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[ihadafeeling]

a stupid mistake?

Shancai: What is the principle of the Schumpeter theory of creative destruction?

Si: In an entrepreneurial life cycle, one doesn't always remain an entrepreneur. Unless he continues to evolve and create new formations, which means to destroy the old, creating the new. [sic] Because with every depression, there is a possibility to gain new skills. It becomes a new skill, product, or business model, to bring the most benefit.

At the close of Meteor Garden (2018), Si credits a revolutionary business plan for his family's once powerful conglomerate, the Daoming Group, to his above conversation with Shancai. As they are studying and he answers her question by rote, she tells him that she admires him -- and Si realizes that memorizing this theory, and understanding it, are different. In creating this plan, a plan that he believes to exemplify this principle, he hopes to always be the person that Shancai admires.

That tension -- between embracing transformation and maintaining a particular feeling -- is at the heart of the show. You could argue it's at the center of all romance, really; love stories are often stories of how a feeling relates to change, be it a story of choosing your beloved, come-what-may, or a story of how affection deepens as you and the object of your affection grow.

And, in a different, meta-way, I think romance is often turned to as a comfort-food kind of entertainment in times of transformation, of uncertainty, because you can be certain that you know how it ends, in two senses. First: somebody's gonna love somebody. Romance is often a story about a person valuing their love for someone else, and in telling that story, it advocates for the audience to hold love as valuable, too. That's the second sense of certainty: romance is going to advocate for the power of love, somehow.

I want to talk about audience expectations and how Meteor Garden ends.

The final three episodes conclude with the protagonists choosing to make a hunger and water strike together, protesting Si's mother's insistence that he marry Xiaozi as part of a larger business deal to save the Daoming Group. Initially, Shancai attempts to convince Si that she does not care for him, so that he will eat; he sees through this, and reminds her that his love has never wavered, convincing Shancai that they must be together.

His mother relents only after their friends raid his computer and uncover his revolutionary business plans, able to save the conglomerate without a wedding. When the lovers are reunited, a weak Shancai crumples to the floor, her head lolling on to Si's bandaged palm.

I could bore you with a description of each of the scenes to follow, but it is essentially this: Shancai faints when Ximen tells her that Si has gone to London to marry Xiaozi, that they really broke up; she wakes up in a wedding dress in a strange place; as Shancai tries to find Si in this unfamiliar location, a black room with just a stage, she is confronted first by his sister Zhuang, who dances sexily to Si's fight song with two backup dancers; who then tells her she will magically summon Si; who then tells her she cannot because Shancai isn't devoted enough; the members of F4 come out and each propose and are rejected in turn; cue Si's entrance, flanked by Shancai's would-be love interests, each of whom gives his blessing to her union with Si; several side characters, many not particularly close to the bride and groom, compliment Shancai's appearance and offer free babysitting; Si is then kicked to the floor impatiently by his sister; Shancai asks if this is real, and is laughed at for being stupid; Zhuang, in the same thigh-high boots from her choreographed dance scene, performs the marriage vows; husband and wife dance to Gareth Gate's 'Any One of Us (Stupid Mistake)':

It can happen to anyone of us Anyone you think of Anyone can fall Anyone can hurt someone they love Hearts will break 'cause I made a stupid mistake

Cut to a series of endearing scenes, showing how various side character's lived are unfolding. There is gratuitous product placement shown as part of Si and Shancai's new married life, and Si's mother says that she wants to discover herself as a person independent from the business, and learn how to cook and take selfies. (Yes, really.) The penultimate scene is of Si with his arms wrapped around Shancai, watching a meteor shower together with Lei... and the very last features Shancai, Si, and the remainder of F4 singing with the musician Harlem Yu, performing the very song that appears so frequently on the sound track, waving at the camera as the screen darkens.

If you take anything away from the above summary, take this: the ending of the show was quite aware of its audience.

I think it was that same awareness that made the ending so unsatisfying to me. As I hope my description above conveyed, the entire wedding was fucking surreal. Meteor Garden, like several of the asian dramas I have seen, was quite clear on its conclusion from the credits of the first episode, being a gratuitous spatter of interactions between Shancai and Si, followed by a notably shorter mixture of interactions with Lei. Though Lei was going to appear to be a viable option, he would never be endgame, the credits told me. That was probably why it appealed to me so much, as a person currently thick in transitions and changes; it was so nice to be sure of something. The narrative took something I was sure about, the wedding between the central couple, and showed it to me in the least certain terms as a last possible twist. Followed by naked product placements. Followed by the cast singing from the sound track and waving at the camera.

