.) There is also a weird trend in popular discourse that if you like a character, you must like everything they stand for. To avoid this problem, the trend has been to make villainous characters sympathetic, or have something about them that offset their evil.

But, let’s be honest, “old school” Disney villains like Ursula, Scar, and Maleficent are more fun.

The other alternative to making a completely reproachable villain is the twist villain – a character who we have come to know in one capacity, and then is revealed to be someone completely different. Whether it’s a secret identity or an aspect of their personality they’re hiding, there’s some sort of reversal. The main issue that arises is that the villain might be more compelling if it’s not a twist. If the villain is going to be secretly evil, without a shred of good, why bother making them pretend to be a good person?

The fact that Vincenzo is able to pull this off so well is a testament to how good the writing is. A twist villain who also falls into the “pure evil” category, but manages to be compelling without compromising the integrity of the earlier parts of the story – that’s really hard to do. But it works. That’s what throws me so hard. It works. It takes these tropes and it doesn’t subvert them (a trope isn’t always a bad thing) but instead executes them perfectly.

So, while everyone else on the planet is talking about Squid Game, I’m going to take some time to talk about my favorite antagonist on all of television. This will be a five-part series on why the villain of Vincenzo is one of the best villains – if not the best villain – on television this year. The series will spoil the entire show, so I strongly encourage you to watch the show first before reading it. However, if you’re not sure whether or not to watch the show yet and are looking for more in depth reasons to watch, then this series might help you come to a decision.

The series will be as follows:

Introduction + Acting – YOU ARE HERE
Writing
Other Character Interactions
Scene Analysis #1
Scene Analysis #2 + Conclusion

For those of you who haven’t watched the show, this is the last warning. I will be spoiling the entirety of Vincenzo in this character analysis.

Pronto? Andiamo.

Introduction: Episode 4

At the end of Episode 4 of Vincenzo, Vincenzo Cassano (Song Joong Ki) and Hong Chayoung (Jeon Yeo Bin) have decided to burn down the tyrannical Babel Pharmaceuticals – literally. Disguised as a cleanup crew, they evacuated the building, sprayed it with gasoline, and disabled the sprinkler system. While safely tucked away in a van, Vincenzo flicks his signature Cassano Family lighter and drops it into a trail of gasoline, blowing the building sky high.

The chairman of Babel Group, Jang Han Seo (Kwak Dong Yeon) gets out of his car and panics upon seeing the damage. As we come to realize, however, he’s not scared because of the loss of revenue. The building blowing up is a problem for his safety…from another source.

A black car pulls up.

The door opens.

A pair of black Oxfords hit the ground.

Jang Han Seo stares, horrified.

Stepping into focus, wearing a scowl that could kill – and probably has – is…

…Chayoung’s former law intern.

Jang Junwoo, the plucky himbo we’d come to love for his awkward English interjections, was secretly Jang Hanseok (italics intentional) Han Seo’s half-brother and the true owner of Babel Group.

Han Seo panics and tries to salvage the situation. He starts screaming at the wreck about how he’ll get the people who did this, Hanseok silences him. He doesn’t have to shout back at him, he doesn’t have to physically overpower Han Seo. All he has to do is quietly tell his brother to be quiet, and his brother complies in abject fear.

We have barely encountered Hanseok’s true nature.

And yet.

We already know.

Jang Hanseok is a force to be reckoned with.

I swear to god, when this twist happened, I was jubilant. This isn’t a new trope – on tvtropes.org, it’s called “Beware the Silly Ones”. But this is the best execution I have seen of this trope yet. And I am not exaggerating. Every time I watch the show, I get chills when I encounter the true Jang Hanseok again. My friends who’ve watched the show at my suggestion have been just as impressed as myself, and we join forces on the regular to analyze our favorite villain.

Perhaps motivated in part by my love of villains, perhaps also motivated by my love of 2PM’s Ok Taecyeon, this will be a very, very deep dive into Jang Hanseok, to help us understand how to write villains – and how to direct them, as filmmakers.

PART 1: Ok Taecyeon’s Acting

We can’t analyze Vincenzo as a whole without addressing the acting. I was thoroughly impressed by the acting of everyone in the show – some roles were definitely played more for comedy, but I was never taken out of the immersion. Song Joong Ki and Jeon Yeo Bin have amazing chemistry together, and there isn’t a Geumga tenant I didn’t like.

