Kpop Demon Hunters: Oscar Winner and an Allegory for Womanhood?
Those who know me would think this article is a strange one for me because I am not a huge movie watcher to begin with, let alone animated ones. Yet here I am asking the question: is the Netflix film healing Millennial women or is the music just fire? Well the answer to the latter is easy, the music is fire! Let’s figure out the rest.
Celine and Young Rumi from Netflix Kpop Demon Hunters
The Mother Wound
Celine, the former demon hunter, who mentors Rumi, Zoe and Mira, represents the mother wound in a lot of us. Celine takes care of Rumi once her mother dies, knowing she is half demon. Yet, in what she considers an act of love Celine, teaches Rumi to be ashamed of her scars and thus the demon begins to strengthen and her patterns begin to grow. Sometimes what seems like an act of love and protection from a mother figure is actually harmful and causes shame, confusion and wounds in our own selves. We can empathize with Celine because as women, we all know you are just trying to do better for the future generations than your parents did for you but, as we move through life those acts of love and protection turn into wounds that need to be healed, however big or small. You can have the best mother in the world and try as she might to avoid it, there is always an element of having to unlearn the shame that, hopefully, comes from a place of care and concern rather than jealousy and anger.
Seeing through the facade.
This takes most of us a lifetime to understand and Kpop Demon Hunters subtly offered it up to this generation in a simple gesture. When leaving the doctor’s office with their tonics, Huntrix (literally) ran into the Saja Boys, the hot new Kpop guy group (of demons). All the girls begin to swoon over these objectively hot characters, with their abs, style and hair to the point where popcorn flies out of their eyes because they’re crushing so hard. Then they hit you with a truth that most of us don’t learn until we are well into a different decade – don’t fall for the facade. At first Rumi, blinded by Jinu’s beauty, is caught off guard but as the boys walk past he bumps into her knocking her to the ground and spills her box. Rather than helping her up he brushes his shoulder and tells her to watch where she is going. The ultimate gaslight. Her fixation is immediately broken and she snaps out of her hot guy stupor and prepares to kill him (as she finds out shortly after he is a demon). She accepts the truth, doesn’t negotiate, doesn’t make excuses and doesn’t fall in love with his potential or the hope of what he might become. Also can we talk about Mira literally blocking the heart from touching Zoe, also been that girl too! I feel like the spell is finally broken!
The Responsibility of Healing Generational Trauma
The movie opens with Celine (the mother figure) passing on the responsibility of sealing the Hormoon. Basically ensuring that the world is safe from chaos that they didn’t create. A lot of times, whether on a small or large scale, women can relate to this feeling of having to solve problems, heal trauma, save people that we didn’t cause or create in the first place. While as half of the human race, there are plenty of us who have caused problems, collectively women are the place generation after generation, people turn to for safety, healing, care, nurturing and wisdom, and while we excel at it and I personally flourish in it, it often leaves us feeling like the world’s problems are ours to solve. This is where Celine lays the responsibility she took on to seal the demons out of the human realm onto her young protegees. An unfair responsibility that was placed on her as well. Most women know this cycle all too well, the previous generation takes care of us, then our children and maybe their parents, until they can’t anymore then they pass that responsibility onto the next generation. It’s a cycle as old as time.
Zoe, Rumi and Mira Performing Golden in Netlfix’s Kpop Demon Hunters
Hyper Independence as a modus operandi
Thus, as most Millennial women know Rumi’s work-a-holic tendencies, her lack of down time or confiding in her friends, who let’s face it would love her no matter what, or never asking for help is something that can be recognized in others more easily than in ourselves. Rumi over works to over compensate for her perceived flaws, her shame, that voice we all know too well: “If I do this thing then everything will be alright or good or better or even just ok” but then the goal post shifts. When Rumi starts to have trouble with her voice and hides in the dressing room ashamed of her scars and thinks everything will be fine if she can just fix everything in the exterior world and feels like she has to do it alone, every generation of women I know from Boomer to Millenial can say they have been in that exact position: burnt out but still performing because that’s what we have been trained to do. And as we all at some point come to realize, the more she hides her patterns the more they spread aka “the worse they get”. The hunter’s mantra is the female mantra of many generations past and hopefully none of the future, “ We are hunters voices strong, your thoughts and fears must never be seen” the Kpop Demon Hunter’s version of “keep sweet” or “be a good girl”. Plagues that have riddled womankind for centuries.
