Crash Landing On You: What binds the magnificent worlds of K-dramas and Bollywood – BBC

An accident leaves a younger lady stranded in a hostile nation, the place she is rescued by a good-looking military officer.

They fall in love however should cross a number of hurdles – together with the road that divides their nations – earlier than they are often collectively.

For those who narrated this story to an Indian just a few years in the past, their first thought would in all probability have been the 2004 Bollywood movie Veer-Zaara, starring Shah Rukh Khan and Preity Zinta as star-crossed lovers from India and Pakistan, neighbouring nations that share a tense relationship.

That’s, till the 2019 Korean drama Crash Touchdown On You (CLOY) swept in with the same premise – centred round neighbours South and North Korea – however with wildly totally different outcomes.

“The world beloved CLOY as a result of the present made the unhappiness shared by the 2 nations so palpable and accessible. However I really feel South Asians all over the world felt it in a different way,” says Paroma Chakravarty, who co-hosts a Ok-drama podcast referred to as Drama Over Flowers.

Her podcast – one in every of many – is a sign of simply how widespread Ok-dramas are in India now. The nation’s Ok-drama love started within the north-eastern state of Manipur after separatist rebels banned Bollywood movies in 2000, and slowly unfold throughout the remainder of the nation. It received a fillip in 2020, when the pandemic stored individuals inside their houses – Ok-drama viewership on Netflix India surged by greater than 370% that yr from the earlier one.

It is tempting to attract comparisons between the burgeoning love for Ok-dramas – which appear to be getting each extra ingenious and reasonable of their storytelling – and altering viewership traits for Bollywood, India’s large Hindi movie business which continues to be struggling to get again to pre-pandemic highs.

However it’s laborious to match them like for like, says Supriya Nair, editor of the weekly publication Fifty Two and a Ok-drama fan.

“In style Hindi cinema, like widespread Korean cinema, is made primarily for male audiences; widespread Korean TV, like widespread Hindi TV, is made for ladies,” she says.

However there are a number of similarities between the 2 leisure industries, each famed for his or her melodramatic, over-the-top romances.

Like Bollywood, Ok-dramas create an immersive world of their very own. The legal guidelines of the universe do not all the time apply right here, and plot strains can ricochet between starkly reasonable and mind-bogglingly over-the-top. Each are large industries with thousands and thousands of viewers and an intense fandom.

“Like with different types of mass leisure from all over the world, [Bollywood is] snug with style mixing and high-low tones: we will take slapstick, motion, romance, magical realism and poetic interiority in the identical narrative,” Ms Nair says.

And Korean exhibits supply the identical storytelling agility – fairy-tale endings are virtually all the time assured but it surely takes a number of twists and turns to get there.

However the deepest similarities between them are the familial and social hierarchies depicted in these tales. Korean dramas are in a position to “articulate the demise grip that oldsters have over kids that nobody within the West will have the ability to perceive the best way we do”, Ms Nair says.

Plot strains in Korean exhibits and Bollywood movies continuously revolve across the impression this has on protagonists – from selecting who they’ll love, the careers they’ll pursue, the obligations ladies must their husband’s family and the social web supplied by households.

“However whereas the fact is regressive, I additionally suppose the perfect dramas are in a position to deal with this with unprecedented tenderness, thoughtfulness and forgiveness for everybody concerned – together with our personal less-than-radical selves,” Ms Nair says.

Even relating to courtship on display, the 2 industries generally overlap.

“Romantic love is idealised and its pursuit is good and harmless,” Ms Chakravarty says. “That is one thing Bollywood has been transferring away from for just a few years, so a whole lot of Indian viewers are transferring on to Ok-drama rom coms.”

As an example, Ms Nair says that followers of Tamil, Malayalam and Telugu movies would discover a whole lot of resonance with a Ok-drama like Hometown Cha Cha Cha.

“It follows a plot that southern Indian filmmakers have beloved for many years: an bold metropolis lady strikes to a scenic village the place she will get taken down a peg by the locals and finds love with a schlub.”

However these similarities additionally imply that the 2 industries veer in the direction of the identical errors, significantly of their portrayal of romantic love – romanticising stalking, forceful bodily grabbing of ladies, and infantilising heroines.

“Jealousy is proven as an indication of affection, and males monopolising their girlfriend/spouse’s time is proven as deep devotion,” Ms Chakravarty observes.

Ok-dramas and Indian films additionally are likely to forgive evil relations by the tip, she says. And tales of home abuse are hardly ever dealt with properly in each industries.

However for a lot of Indian ladies, the most important attraction of Korean exhibits is its remedy of heroines. No matter style, these main girls are sometimes good and sophisticated, with a narrative arc that explores their life outdoors of romance and are not only a foil for the hero.

Take, as an illustration, the superhit Bollywood movie Dangal and the Korean drama Weightlifting Fairy Kim Bok-joo – each launched in 2016 and inform the tales of feminine athletes.

However Dangal, headlined by celebrity Aamir Khan, chooses to foreground the sacrifices made by a father to make his daughters profitable wrestlers. However, the Ok-drama places its protagonist, a younger feminine weightlifter, entrance and centre.

Each inform a narrative of braveness, rebel and sacrifice, however the place Dangal in the end requires the daughters to undergo their father’s judgement, Weightlifting Fairy focuses on the inner struggles of the younger athlete.

With lots of their hit exhibits written and directed by ladies, Korean showrunners are in a position to “adhere to severely conservative norms and broadcast requirements” whereas being “on the aspect of ladies’s ambitions and their private freedoms”, Ms Nair says.

So whereas Dangal in the end harnesses Khan’s star energy to provide a spectacle, Weightlifting Fairy’s focus stays firmly on its main woman and her progress as a personality.

It helps that Ok-dramas usually inform their story via 16 episodes – “a novel with 16 chapters” as Ms Chakravarty calls them.

Ms Nair says it is thrilling to see the company given to ladies in Ok-dramas.”Have you ever seen what number of sageuks [Korean period dramas] are anachronistic fantasies about ladies’s freedom?” she says.

“We by no means make these in Indian popular culture as a result of not even in fantasy can we enable ladies to behave freely outdoors the bounds of caste and non secular mandates.”

A part of that is linked to relative freedom from non secular and social stratification that occurred in Korea, China and different elements of east Asia over the twentieth century, she says.

Lengthy-time Ok-drama watchers credit score the ingenious storytelling in these exhibits to the business’s emphasis on good scriptwriters, lots of whom are ladies. The same respect for the craft and abilities of the scriptwriter might rework how Bollywood tells tales, they are saying.

And Crash Touchdown On You is an effective instance of easy methods to make tough tales palatable and delicate.

“Despite the fact that lots of widespread Hindi cinema’s largest stars and filmmakers suffered partition instantly, I do not suppose they or their descendants have been in a position to depict the thought of mutual love with the identical success as Koreans have,” Ms Nair says.

“It is ironic as a result of the Koreas have been at conflict for 70 years and India and Pakistan have had prolonged durations of peace in the identical time.”

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