The Strange Theology of K Pop Demon Hunters

You can ruin pretty much anything by overthinking it, and K Pop Demon Hunters is no exception.

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.  Those sugary tunes and synchronized dance moves just slide right off my middle-aged neurocalcified brain.

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.

GodSnack

As I continue to read my way through the poetry of Rumi, I pranged against an interesting spin on one of the more challenging things about a mystic approach to faith.

The poem is entitled "Chickpea to Cook," and its focus is a reluctant chickpea, which doesn't want to be part of the stew a cook is preparing. The chickpea has no desire to be eaten, to lose its sense of self and identity. It doesn't particularly want to be cooked, either.

The cook, on the other hand, thinks the chickpea is being selfish. "I'm giving you flavor," he says, "so you can mix with spices and rice and be part of the lovely vitality of a human being."

What Rumi is articulating is a desire that weaves through all of the mystic traditions within each of the world's great faiths. It's the yearning to lose oneself completely in God, to be utterly subsumed into the glory of the divine. As it's expressed in this wee bit of theological whimsy, Rumi articulates our purpose in being as giving God "...something good to eat."

This, I think, is the problem most human beings have with mysticism. There is nothing, nothing, nothing that we cherish in the world more than our own sense of self. We don't want to cease to be as we are. We cling to the unique assemblage of memories that form us, enfleshed in our uniquely patterned organic neural network. It is our existence. It is us. We don't want to let ourselves go.

When we conceptualize heaven, this is why we want it to be a place where we remain eternally as we are. Maybe a bit younger or a bit older, maybe a bit thinner, maybe with a full head of hair, but still us. This has never really appealed to me, or made any sense theologically. Here in creation, our "self" is a complex intermixture of genetic predisposition, experience, and memory. But moving into a direct and unmediated experience of God would seem to be something of a gamechanger for us as persons.

We know that individual experiences or events in our lives can have radically transforming impacts on our sense of self. After that first kiss, you are not the same person. After the first death of a dear, dear friend, you are not the same person. Why would we expect not to be utterly changed by God's presence, which is several orders of magnitude more intense?

If God is, as we faith-folk tend to say, both infinitely good and infinitely loving, why wouldn't we want to lose ourselves in God?

Poets in Hell

As part of my summer plan to catch up on some reading I've been missing, my bedstand is now occupied by a rather thick collection of the poetry of Jalalladin Rumi. Rumi is a contender for the title of Everyone's Favorite Muslim (c), and after spending an hour or so with his poetry, I can see why.

Rumi is perhaps the best known among the Sufi, that mystical strain of Islam that Westerners used to call "whirling dervishes." Though folks tend to think of mystics as austere, distant, and cryptic, Rumi is none of that. His writing wonderfully melds the earthy and the transcendent. It's full of fragrance and flavor and mischief, and through this articulates a deep and passionate yearning for reconciliation and reunion with God. While it's not Christian, sometimes...particularly when his poetry sings the praises of Jesus and the Holy Spirit...it's hard to tell.

What amazes me whenever I engage with someone from another tradition who is so obviously and self-evidently suffused with grace is how easily AmeriChrist, Inc. declares folks like Rumi to be hell-fodder. Sure, he's delightful and talented and gentle. Yeah, he yearns for and seeks reconciliation with God. He appears to have a deep and abiding respect for Christians and for Jesus in particular.

But having not heard The Jesus Prayer coming from Rumi's lips, our Lord and Savior is obligated to consign him to an eternity of listening to poetry that is 1) written by fifteen year old girls whose parents have recently divorced, and 2) sung aloud by Fran Drescher and Gilbert Gottfried.

Whenever I lament this rather peculiar understanding of Good News, I tend to get the same response from a particular wing of Christianity. That response is, basically: "Sure, but that's just the way it is. Either you come up at the altar call, or it's Fran and Gilbert forever." That's followed by a few choice scriptures, and an offer to earnestly pray for my evidently deluded soul.

As someone who both feels and regularly articulates the importance of Jesus of Nazareth, I know personally that deep certainty of His Wayness, His Truthness, and His Lifeness. It's a real thing. In Christ, the purpose and intent for all human beings is expressed. In him, it lives and breathes. By following that path, we find ourselves at one with God and at peace with one another. We have found the Way, and we walk it in confidence.

When others curse that path, and mock it, and live their lives in opposition to it, then I think all is not well with them. But when others come near, and smile, and speak and act well of the journey, I can't for the life of me imagine that Jesus...the source of all my grace...is somehow less graceful and less forgiving than I am.