Sunday, May 19, 2024

Gay Kim | 질투는 나의 손님 (Jealousy Is My Guest) / 2016

fish cake soup

by Douglas Messerli

 

Gay Kim (screenwriter and director) 질투는 나의 손님 (Jealousy Is My Guest) / 2016

 

Poor Hun, the waiter in the small Korean restaurant in Gay Kim’s short film, Jealousy Is My Guest. We can see, just from the way he looks at Mr. Jang, his boss and the cook, that he has a crush on the man. And then, one slow night, when the restaurant customers seem to have all fallen asleep, Mr. Jang, almost out of the blue, offers to close up early and cook a special meal of fish cake soup for his young employee, Hun feels for the first time in years that he might get the opportunity to tell his boss what he truly feels about him—or perhaps to just enjoy the homage his gentle boss is paying to him.


    No such luck, for out of the night comes Misuk, an unhappy female, insisting that she be let in for one more drink, arriving in tears. Mr. Jang, it appears, is an inveterate sentimentalist, a man who loves all his customers to such a degree that he simply cannot let the drunken Misuk go without serving her up the soup he has begun to prepare for his young employee.

     A favorite of his, he attends to the unhappy woman as she gradually reveals that her husband seems to have left her, while meanwhile demanding that he make the soup spicier and that she should be served up some soju on the side. Mr. Jang obediently obeys her drunken instructions, while Hun grows more and more jealous and bitter for the fact that she has intruded on what he has perceived as a very special moment in his life.

     As he cleans up the rest of the dishes, he accidently cuts his finger and applies a Band-Aid to quell the bleeding, without Jang, attending to Misuk, even bothering to notice.

      Misuk swills down the soup without even properly tasting it, and surely without even a kind word to her would-be savior. A call on her cellphone reveals that her errant boyfriend or husband is waiting for her at home, as she drunkenly rises and trudges off back to where she has declared she might never return.

      Hun exposes his small cut, hoping at least for a little sympathy, and Mr. Jang offers him the customer’s left-over soup. But this time, Hun makes it clear that he will not eat the leftovers of his bosses’ kind deeds, demanding that he make up a new batch of fish cake soup just to his taste.

     Jang seems to know what just what the jealous boy needs, agreeing to start over in their special evening, so rudely interrupted.

     Nothing is openly expressed about a relationship between the two other than the fact that a kind owner/cook offers his open admiration his cute employee, but anyone with even smidgen of gay romanticism should realize that there is truly something sexual boiling up in that fresh fish cake soup.  

      The actors in this modest and understated melodrama are Ahn Dae, Kyum Bae, and Jinho Kwon Yujin.

 

Los Angeles, May 19, 2024

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (May 2024).

 

Ian Galsim | Theban / 2013 [music video]

in the blood

by Douglas Messerli

 

Ian Galsim Theban / 2013 [4 minutes] [music video]

 

Director Galsim begins Sebastian Castro’s November 2013 music video with a brief reminder of the Greek society of male warriors, prefacing his video with two comments: “The sacred band of Thebes was an ancient Greek army composed entirely of men,” adding in the next frame the words, “It was believed that if you fought next to the person you loved, you would fight that much harder to keep them alive.”

      We have clearly moved out of the high school locker room in this mythical recreation of Greek homosexual society, and Castro’s new video loses nearly all sense of humor in the process. Castro’s lyrics immediately establish an all-gay world in which the sexual difference is the central issue:

 

“You’re—different

Un—like the rest.

They—fall for

Women. You could

Care less

I—know why you don’t—get the fuss

Let—me show you a different kind of buzz”

 

    And he does indeed show us, not only through his heavily hyphenated dialogue—which separates words in a manner close to how the world he presents which divorces men from women—but in a series of scenes where the men are clustered together in homoerotic friezes, sometimes appearing to engage in mock battle and at other times simply fraternizing with their friends in semi-sexual recreation.


      The song continues to stress the need for heterosexual suppression:

 

“It’s in your blood. Don’t second guess

That thing they taught you to suppress

Shut up listen. Don’t think give in.

To your every whisper from within.”

 

     The chorus continues in the notion of the all-gay world, a kind of separatism that is enforced by notions of collegial togetherness:

 

“You’re one of us

Bound by love, by love, by lust

Feel it kick in

He sees you the way u see him

Look at his eyes

You are the very reason why

Scream it out loud.

Let everything inside fall out.”

 

    The call to sexual brotherhood becomes a call to war, the two totally interconnected in the Theban cry of the chorus: “On On On On / The Theban sacred bond lives through us / On On On On.”

     Almost as soon as the chorus begins, the images become even more homoerotic, and as the next verse, basically a variation of the first, is sung we begin to observe greater and greater sexual activity.

      Laying out almost nude, Castro sings:

 

“I love you more than a shark loves blood

Can’t quench the thirst. Can’t get enough.

E-ven death can’t take you from me.

You are the color I bleed.”

 


     Again the chorus sings about how they are linked by blood and lust, the leader now presented in an image that is quite powerful.

 


    Before the video is finished, we see our hero kissing and engaging in sex, Castro’s music video becoming something closer to a soft porn film than what one usually thinks of in such YouTube musical presentations.


   One can well comprehend why Castro was seeking out something much more serious than his previous giggling high school sexual escapades, and one respects him for his attempts. But despite the beauty of director Galsim’s images, the music and lyrics just don’t delight one the same as his lighter works such as Bubble and You’re Gay.

 

Los Angeles, May 19, 2024

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (May 2024).

