Jay, a student studying filmology, cast his girlfriend Gosun in his first provocative debut movie. However, the movies was spread on porn sites and he and his girl friend finally separated. 4 years after, Gosun demanded the original film from Jay and told him about how much pain she had gone through. She finally decided to commit suicide. At first, Jay acts indifferent to Gosun's action but he was in pain and was confused why his first movie had been degraded to porn. Finally, Gosun notified Jay that she was going to commit suicide in the bathtub. She asked him to press her body to help her commit suicide. This is the synopsis of <Motel,Seoul>. Over 19 -year -old viewers are allowed to watch <Motel,Seoul>.
Department of Theatre, Chung-Ang University,
One of Korea's top department of study, CAU‘s department of Theatre purchased and set up a performing art center in Dae-hak-lo in 2001, which is called the mecca of performing, by means of the development funded by graduates and the enrolled students. <Motel,Seoul> was performed there. Department of Theatre performs annually once a season:spring, summer, fall, and winter's <Motel, Seoul> is also one of the regular performances along with <I came to look for flowers>, <Come to see me>. There appeared only two characters, Gosun and Jay. Due to this property, we could feel their emotions directly and we can see the action like trembling their bodies and tears. Actors and viewers could be immersed in the play easily. Especially, last scene, we can see that the girl character and Gosun are same people.
Many people may think that the two main characters have unfortunate fate. Besides, no one is responsible for the problem and no one could resolve their poor destiny.
At the end of the play, Jay was confused about how he had fallen to his current position. He was in pain from seeing how other people keep blaming him for his mother's death, although it was just a coincidence. There is a saying ‘A pear drops when a crow flies from the tree.' He has a destiny that he was responsible for his mother's death and his movie had been degraded to a porn. This bad luck arouses the sympathy of many people, rather than blaming him at the end of the play because they thought that Jay had poor fate, so it cannot be helped.
Viewers may think that Gosun is not responsible for the incidents. She was in pain because of her boyfriend's movie. In other words, her boyfriend, Jay made Gosun a star in his movie and because she just loved him, she decided to star in a movie. However, she suffered because of the incident. As things turned out, she only loved him and was in a movie and only wanted the movie to succeed, so people felt sympathy for her. People that watched her movie talked behind her back, pointed at her, and laughed at her for four years. She could not live with her life like this and felt constrained in the sight of others.
Let's consider what’s the matter from a different point of view. Aren’t there responsible people for what Gosun and Jay went through? Isn't there a person in charge for their poor destiny? No. Apparently people may have felt sympathy for them. However, they selected their life. No one force them to live in desperation.
Jay quarrelled with his lot because of his movie that he filmed very impassionedly had been degraded to porn and he had a guilty conscience. Also, he helped Gosun to commit suicide. He had the responsibility of his girl friend because he practically made her live in hardship. He recommended that she should be the star of the movie. He knew that if he films that kind of movie, that his new girl friend would be a star in the movie again, and he could live with the same life. However, he did the same thing even after 4 years. On the surface, his poor destiny makes him live in a state of dilapidation. Though, his current condition is the condition that he made.
Gosun, the other main character, acts in an adult film, and it can be said that Gosun herself was responsible for participating in a movie, not thinking beforehand about how the movie could be modified. Also, Gosun doesn't think about how to overcome the problems in her life and ends up making money through unethical methods. Is it fair to say that Gosun's life was devastated only because of the provocative movie scene? Most definitely not. Gosun expresses her name as one that cannot be erased even if she wants it to. She thinks that she can't die even if she wants to die, and thinks that she will never be able to escape from her current situation no matter how hard she tries. Even more, she blames her boyfriend Jay, for all the things that happens to her, when actually, she is responsible as well for what has happened.
Many people think that our lives depend on fate. That is to say, people destined to die are going to die surely, and people destined to survive are going to survive surely. Besides, there are many works in Korea about destiny that we cannot change. The reason why people like to read the palm and other kinds of fortunetelling is not to change thier lives, but to know thier future. However, simply that they foretell thier lives is useless. Gosun and Jay lived stupidly. Because they thought their lives are miserable, they couldn’t handle their lives. Let thier lives be a good lesson to you. Whether they know thier future or not, they should not blame their destiny and should exert themselves. We should recognize their lives as a hill that they could climb, not a fixed result. What they should be afraid of is not thier lives, but the attitude that they recognize their lives as a destiny.
The name of the girl character is Gosun, meaning a duck who can't drown even if it wants to. She wants to die and tries to do so at the end of the performance, but her attempt of suicide fails. Actually she may not want to die, but she just wanted to escape her life. If she really wanted to die, would she have filmed a will of herself? Like her name, she couldn't die even though she wanted to and as a result keeps on living her wretched life. Like her name, perhaps her "not being able to die even if she wanted to" life wasn't her fate but the life that she had planned all along. We can't live by entrusting our lives on our fate. In other words, if our fate was sealed, we would have no reason to keep on living. However there are many people who just blame their fate like Jay or Gosun. But in the end, it isn't the ignorant world that has the problems, it's themselves that live in it. Nothing is determined. If anything is determined, we can exert ourselves. We cannot handle all things, but there are so many things that we can handle. We could say that changing things is the reason why we live.