I had followed this show for forty prior episodes, confident that it would show me that love is something worth fighting for. I wanted to hear that message. I wanted the happily-ever-after. And what I got was a series of scenes so unlikely, so transparently wish-fulfillment where everyone ended up happy, so focused on the viewer who wants a certain thing from this show and who can buy things, that I cannot take it seriously as part of the story, really, because none of those scenes felt like something that a person would do. There is a part of me that wonders if the wedding and following scenes are anything but afterlife dreams, Shancai and Si having each died from their hunger strike shortly after being reunited. That would be cruel, but better writing.

Similarly, I found myself hoping that Daoming Si would turn his back on his incredible wealth and privilege. As it stands, though he undergoes emotional growth (the most of any character in the show), he never ... seems to face real risk, where he might change in some way previously fundamental to his identity. He never stops being the chosen son of Daoming Group. Even when he shouted out his intention to never give Shancai up to waves, it was never a vow to choose her over wealth; it was to choose both. Both is good.

I've decided that, no matter what happens, I have to be with Dong Shancai! I won't give up on Shancai or Daoming Group! I'm going back to London, I'll take care of everything, because I'm Daoming Si! Because I'm Daoming Si, I'll never give up on Shancai!

Even if Si never went through the material transformation I wanted, I strongly suspect that the choice of wedding first-dance song, the one meant to be symbolic of a love story between the bride and groom, was intended to reference the many mistakes that they had learned from and so become changed people, leading them to choose one another; it was not supposed to be directed towards the audience, for foolishly believing that this surreal scene was actually happening. But as an English viewer, it was quite a suckerpunch to have that song, of all songs from the limited soundtrack, play at the critical moment.

Was it a stupid mistake to watch this show?

Dong Shancai. I like you. I don't know why. Even I'm surprised by how much I like you. ... I know I'm annoying. If you want to run away I'll chase after you. If you go to Mars, I'll go there too.

Sometimes Meteor Garden seemed like nothing but an elaborate game of tag, where each lover would take turns pursuing and resisting one another. I think that is because the satisfying part of a love story is to see feeling calibrated by action and risk. They always end, and the point where they end is supposed to be the point when you believe that these people have settled the question of the value of their love. But that's the funny thing about intrinsic values, things like righteousness or love or protecting others -- you never stop coming to that crossroad. When I think about what I wanted from this episode, a realistic depiction of the question of their love being settled, it's true I didn't get it, but what I want from this story, an assurance that certain things are worth fighting for, I was never going to get. Not for long.

In that way, I've found deciding the value of this show to replicate the pitfalls of deciding to hold values generally, even love. Yes, I think it was worth watching a series of distilled yearning that never paid off, if only because it made me think so much about why I was unhappy with what I got. Occasionally I wonder if the final arc was a brilliant, intentional choice, referencing the artificialness of endings by being so exaggeratedly unreal.

And along the way, I got to observe Dylan Wang's excellent eyebrows make an entire character.

[ihadafeeling]

sticks & stones

As I’ve been couch surfing the past month, I’ve been able to step into the lives and homes of friends not simply as a guest, but as someone trying on that life for a little while. Guests are supervised, and their experience of a home is an experience of the host; I have been been briefly trying on homes. Mostly my experience has been one of the stonework and plant life of different Boston neighborhoods, and how those things determine beauty.

I remember moving into my home in Medford in 2014, attending the house interview, and thinking ‘how ugly!’ at the cracked sidewalk and the mystery home gym on the front porch, but leaving it in 2018, I was comforted (as an occasional insomniac) by the night trains, and loved waking to the birds in the morning, hearing rain works its way through the small copse of trees that flanks the train tracks. Parts of my old home were a beautiful experience.

When I stayed in Arlington, I would know which street was mine by finding the right mural on Mass Ave, then walking up a side street until I found a front porch surrounded by blooming hastas, which in my childhood my mother had kept around our patio so that you could never simply step off the concrete, you had to jump. The house had red-gold wooden floorboards polished to a high shine, and as I came up the steps, a black cat would twine around my legs. That was a beautiful experience.