Nolan Bernardino | Bubble / 2013

pop

by Douglas Messerli

 

Nolan Bernardino (director) Bubble / 2013 [4.20 minutes] [music video]

 

US singer and actor Benjamin Brian Castro, known to his YouTube audiences as Sebastian Castro, is best known for his music video Bubble, which made him an overnight internet celebrity with a following mostly in Southeast Asia and particularly in the Philippines and Indonesia.

     At age 17, Castro’s Jehovah’s Witnesses believing parents disowned him for being gay, forcing him to seek out his own way of financing his education Savannah College of Art and Design. On February 14, 2013, Bubble appeared on YouTube, garnering over 3 million views, according to Wikipedia. The video itself served as an international “coming out,” since before the video he had not publicly spoken about his sexuality.

      Castro officially came out on a Philippine podcast, Beki Nights shortly after the release of Bubble, declaring “I know there are lots of people out there that are scared to be themselves.”

    In 2014, he and former ABS-CBN reporter Ryan Chua announced their relationship over social media during a trip Castro made to London where his companion was involved in a Masters program at the City University of London. The couple separated in 2017.

     Bubble begins, as its lyrics, proclaim in the locker room, but alternates throughout with a kind circus-like state on which Castro and dancers also perform.

     The lyrics of the song pretty much define the images, which consist mostly of Castro and other young men dancing in black shorts and at one point showering.


"There's a fine, fine line, in the horny mind

I crossed mine, in the locker room, mmmhhmm

 

Next thing I knew, something just grew

In the line of view of: "You'll never ever guess WHO!"

 

The very best friend I always knew

(Is starin')

At the jockstrap with the bursting bulge

(I'm not wearin')

And maybe that's why, he's walking over, whispering those words

(I can't get Over)"


Chorus:

 

"I like your bubble, even the stubble

Happy trailing down the crack of those two muscles

Tighter the better, and yours has never

Felt the pain, that gives...

(Me so, so, so, so!)

(Me so, so, so, so!)

(Me so, so, so, so...)

...Much pleasure!

 

Pop that pop (POP!), stick your stick into it

Can you bu-bble pop (POP!), grab both cheeks and do it

This is it boy, Christian Grey my boy toy

Pop that Pop (POP), this is how we do it

See pop shows near Los Angeles

Get tickets as low as $14"

………….

 

[a whole chorus of “pops’ follow.]


"(Deep Breath)

What did you do, up my choo-choo

I can't even walk straight as I used to"

 

     His new friend, however, declares he didn’t do much, “just a touch, innocent enough,” and declares that the two of them are still straight.

 

     Castro answers:

 

"Mhmmm m-okay, l'll let it go. I'm still a bro

It didn't mean anything, so who has to know?

 

I am straight; Straight!

I just pulled a muscle lifting weights

It's straight. Man am I straight!

As always I got a hot date"

 

    Castro visits the doctor:

 

"Doc! Its hurts so bad I can't even sit down

I don't want to tell you how it all went down

How do I know you won't tell anyone around

We both know it's a small ass town"


"Breathe boy no need to be cynical

All you need now is my physical

Drop the undies and show me the pencil/pop-sicle

Everything here on out is confidential"


"I like your bubble, even the stubble

Happy trailing down the crack of those two muscles

Tighter the better, and yours has never

Felt the pain, that gives...

(Me so, so, so, so!)

(Me so, so, so, so!)

(Me so, so, so, so...)

...Much pleasure!"

 

     The boy protests, the doctor basically ignoring him:

 

"-No please don't

-Hell if I won't

-Why are you kneeling?

-To give you Uh-Oh feelings

-Why do you and everyone I know want my Santa Claus?

-Because…"


     The obviously is another chorus of “I like your bubble,” end in the words, now slurred out as in sexual ecstasy itself: “Soooooo much pleasure.”

     I have to say this music video is truly sexy.

 

Los Angeles, May 19, 2024

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (May 2024).

Douglas Messerli | Seb Castro: Three Early Music Videos [Introduction]

seb castro: three early music videos

by Douglas Messerli

 

US singer and actor Benjamin Brian Castro, known to his YouTube audiences as Sebastian Castro, is best known for his music video Bubble, which made him an overnight internet celebrity with a following mostly in Southeast Asia and particularly in the Philippines and Indonesia.

     At age 17, Castro’s Jehovah’s Witnesses believing parents disowned him for being gay, forcing him to seek out his own way to finance his education Savannah College of Art and Design.

     On February 14, 2013, Bubble appeared on YouTube, garnering over 3 million views, according to Wikipedia. The video itself served as an international “coming out,” since before the video he had not publicly spoken about his sexuality.


    Castro officially came out on a Philippine podcast, Beki Nights shortly after the release of Bubble, declaring at age 24, “I know there are lots of people out there that are scared to be themselves.”

     In November of 2013, Castro made another homoerotic video titled Theban. This work, as I describe it below, contained perhaps even more sexual content that Bubble, but had lost much of the comic charm of the earlier video.

    However, in 2014 Castro followed it up with another exuberant school-based musical narrative, You’re Gay, which recaptures the naughty glee of Bubble.

    In 2014, he and former ABS-CBN reporter Ryan Chua announced their relationship over social media during a trip Castro made to London where his companion was involved in a Master’s degree program at the City University of London. The couple separated in 2017.

     After his videos Castro turned to performing in movie roles in several films, including Mrs. (2015), Bar Boys (2017), 4 Days (2016), Bakwit Boys (2018), and Urban Legends (2018), works, when appropriate, I review along with his 2019 musical video Feel the Burn in the years in which they were created.

 

Los Angeles, May 19, 2024

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (May 2024).

My Queer Cinema Index [with former World Cinema Review titles]

Films discussed (listed alphabetically by director) [Former Index to World Cinema Review with new titles incorporated] (You may request any ...