Allowed to Exit and Return

The African American family behind made their preferences clear: Ninety seconds into the K-Pop band, BTS’ movie, “Bring the Soul” one of the young girls shrieked: “Jimin!”  The doe-eyed one with the ever so angular smile flashed up again a few moments later and she howled again: “Ji MIN!”  Every member of the BTS Army has their ‘bias’, and this gal’s was clearly Jimin.  In the moment, my daughter, smiled widely and seemed more at home here in Poughkeepsie than any time prior. 

Generally, people buy movie tickets at the movie theatre the night of the show.  My daughter had bought these six weeks ago, on line, when we were in Beijing.  She showed me video clips of BTS fans in other cities who had mobbed theaters and began to chant each of the seven band members names, one after the other.  So, pulling up to the Galleria Mall in Poughkeepsie I wasn’t sure what to expect.  No one was chanting, and there were, indeed there were still tickets available so my wife could join us.  But there were a lot of fan-like people milling about, and to my eyes, what was interesting was that no one looked particularly Asian.

We got an enormous tub of popcorn, salted popcorn, which is for some reason unavailable in China where cinemas only serve sweetened corn, and made our way to the ticket check.  He ripped our stubs, which devastated my daughter who'd wanted to save hers, and told me that I was allowed to exit and return if I needed to do a call.   I had a conference call that would began an hour after the movie started and so I tried to grab a seat that would allow me an easy retreat. 

I supposed you could call this a “movie” but it more like shots of them in one or another hotel room, and then up on stage in various cities. I leaned over about eight minutes into the opening scene where they were chatting somewhere alone, in a hotel in Paris at a table for seven and asked my daughter when things were going to begin.  They each sipped wine and made comments that seemed improperly translated in the captions, as the other member would reply to something completely off-topic.  Perhaps the most poignant moments of the flick where the interviews with fans, who did not fit anything like the Asian teen profile I’d imagined, explaining how important the band had been to their self esteem.  Watching a middle aged Hispanic woman, for example, explain how the BTS message of Love Yourself had helped to see her through some difficult times gave me pause once again to consider the remarkable, unlikely potency of Korean soft-power.

Wednesday 8/07/19