When I stayed in Brookline, I admired all the little shops I saw, like a town in a movie, and loved the small walk up to a house on a hill, marked by an overflowered deciduous tree that I had to duck under. The house was pink and green, like a little old woman’s outfit. That was a beautiful experience.

When I stayed on Tremont street, I would walk past unlit garlands of lights and flowers of unopened restaurants, very beautiful in an area of otherwise highly regular red brick buildings, and see them transformed in the evenings into very romantic settings (all it takes is inconsistent lighting and greenery). My walk back was always late and always involved dodging around couples holding hands, or overhearing indignant customers ask about the special they felt entitled to or the wine they wanted — but before I hit the restaurants, there was always a moment on a bridge, overlooking a highway and spying the Prudential building and all the other skyscrapers warmly bright, thinking how I would soon be there. That was a beautiful experience.

When I stayed in Union Square, I spent my first night looking at sunset in a church parking lot, sipping white wine, watching the same commuter rail go by that runs past my old house. The house itself is beautiful, surrounded by sidewalks as cracked and ugly as my own in Medford, but my favorite part involves looking at the neighbor’s garden, a riot of sunflowers. This is a beautiful experience.

I have been intentionally avoiding going to my home-to-be, but I think it will be something like this. It is in an old gray brick building overlooking a community garden on a Fenway side street; the windows are lined with frail balconies that I will debate bucking the rules and putting plants on.

Like all the homes I have been graciously allowed into, it will be beautiful because of plants (tamed and untamed) and stone.

[ihadafeeling]

heroines are proportionate to their villains

Don Jon: Most people eat that shit up. The pretty woman. The pretty man. Love at first sight. The first kiss. The break up. The make up. The expensive wedding. They drive off into the sunset. Everyone knows it’s fake, but they watch it like it’s real fucking life. Barbara: She was the most important thing to him. He gave up everything for her. It was just meant to be. I love movies like that.

You've heard this before: boy meets girl; boy loves the girl before the girl loves the boy; girl is poorer than boy; girl is less powerful than the boy. It's an old story, and old stories accumulate endings with retellings. Sometimes the girl changes the boy by loving him. Sometimes the boy's love for the girl changes him, a subtly different story. At worst, the change is a conversion of a girl's no into a yes, though the means of conversion vary; in my very favorite incarnation, the girl converts a beast into a man by taking the magic out of him.

What I've always loved about Beauty and the Beast is that it is a story about the transformative power of love in conflict. When Beauty faces the beast, she proves her ferocity. When the Beast yields to her needs above his own, he demonstrates his gentleness. Even so: a dark story. The Beast's gentleness comes down to failing to compel Beauty, even when he could — and only when he shows that willingness does Beauty offer her love, at the first point when it could be freely done. Still, 'failure to compel' is not a ringing endorsement of the Beast's kindness, though usually pitched as putting her agency above his own survival. It is a distinctly different fairy tale ending when contrasted with the usual upward class mobility of pauper-to-princess stories, where the prince remains exactly as he was, while the princess-to-be bargains or endures magic to meet him.

This is supposed to be the story of Meteor Garden 2018.

This was made for women, I thought, watching the first twenty minutes of the first episode. The powerful boy-clique at the heart of the show and at the center of its university setting, the F4, include someone with an eidetic memory; a master of the tea ceremony; a piano virtuoso; a business wunderkind who made his first million on the stock market at age 18; and yes, all of them wealthy beyond compare. But they are specifically introduced as trilingual 185 centimeter Bridge enthusiasts who excel in their respective fields of music and business administration and, "though they might look like players, they respect women." Verbatim. Such is their unbeaten skill at Bridge, and so numerous are their challengers, that only those that receive a red Joker card are invited to play them, where each team will place a bet on their victory. These bets vary, the scariest being the allegation that a losing team had to eat a pair of slippers. Expecting powerful men, I anticipated the usual machismo of wealthy brutal playboys who would gain attention because of their dominance over others. I was not expecting cute schoolboys who are showered with attention for ... well, for being just that, really.