However, the show rides on Taecyeon’s acting more than Song Joong Ki’s. Since we know that Vincenzo is a consigliere from the first minute of the movie, there are no twists in regards to his character or what he’s capable of. So yes, Song Joong Ki’s acting is brilliant, especially with how he subtly shows emotion and throws himself completely into any and every disguise.

But if Ok Taecyeon didn’t sell us on Jang Junwoo, Jang Hanseok wouldn’t be nearly as shocking or compelling as he is.

Taecyeon has to make sure that we’re just as caught off guard as the other characters when we find out who Junwoo really is. However, there has to be at least some consistency between the role of Junwoo and the role of Hanseok, otherwise it’s not believably the same person. Taecyeon’s acting is literally the hinge on which the plot swings.

SPEAKING ENGLISH

The use of English is probably one of the more interesting traits that’s shared between Hanseok and Junwoo. As Junwoo, it comes across as a quirk, almost to establish a childishness. It also implies that Junwoo has a problem assimilating in Korean culture, since he defaults to English constantly. He even states a lack of understanding by asking questions in an almost joking manner – “Koreans forgive you when you beg, right?” It implies that Junwoo is a “safe” character, because he is (allegedly) more focused on not causing a faux pas in this new space. People feel comfortable sharing sensitive information in front of him because they think he’s a fish-out-of-water American. (Without getting into spoilers for Burning, it’s like Steven Yeun’s character in that.)

However, when Hanseok is himself, he is able to fully articulate himself in both languages – using English is a choice as opposed to a default. He will talk business in Korean with a degree of fluency his brother doesn’t have. However, if he needs to, he’ll use English in negotiations – and since his lawyer accomplice Choi Myunghee (Kim Yeo Jin) struggles to do the same, this implies his reach is broader than any of his minions.

Hanseok uses English as a scare tactic as well. Since it is a language he grew up speaking, he expresses himself in anger with English. The angrier he is, the more English he tends to use. Take the car scene, where he screams “STAY. IN. THE CAR.” After beating the car to a pulp, he says, “Am I dreaming? I’ve never lost twice in a row in my life.” Then, to Choi Myunghee and CEO of Wusang Law Firm Han Seunghyuk (Jo Han Chul) he says, “This isn’t real. What is this?!” He does these things in English to establish the severity of the situation. Han Seunghyuk tries speaking English with him, but he’s not nearly as fluent and goes back to speaking Korean. In this scene, speaking English is a form of power that Hanseok wields.

The use of English also establishes a closeness in stature to Vincenzo. There are only three characters who speak more than one language fluently – Hanseok, Vincenzo, and the manager of Geumga Plaza, Cho Youngwoon (Choi Young Joon). These characters all have one up on the rest of the cast in some capacity (though Cho’s actual role in the story isn’t revealed until much later.) And, since the main conflict is between Hanseok and Vincenzo, the fact that both are fluent in another language establishes them as relatively evenly matched, making for a fantastic rivalry.

RELAXED POSTURE

Posture is important for an actor because it’s one of the primary ways we observe tension in a scene. If characters are standing at attention, it implies that there is a need to assert oneself, whether as subordinate or superior. Alternately, a character who appears relaxed portrays a disinterest with appearing inferior or superior. A shift in posture implies a shift in the dynamics.

Hanseok’s posture throughout the show is very relaxed, which implies a disinterest in exercising prowess over another. This plays a major factor when Hanseok is Junwoo. Appearing relaxed at all times implies that he’s willing to let other characters step all over him (which, as we find out when we learn his identity, is a power play.) It also makes him seem more lackadaisical and awkward, which means people look over him like he’s not even there.

Which, of course, is exactly what he wants.

However, the relaxed posture creates an interesting dynamic when Hanseok is his normal identity. Hanseok rarely stiffens or stands to attention – instead, his body remains relaxed, even when threatening another character. This communicates to the audience that Hanseok’s prowess doesn’t need to be stated by the character himself. If Hanseok were consciously standing upright the whole show, it would mean that he has to assert his power. But people are afraid of him no matter what he does. He has no need to appeal to show how powerful he is.

In fact, most of the posture shifts come from Hanseok bending down to someone shorter. It’s an interesting way of establishing dominance because rather than staying above you, he makes it a chore to come down to your level. He’s subconsciously always above you. The only other time that Hanseok shifts his posture is when the shift in power is disrupted – usually towards Vincenzo and Chayoung, but also towards Han Seo. These are the only times in which he stiffens, usually because he’s trying to calculate the next move. It is rarely, if ever, out of fear. I would argue that Hanseok never telegraphs feeling fear. (In fact, I will argue that, but in a later article.)