Giving into your own demons when you’re burnt out
When we reach the point of no return where Rumi can no longer hide her pain and her inner “demon” her worst fears come true and her true nature is revealed to her friends – she is part demon. Girl, if this isn’t a lesson in the power of female friendship! But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. In Rumi revealing her true character Mira and Zoe feel betrayed and begin to lose their way as well. Their “demons” begin to seep in with “you’re too much” and “you don’t deserve a family” because inevitably the thing they always thought would happen, happened. The other shoe dropped, it was always too good to be true. How many of us have felt that in the depths of our soul!
Breaking generational curses
With the world falling apart and the demons taking over, Rumi runs to Celine to confront her. She is mad now that she sees the truth, she blames herself for all the pain in the world – ouf if we haven’t all been there at some point! She thought she could fix herself before anyone discovered she was the real problem. Laying at Celine’s feet, she has accepted that she is this awful person now, of no value and asks Celine to kill her, since she is such a burden. If you have a daughter or are a daughter I think you know this feeling. We have all had that confrontation with our mother at some point, usually in our teen years when our hormones are raging, of fine if I’m an asshole just be done with me. Like a good but flawed mother, Celine refuses and says she does her best to accept her but Rumi confronts her and says she told her to hide and never accepted her, confronting Celine with the truth of the wounds she inflicted on her and really Mira and Zoe by asking them to “be good girls and do what they’re told”. She asks Celine why she couldn’t love all of her. Celine believes that the only way to protect Rumi is to hide the truth of who she is, half demon. Celine is unrelenting in her view, Rumi sees that the battle is lost and it’s time to just accept the relationship and move on but on her own terms.
Destroying the old ways to build your own path
Celine is unrelenting in her view, Rumi sees that the battle is lost and it’s time to just accept the relationship and move on but on her own terms. Rumi tells her she is happy to see the hormoon destroyed, if the hormoon Celine wants to protect is forcing her to hide who she is. Hell yeah girl! Hopefully you have all had that moment as well of telling someone, or just even yourself, that you’re sick of the status quo and it’s time to shake things up. As the rest of the audience makes their way like zombies to the Saja Boy concert we don’t see or hear from Rumi but we see Mira and Zoe give in to the demons and follow the crowd. Once the stadium is filled and the Saja Boys start their performance, Rumi shows up to shut it down and in an epic rebirth decides to accept herself wholly. Having broken the trance and begun the healing in herself, she began to sing, in her true voice, in a note that she can reach, a place she is comfortable and let’s be honest, the song (What it Sounds Like) is 10x better that the one she was forcing upon herself. That’s what happens when you finally give in to your voice, your power, your truth, the authentic version of your being, you become better than you could have ever imagined. This song draws her girls back in and breaks the spell the “demons” had on them. The girls then reunite then proceed to kick demon ass. The girls defeat the demon and successfully create and seal a new hormoon that is on their terms. All culminating in their victory at the end of What it Sounds Like and millions of my tears as they hug and soar into the sky together.
Finding love and acceptance in female friendship
The underlying and obvious thread that weaves this story, created by Maggie Kang, together so beautifully is the constant power ballad that is female friendship. These characters have found their place to belong in this world and made their voices heard because of each other and their acceptance and celebration of what the world labeled as “different” or “weird” or “too much” in them. The idea that I, and many women, know very well that when you have even just one good female friend, the you that is reflected in her eyes will make you feel like you can take on the world. It accepts the imperfections of your perfectionist in Rumi, it allows your Mira bitch vibes a place to live, vent and then play and it tells the people pleasing Zoe in you that boundaries are healthy and it’s ok to say no. The care that they will care for you without having to ask is unmatched: female friendships lighten your load when it feels like the weight of the world is on your shoulders. These characters didn’t need a man in their lives to validate it, or to be the book end of their adventures, there were some cute boys in the mix but when they showed their true colors they were gone quickly and what remained was actual magic. It’s that magic you feel from a girlfriend who is your biggest cheerleader, the one who quiets your own inner demons, the one who sends you from tear to laughter (and sometimes a combination of both) in seconds, that proves that women hold a little of the universe’s power inside of them and that every once in a while you get the opportunity to catch a glimpse of.
Rumi, Zoe and Mira coming back together healed – from Netflix’s Kpop Demon Hunters
So here I sit, a Millennial woman in tears, hopeful for future generations while, simultaneously thinking of all the women in my life, my mom, my grandma, my girlfriends, my niece, who have shared a piece of their magic with me and healed me in a way they may or may not ever know, all because of a kids movie I never wanted to watch in the first place! Maybe it hasn’t healed all Millennial women but it has healed me!