To be fair, the most traditionally masculine of four is the main lead. Daoming Si is the aforementioned business wunderkind, the heir apparent to the most powerful conglomerate in China, who incidentally also beat up a mob boss in highschool. (I'm telling this to you now so you are less surprised than I was by some otherwise unexplained karate heroics of his in the show.) The story begins when he steps on Dong Shancai's phone by accident, breaking it, and does nothing to acknowledge it. As Shancai, unlike the F4 or the vast majority of Ming De University students, is not from a well-to-do family but instead a humble restaurant, the loss of a phone represents a significant hardship. Shenanigans ensue. A red Joker appears in Shancai's locker, indicating a challenge to play bridge from the F4. Si orders an incredible amount of take-out from her family and taunts her over its quality, prompting Shancai to admonish him for bullying her and for being an embarrassment among the otherwise polite and respectable elites at Ming De — and angered, Si smears a box over her head to silence her. After cleaning the noodles and sauces from her shirt, Shancai dreams of the F4 boys chanting EAT THE SLIPPERS over and over.

Her response?

To tell Daoming Si she's not interested in playing cards.

Then kick him in the face.

This refusal to surrender, even when desperately outclassed and outgunned, is supposed to be Dong Shancai's strong suit, where she is the 'undying weed' who refuses to give up against stronger foes. We understand, as the story goes on, that the independence of mind that Si finds so attractive in Shancai is also what causes many of their initial romantic troubles. He seems to not account for liking someone who does not like him back. In a particularly brutal scene, Si rushes to the rooftop to confront Shancai for her interest in Lei, something he interprets as playing them both. He strikes the wall next to her head, never fully explains the source of his anger beyond telling her to stop pretending, prevents her from leaving, pushes her against another wall ... and begins to kiss her, smearing the blood from his knuckles along her cheek and her jacket in the process. Bearing all this, Shancai begins to sob, and begs him to stop. "Stop crying. I won't hurt you any more." He smoothes back her hair as she curls back into herself, crying uncontrollably.

There is no apology for this interaction at any point in the show.

This is the scene that made me rescind my judgment that this was a show made about men generally far outside of toxic masculinity, and therefore the kind of show I think of as aimed at women rather than men. The same scene sat uncomfortably with me as the show pulled out the conventional stops to show love in the making, where Si demonstrates care for Shancai's wellbeing at the risk of his own life ... always followed by a scene where he called her his girlfriend (yes, that specific possessive term, never simply dating), a title she would explicitly deny. He would risk some loss, but never actually lost anything — immediately followed by his indignation to find that this hadn't entitled him to Shancai's affections. I thought again and again of that scene, and of how the things that I often took as demonstrations of love did not involve a change in the balance of power.

So why isn't this Beauty and the Beast?

What story is it, and who is it for?

Let me say one thing it is not: it's not a kind of wish fulfillment. I described to a friend how many side-characters fall in love with Shancai, to her general lack of notice and Si's enormous frustration, and that friend was taken aback. 'You're telling me that dude after dude falls in love with this average girl, while this unattainable boy remains solely interested in her?' Indeed. You could read this as a sort of women's fantasy: the totally unremarkable average girl, surrounded by a harem of unwavering admirers, one explicitly a remarkable boy. But the narrative addresses this concern fairly early on. Si has the opportunity to be with a very average girl, and his refusal of this girl demonstrates that his interest in Shancai isn't simply curiosity about how the other half lives, or the novelty of her poverty, but rather his interest in her as someone with a uniquely strong will. Though there are occasional random admirers without deep explanation, in general, Shancai is flattered by potential love interests for being someone who can persevere in the face of adversity. Which is to say that Shancai is not some fill-in-the-blank average girl. She is specific, and it is her specific moral quality that these men admire.

(And it should be noted she is not uniformly beloved. In her break up with the only other real rival love interest, he comments on how ugly she is, a fact commented on in literally every episode by every character except Si and literally unbelievable if you even glance at the actress Shen Yue.)