EVIL EYES

Ok Taecyeon’s ability to express emotion with his eyes is actually incredible. Most of Hanseok’s character is expressed through his facial expressions, often very subtly – which is interesting considering that the character is very over the top. However, it’s Taecyeon’s eyes that I want to talk about here, because so much of the character is wrapped up in them.

Hanseok and “Junwoo” both artificially widen their eyes – by which I mean, holding them open wider. I really hope that Ok Taecyeon invested in eye drops for the role because he does this so often. But what’s interesting is that Taecyeon communicates something completely different for both Hanseok and Junwoo by using the same tactic. For Junwoo, he portrays a childish quality; for Hanseok, he portrays a deranged quality.

Junwoo’s eyes communicate innocence, especially because they’re often held open for comedic effect. When Junwoo messes up, his eyes are wide. When he acts exaggeratedly, his eyes are wide. It gives him the illusion of a babyface, despite having a jaw that cuts you by looking at it. This is key for the misdirection of the first four episodes, because his face literally telegraphs his manchild status among the other characters.

However, Hanseok’s eyes.

Hoo boy.

Every time Hanseok’s eyes are wide you know something is wrong. He most often does it to get under the skin of another character – like he does with his minions constantly. He pierces Han Seo with his gaze constantly, to the point that Han Seo rarely looks him in the eye. After the reveal, when he does his typical Junwoo-isms like acting childish, he’s almost always doing it to catch another character off guard, and his eyes being open helps with that.

Where it most freaks me out is in the scene where Hanseok beats someone to death with a hockey stick. His eyes are wide the entire time, in a sadistic glee. As he’s threatening Chairman Jang in the same scene, he uses his eyes to completely disarm him. This gets under my skin like nobody’s business, especially paired with the high-pitched cooing he does. Which, of course, is the intent – to make you feel his gaze in your bones.

(Bringing another actor into this, Jake Gylenhaal achieves a similar effect in the movie Nightcrawler. No spoilers. Please watch that movie.)

WRAPPING UP…FOR NOW

It’s amazing how Ok Taecyeon is able to portray the character of Jang Hanseok so perfectly. Taecyeon mentioned that playing Hanseok allowed him to show “a different side” to himself, and while the pretense worries me a bit, I can see that he threw himself into that character. I don’t know what Taecyeon’s process is as an actor, but I would love to find out what he used to get into character.

That said, we can learn a lot from how Ok Taecyeon plays the role of Hanseok about how to portray both comic relief characters and villains. The shared traits not only keep the character consistent, so that he’s recognizable both as Hanseok and Junwoo, but they completely subvert our understanding of the archetypes these characters belong to. The consistency also makes it easier to see what is uniquely Hanseok – that being violence and power.

There is, of course, much more about Ok Taecyeon’s acting that could be unpacked. However, to avoid turning this into a dissertation, I am going to cap it here. We’ll come back to this when I do scene breakdowns later on, but I want to make sure there are at least some surprises!

For now, I say: ci vediamo!

Dreamcatcher’s “You and I” – Substance Versus Style – Part 1

on February 17, 2019April 24, 2019 By francesca_ohop 1 Comment

When taking on a music video, substance and style are two different modes of filmmaking. Substantive films can have subtleties and steer away from overt, crazy imagery, often using the singers as characters in some drama or even getting rid of the singers altogether and focusing solely on a story. Stylish films often negate story, or have the story implicitly shown through subtle cues.

Within style for K-Pop, the biggest component is movement – constantly moving cameras, fast edits, dance shots, everything is very dramatic. You have to keep the viewer engaged not in the stories, but in the visuals. If the visuals have a story that’s even better, but the story is not necessarily what is primarily at play. Balancing style with substance is what makes a good music video.

Dreamcatcher’s “You and I” has a stylish music video, with enough substance so that the visuals still have meaning. But it focuses more on visuals and special effects than story. There is still story present, but it’s meant more to look appealing than communicate a coherent plot. Is this a bad thing? No. But it’s a different approach than Dreamcatcher’s usually story-heavy videos. A primary focus on effects and dance makes for a video that would work as a pleasant surprise for most fans.

