In the event you're old and cranky and utterly outside of the zeitgeist, K Pop Demon Hunters is an animated movie produced by a partnership between Sony and Netflix. It tells the definitively fluffy tale of a three-member K Pop (that's Korean Pop, boomer) girl band called Huntr/x who...in addition to packing stadiums full of adoring fans..are also engaged in a battle to prevent the earth from being overrun by demons. They do this through the magic of their infectious bops and by killing demons with their prodigious martial arts skills. Hunter/X has a chance to create a magical shield around the world with their song, one which will wall off the demonic world forever.
The demon world finds this threatening, and the dictator of the demons is convinced by a hunky demon musician that the only way to battle Huntr/x is to form the Saja Boys, a demonic boy band. Music and actual battles ensue.
It's wonderfully animated by the same team that created the brilliant animated Spiderman movie. It's an artfully spun cotton-candy confection, one which reflects the pop-ethos of both Korean and Korean-American culture, and it's been a wild success. Meaning, the songs sung by the two in-movie fictional bands have topped the pop charts, the soundtrack is a number one album, that sort of thing.
Am I the target demographic? O Lord no.
And as a Presbyterian, I'm always both overthinking and looking for a theological angle. As it happens, theology of a sort is front and center in the movie.
Here, there will be spoilers. Just saying. Go forth forewarned.
The movie's obligatory romantic entanglement is between Jinu (the leader of the Saja Boys) and Rumi (one of the three members of Huntr/X, who also happens to be half-demon by birth and is hiding the tell-tale marks of that identity). Most of the Message in the film is about how shame turns you into a demon, forcing you to hide yourself behind a web of lies and self-loathing. For example: Like every other demon, the hunky pretty-boy demon Jinu was been enslaved by the demon king Gwi-Ma, trapped by his shame at having betrayed his family in exchange for success.
Why Rumi is ashamed isn't quite clear. She's ashamed of being half-demon, but if becoming a demon requires you to be ashamed, how that works seems a bit recursive. Perhaps she's ashamed of her demon father? Or ashamed of her demonic heritage? Or ashamed of lying about being half-demon? I couldn't quite parse that out.
As the movie progresses, the one great goal is creating the ultimate Honmoon barrier between the worlds, trapping the demons forever in the infernal realm ruled by Gwi Ma. Rumi and Jinu fall in love, of course, and at the end of the film, Jinu overcomes his demonic shame. He chooses his love for Rumi, and sacrifices his soul so that Rumi and the other members of Huntr/X can defeat Gwi-Ma and...activating the new improved Honmoon shield...forever trap all of the demons in their bitter realm of shame and lies.
As I watched, this was where my overthinking kicked into overdrive.
Here's why. We know that, if loved, Jinu can change and be released from the power of shame. We know that Rumi, a half-demon, can be freed from the power of shame.
But what does that mean? It means that every other demon...all of whom are souls who have been enslaved by Gwi-Ma...can also change. It's clear they're all living in fear of the demon king, and when they're not being slaughtered by Huntr/X, most of them are portrayed sympathetically. They're not really threatening, and are utterly powerless against the OP triple threat of our heroines. Heck, two of the demons...a three-eyed magpie demon and a Totoro-eque tiger demon who Jinu uses as messengers...are cuddly comic relief.
So what does that say about Rumi's goal, and the conclusion of the movie?
Again, the great victory of the film was to be this: trapping every single soul that has been enslaved by demonic shame eternally in that oppressive realm. When this happens, backed/evoked by a triumphant Girlboss pop song, we're supposed to cheer. All the while, we also know that within the logics of the narrative, every one of those demons has both human backstory and a self-loathing that they could still potentially overcome.
Yay inflicting eternal torment on the damned? You..um..go girls?
As a recovering Calvinist, this seemed...oddly hopeless.
Particularly for a sugar straw candy concoction like K Pop Demon Hunters. Being doomed forever because of shame seemed a bit on the grim side, and flew in the face of the whole "coming to terms with the truth of yourself" and "acceptance" schtick.
And here's where my plans for this post went a little awry.
As I dug into it a bit more, I found a little detail in the freshly minted "lore" for the movie. Because no IP out there now doesn't have lore, as internet fandom interfaces with world building to create fractally endless ruminations on the "universe" that any popular narrative inhabits.
The shield formed at the end of the film wasn't, evidently, the long planned Golden shield. It is, or so the eagle-eyed interwebs informed me, very possibly a Rainbow shield, which may be permeable, which may mean the hunky demon Jinu could still be alive, which may point to a sequel, Q.E.D., O.M.G.
Was that evident at any point in the watching of the film? Nope.
Is it evident to a casual viewer? Not really.
But pop fandom has an explanation for everything, and can make angels dance on the edge of even the slightest detail. Films are watched, and rewatched, and watched again, with deep meaning hinging on the tiniest fragment of narrative minutia.
Which is, itself, remarkably theological.
It's nice to know that overthinking isn't just a Presbyterian trait, after all.
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