It is also not Beauty and the Beast, at least, not in my eyes — and I think that unfortunately has to do with some of the changes to gentle the differing presentations of masculinity in the show. It has much of the shape of that story, particularly as the early episodes alternate between Si trapping Shancai into being with him through his power and Si risking his life to show the value he places on hers. That's Beast's locked enchanted castle. That's Beast laying down his life. But the quality that Shancai is supposed to demonstrate, her unwavering, weedy perseverance, grows absent as the show continues. She is never strong armed into dating Si, but she is also unable to communicate her feelings to him, and the scenes in which she is unable to communicate read as her being cowed by him rather than withholding them deliberately. From what I've read of Hana Yori Dango and Meteor Garden 2001, her confrontations with F4, and with Si, are meant to be between someone relatively powerless confronting the powerful who abuse that power. (This is based on reading descriptions rather than actual viewings, so please forgive me if I've misunderstood.) Instead, the F4 are respectful bridge playing nerds. They are not villains. When Si and Shancai confront in the earlier arcs, regarding their romantic status, it does not read as a moral confrontation.

To me, Shancai feels like less than she might be, because her opposition is less.

Si begins Beastly, but goes through the transformation that his half of the fairy tale insists on. Rather than assuming Shancai's interest because of his own, he learns to state his feelings, vulnerably and honestly, and to seek frank discussions about their relationship. He does what he can to assimilate into her world, rather than assuming he can yank her into his.

In contrast, Shancai doesn't seem to be learning much at all, and in that, I find her less like Beauty than I would like. Beauty is supposed to learn that she has something inside her that she didn't know about, something strong, something not simply sweet or lovely. Something that can take on the Beast. She demonstrates this with her first flying kick, but insofar as her quality of perseverance appears in their relationship, it is in her refusal to date Daoming Si just because he says so.

And her refusal to discuss her feelings with him doesn't read as courage, or as a denial of that kind of intimacy because he doesn't deserve it, but as unwillingness to confront him. It's not that I don't get that, but it doesn't make me feel like this is a demonstration of an important moral quality. And insofar as the quality she discovers in herself is the ability to deny consent, well, that sucks for a moral quality, because what a terrible thing to remark on constantly as something that makes Shancai unique.

The only real villain in this show is Si's mother, the formidable Daoming Feng, leader of the Daoming Group, whose actions play out as cartoonishly evil. (One pleasing thing: she is unique in being unsupportive of Shancai. Every other female character who is introduced with the potential to be a rival or obstacle to Shancai appreciates her, even as they may go on to compete with her.) Shancai does talk back to Feng on a few occasions, but breaks up with Si at her first truly villainous act, and fears to confront her for the next 17 episodes. And I fret about this, because if this is supposed to be a love story with a point, the point should be the perseverance Shancai demonstrated in her love -- and it doesn't. She wavers too often.

I suppose consistent fortitude would make terrible television. There would be no surprise! But insofar as this show has involved growth, and therefore change, it has been the male lead's, and that always makes me nervous; when you read a heterosexual romance where the man does all the deeply existentially human things, fighting, changing, learning, growing, in his pursuit of a woman whose main choice is the change of her mind about him, you read a story simply about a man.

That makes me wonder about my question of who this is for. When I remarked earlier that seeing such sweet, soft, non-toxic men made me think that this was aimed for women, I didn't have a way to ground the claim, even as I felt it was true. I have even less of a basis of who the audience is if it reads as I think it does: as the taming of a very traditionally powerful man by his love for a woman, with a story centered on (but not explicit) on how the plot mainly centers on his choice to continue to pursue her. It's women, I know it is, but I don't know why I know that. I worry that it's some of the old existentialist bullshit, that women never fantasize about themselves as doers.

There's five hours left in the drama, and forty-three of it behind me -- enough that Shancai may surprise me, or that I may be deeply mistaken about previous episodes, because I just can't rewatch them all. I worry that that this last arc will involve Shancai holding tightly to Si, even as his mother does everything to destroy her life. That would it Tam Lin's fairy tale instead of Beauty's: a woman rescuing a man from fairies by clutching to him as he changes shape. Liz Lochead put it best:

It seemed earlier, you see, he’d been talking in symbols (like adder-snake, wild savage bear brand of bright iron red-hot from the fire) and as usual the plain unmythical truth was worse. At any rate you were good and brave, you did hang on, hang on tight. And in the end of course everything turned out conventionally right with the old witch banished to her corner lamenting, cursing his soft heart and the fact that she couldn’t keep him, and everyone sending out for booze for the wedding. So we’re all supposed to be happy? But how about you, my fallen fair maiden now the drama’s over, tell me how goes the glamourie? After twelve casks of good claret wine and the twelve and twelve of muskadine, tell me what about you? How do you think Tam Lin will take all the changes you go through?