Similar to “Fly High”, “You and I” has a more pop sound than rock, but still falls in the genre of rock-pop pretty well. Its chorus is catchy both in Korean and English, with lines in both languages to make it a more easily accessible song to both demographics. The chorus is primarily in Korean, but the hook is in English – “Baby you and I”. It has soft verses with dramatic drum beats, slowly building with time, with a magical quality to it that makes the song feel light and heavy at the same time.

The colors in this video are mostly shades of blue, with some scenes taking on primarily reds and blacks. Other colors are either neutral tones, or harsh blacks and whites. Costumes are more modern, but a few retro pieces that appear. There are also these short corset outfits with long sleeves in white, and leather straps in black – not something I would expect anyone to be wearing in the early 1900s. This starts the direction that this video takes towards style as opposed to substance – but as we can see here the two are not mutually exclusive.

There is not a lot of story in the video as a whole, but there are a number of moments with story that connect so that the video doesn’t feel like you’re watching incoherent nonsense. The film mainly revolves around Yoohyeon, who we see at the beginning of the video running towards some sort of portal. There are also a number of shots of JiU pushed to the forefront, but Yoohyeon is the star of this one. There are a few inserts, so I want to cover the inserts first to give all of the members some attention.

Most of the members don’t get anything related to the plot. Gahyeon has one insert, where she is in a mirror, being held by JiU. The mirror shot is also mirrored, so it’s more duality. Handong has a scene where she’s surrounded by strings, spiderwebs, and candles, next to a set of stairs and some canvases. Dami doesn’t even have a story shot, she just appears in another dimensional space, in a glass snowlgobe-like cage, before breaking it with her staff. This may get called back to in Dreamcatcher’s later music video, “What”, but at the time this didn’t appear consistent thematically. SuA has an insert next to a camera, but we’ll get back to the camera in a minute.

I will say this though about SuA’s scene. If you look closely behind her, at all of the photos, we’ve either seen a lot of them before, or can recognize them for thematic reasons. The picture from “Chase Me” is up there, as are some images that appeared on the wall of the final shots of that music video. We also see a darkened photo of a girl that appears in an earlier scene of this music video (but for sake of keeping this organized, we’ll touch on this later). There is also a picture of two women, seemingly twins, holding hands – and if you’ve seen Dreamcatcher’s “PIRI” music video, which came out this February, this might strike a chord.

There are two distinct zones, one that seems more realistic with rooms of a house and hallways, and one is some sort of alternate dimension, with floating objects, gray space, sand, and spiderwebs. The background of the second dimension is filled with stars and clouds. The biggest floating object that gets the most attention is the portal, a stone circle with space opening in front and light shining through it. Well call this the netherworld, since it appears to be something along those lines.

The one character who gets a lot of inserts is Siyeon, all of them surrounded around the same motif – photographs. She has a lot of old photographs that she studies with a light board and develops in a room with a lot of red lights. Hanging in the back of a room is the infamous photo from “Chase Me”. We also see the picture of the girl in shadow, which is on the wall in SuA’s insert.

One of the photos she develops – with the accompanying Gayeon and Handong – has supernatural qualities and catches on fire spontaneously. I assume that this is a callback to Good Night when the girls burn the photograph, ultimately saving SuA from the clutches of a tree monster. We can’t really see what’s on it, but it appears to be a picture of a girl surrounded by spiderwebs.

Shot from “Good Night” for comparison
Shot from “Good Night” for comparison

JiU’s scenes are reminiscent of the ones in “Fly High”, where she’s running through hallways – in a suit, this time, instead of her school uniform. The suit has creative stitching and patterning all over it, immediately reminding me of the suits in VIXX’s “Voodoo Doll”. This time though, we see what’s chasing her, in the reflection of the mirror – some sort of gray smoke monster hand. As she runs we see her stumbling and stopping right before a top, spinning on the ground. We also see her standing with her head slightly askew and her eyes blank while the lights from outside flicker past.

This brings us to Yoohyeon, who is the focus of the majority of the video. She has a number of shots where she’s sitting in a chair and JiU is standing behind her. The other girls are standing, scattered throughout the room, staring straight ahead and being perfectly still. JiU drops sand and starts whispering some incantation, and we see the gray smoke apparition, taking the form of a person, flying out of Yoohyeon’s body. I would assume that this is Yoohyeon’s soul, but it’s not very clear.

