Sometimes I have an observation that I want to share with others. But I sometimes have this anxiety of feeling like I make other people feel like I’m too frequent a social media poster, and I don’t like feeling like I’m the only one in some of my group chats that starts conversations or blurts out random things, and frankly social media is trash and is often times not worthy of the things I have to say, so thank goodness I have a personal brog for me to use as an outlet, even if nobody will ever see it.
But even if it’s just a statement that really doesn’t need much explanation, it then makes me feel like I need to write more words about it to justify making an entire post despite the fact that I have no real rules about what I write on a personal site but that’s just one of those weird self-imposed obligations I hold myself to, but if there’s anything at all, it’s a good exercise to endlessly be practicing my writing.
I just finished watching 참교육 which for all the white folk is Teach You A Lesson on Netflix. When I first saw it popping up on the home screen, I couldn’t help but notice that the obvious main character of the show (김무열) was a dead ringer for John Cena, but if he were Korean. Like seriously, it’s basically John Cena’s face with Korean eyes and black hair, but generally the exact same jaw line, cheekbone structure and silhouette of his head. I couldn’t get over it, and always said to myself, or aloud when I saw him, KOREAN JOHHHHHN CENAAAA
Then because big brother is always watching, I got a preview reel of it on social, and I watched as Korean John Cena was killing a bunch of high school punks with defense, getting them to swing and miss and wail on each other, and then I thought to myself, yeah ok, this might be interesting to watch after all, and when the moment was right, I dove right into watching.
My mom would have called this an 엉터리 show, which is Korean for trash or bullshit, and from a literal point of view, yeah, it might be. But I’ll be damned if I didn’t enjoy the it, because the plot was very linear, situations were exaggerated heavily for emphasis, it wasn’t a season of 26 episodes at 94 minutes each like a lot of Korean shows tend to drag on for, and of course, it had Korean John Cena.
And the best part is that his character, ERPB Inspector Na Hwa-Jin basically was like John Cena, in the sense that he was basically permanently Super Cena where nobody could hurt him, he was always coming out on top, and always seemed to have the moral high ground no matter the circumstances.
Hopefully the show doesn’t achieve the level of popularity to where white folks feel the need to re-make it for white people, even if the very Korean tropes featured throughout the show mostly wouldn’t hardly apply to Americans, but never underestimate white peoples’ ability to appropriate and twist things in order to make it work for whitey. However, if this were ever to come to fruition and an American version of Teach You A Lesson starred actual John Cena in the leading role, then maybe it would have a chance. Lord knows the role is tailor made for him.