Later in the video, we see Yoohyeon walking an older woman to a couch, then posing behind the camera, the same camera that SuA is seen with earlier. The woman poses for a picture, sitting still – she seems older but more along the lines of middle aged, with brown hair. When Yoohyeon is about to flash the camera, she pauses and looks up in horror. The woman looks at her maliciously, then we see a shot of Yoohyeon with a shot of a spider appearing on the wall. Yoohyeon faints upon seeing it.

As far as I can tell, the woman is not real, but a representation of the spider that Yoohyeon murders in Fly High, which she kills with a magnifying lens. Since a camera with a a flash is another contraption that uses lenses to manipulate light, it’s an appropriate comparison. Later we see Yoohyeon sit on the couch where the woman was sitting, with some determination.

In the last part of Yoohyeon’s story, we see her running towards the portal, trying to presumably get back to the real world. However, she doesn’t make it, and collapses to her knees. However, this is shown in conjunction with the girls standing around her sleeping body in the netherworld, and her waking up. There’s also a shot that appears to be of some significance, where she’s reaching towards the sky and the gray fog surrounds her hand.

These shots are likely not in order – I would presume that a lot of these shots are meant to be at the beginning and we’re uncovering things as Yoohyeon comes to terms with them. So the order of events would be that she wakes up in the netherworld first, the gray mist surrounds her hand, she ends up plagued by nightmares or images in this netherworld, then tries to escape but fails. In conjunction with this, all of the shots of JiU seem to be in the real world, but if we take the hand in the mirror at face value, it seems like the netherworld is some sort of mirror world, akin to Neil Gaiman’s Coraline.

I find that the camerawork in this is on par with videos like “Fly High”, where here is a much clearer idea in the cinematographer’s mind of what to get and how to work with the editor to get the right effects. A lot of the video is either slowed down or sped up, but not to an extent that seems unnatural, and in keeping with the frame rate so that nothing feels off subliminally. There are also a lot of gorgeous wide shots and close-ups, but the camera is almost never stationary. It moves with the music.

It also works beautifully with the dance – something that Dreamcatcher’s earlier videos were lacking. They had beautiful dance routines but rarely could you get to see everything. The dance is more central to this video as opposed to the story, so we really get to see it in all its glory. I think that’s important – the use of scarves works well to help you follow and capture the movements of their dance. It’s similar to VIXX’s “Shangri-La” stage where use fans as an inherent part of the choreography. I also like Dami’s use of canes, though I think that this is definitely underused.

Back to my original point – the difference between style and substance. The entire video is trying to balance story and visually pleasing motifs, and does so very well. In terms of substance, there are always pitfalls at trying to tell a nonlinear story. It’s a lot harder to follow than most story-based music videos. Does “You and I” do a good job of trying to get the story across? Or does it fall victim to what nonlinear stories try to do?

The video is inherently stylish – it’s entirely possible for people to watch the music video and just watch for the dance, and not pay attention to the story at all. The images are entrancing almost to the detriment of the video – you can get caught up in how pretty everything looks and not think about what the story is at all. And it’s clear how much money and production value they put in to make this video stand out, so in that case I would say it doesn’t do a good job of getting its story out there.

However, if you’re a fan like me, you won’t be content to just watch and not try to tie in some story. I do think it’s a valid approach to make music videos that have story only if you’re trying hard enough to look for it (BTS’s “Run” I would say is particularly good at this, as is f(x)’s “4 walls”). There are plenty of people who watch music videos and try to connect story pieces together, and plenty of fans who are invested in the girls’ characters, as well as the girls in real life. So having a story that is implicit, in the background, while making the song more to the forefront and having a few key story moments pushed to the front – that is a good approach to making a music video. It keeps the fans who like mystery-solving happy but also makes it accessible to casual fans.

In the end though, the approach that this video takes is not as much about story, but more about making the girls front and center. And that makes it a much more enjoyable experience – you’re watching a video that makes you not only invested in the world the characters live in, but appreciative of the girls’ individual talents and how they play off each other. Good costume and makeup design help with this, but also making the dance more central – that’s the biggest piece. Everything else takes a backseat and lets you appreciate the artists more, and that is a good move on the part of the directors.

Overall, “You and I” is a compelling must-watch for K-Pop fans. It has enough for the casual viewer and more than plenty for the invested viewer. It keeps you on your toes but also is entrancing and enjoyable in a less involved way. I personally think this is one of Dreamcatcher’s best videos yet. They still have a long way to go as a band that’s really only existed for 2 years – but they have potential, and this video uses their potential to its fullest.

Tag: young