s e r e n i t y

I went and asked on the board guide wether they have a Jerman thread just for the fun of it I hope they dont come after us with torches

wolkenfuehlen

I'd protect you if they did! Jerman are the hot new couple, they just don't see it yet!

s e r e n i t y

Well so far Gay agrees with us So I suppose its safe to come and preach the idea now that we have a mod on our side

wolkenfuehlen

*runs over to the VD board*

s e r e n i t y

We're actually gathering up supporters

Finnegan

Fasicnating. I wish I'd read this thread earlier.

The Wikipedia article on "Coffee Prince" is here.

An English translation of the original Manhwa (Korean Xanga) version of "Coffee Prince" is online here.

The Korean (MBC) TV version with English subtitles (17 episodes, aired in 2007), is online here. This series seems to have been a huge hit in Korea.

"Coffee Prince" is, in its externals, remarkably similar to the J/H story-line in Young Americans; a straight guy falls in love with a cross-dressing but straight girl while believing her to be a guy. An episode-by-episode plot summary is available here.

However, it does not so clearly use cross-dresssing as a "test of true love" in the "Frog Prince" or "Beauty and the Beast" tradition; perhaps the Western notion that "true love" must be "for soul, despite body" may be rooted in mind-body dualism and a religious denigration of sex that lack equivalents in East Asian culture. In both the comic and the TV series, the guy's commitment to heterosexuality is questionable. Furthermore, when the guy first kisses thre cross-dressing girl, she doesn't reveal her true gender, partly because she's his employee, he hires only men, and doesn't trust him not to fire her.

"Coffee Prince" also is more comedic and less concerned with moral edification than YA. The serious tone that YA derives in part from Finn's classes and Krudsky's voice-overs is largely absent. Seoul in CP is just the real Seoul, not an idealization like Rawley.

wolkenfuehlen

For years I've been meaning to ask my friends if they have Coffee Prince. They're really into Asian movies etc. Youtube is rarely an option for me because it takes aaaaaages to load But thanks for the links anyway!

I think it's interesting how, at first glance, this story seems so similar to J/H, and yet it's completely different.

The female character ends up crossdressing simply for practical reasons, e.g. to get a job in that particular shop and thus get money for her family. It's not a real choice for her, and there's no deeper emotional motivation behind it, it seems?

...this reminds me of this German "YA remake" I watched years ago. It was a tv movie that aired in 2003, around a year after YA aired here. A tomboyish girl goes to boarding school and is accidentally mistaken for a guy. Since the principal doesn't believe her when she tries to explain, she stays, and doesn't reveal her secret, because she thinks life as a guy is simpler. She has "male" interests (like boxing), and being mistaken as a guy results in her being able to take part in the boxing classes, instead of having to take ballet like the girls. Of course she ends up falling in love with a guy, and he falls in love with her, and it's all very very dramatic and cute. Like Hamilton, the guy decides to throw caution to the wind, but he does it in front of everyone. And then the girl simply storms off because other stuff happened that revealed her gender to the school badboy. At the end of the movie, she reveals her gender to the whole school, and then leaves together with the boy. (In my head they live happily ever after. )

Here are some scenes from the movie. Sadly, no subtitles

Finnegan

Vielen Dank, Anja!

So apparently YA did spawn some imitation in Europe and Asia ... just not in America. Fascinating!

I gather you haven't see the sequel to "Mädchen sind die besseren Jungs:" Allein unter Mädchen? Sounds pretty bad ...

wolkenfuehlen

You're welcome!

Oh, I have seen the tv show sequel, and it was pretty fun. at least the first season. But it focuses on the group of friends that the guy and girl left behind when they left at the end of the movie. The two of them aren't in the show (and aren't mentioned, either, if I remember correctly).

Hm, maybe there is no imitation in the US simply because it would be too "obvious"? Of course it has been a while since YA aired and it was cancelled early on, but lots of people seem to remember "the WB show where that girl dressed up as a guy". I'm not sure about Asia, but I'm pretty sure that YA is not widely known in Germany. So maybe it's easier to produce imitations of the story here where the original isn't really known to the audience...

TessShipper

It is a shame that it really isn't widely known in Germany even though around the time it aired many of my friends watched it but I guess they forgot about it by now

wolkenfuehlen

Yeah, a lot of my friends remember it when I talk about it, but I don't think they would remember otherwise If they'd at least rerun the episodes...

Finnegan

Perhaps, Anja. Or perhaps neither side of the US "Culture Wars" could be quite comfortable with Antin's reworking of the "Frog Prince" using cross-dressing as the test-of-true-love. The Jake-Hamilton storyline strikes cultural consevatives as culturally subversive; but it's setting, in the idealization of traditional moral vitue that is Rawley-as-perceived-and-narrated by Krudsky, strikes cultural liberals as ridiculous. In consequence, YA strikes almost any American as a bit disconcerting or "wierd."

In a European or East Asian context, YA may seem merely artful, but in the U.S., where public policy regarding sexual mores is far more contested, YA was boldly inconsistent with accepted dogma on both sides of the "Culture Wars." Antin makes a powerful case for sexual liberalism, but does so by reaffirming traditional values and only in context of suggesting that sexual liberalism can serve those values. In a more serious venue than teen TV, a re-working of YA might be, in context of contemporary US cultural politics, something rather novel, paradigm-challenging and thought-provoking.

Finnegan

The superb 1981 BBC version of Brideshead Revisited, based on the 1945 novel by Evelyn Waugh, can be watched in its entirety, in clips of excellent quality, on YouTube on this channel. Any Young Americans fan who makes it half-way through the first episode will, I predict, be hooked.

For teasers, try two brief clips: this and here.

Thematic similarities to YA abound. During WWII, an aging army officer seeks rejuvenation by recalling his youth: at Oxford, he, a brilliant student of modest background, fell in love, although straight, with another male student, a self-destructive scion of the aristocracy alienated from his family. No redemption of the degenerate young aristocrat is either attempted by his lover or achieved, save, at the end, by his loss of all worldly things. Yet he is, in a sense, transformed into a girl, and gay love replaced by straight love, as his sister, uncannily similar to him, replaces him in the affections of his lover. Waugh's theme, like Antin's, is redemption by "true love," but for Waugh, true love can be of God alone; passion corrupts rather than complements it, and must be renounced. Waugh, a highly traditional Catholic, addresses the same themes as Antin, from the opposite point of view, but by much the same means, including use of homosexual passion to represent all passion.

This series, set chiefly at Oxford, Venice, and Castle Howard, is even more beautiful visually than YA, and has a musical theme that rivals Orff's "Gassenhauer." And Anthony Andrews was an Adonis to rival Ian Somerhalder or Björn Andrésen.

Finnegan

Ladies, Wishaw is cute as Sebastian Flyte:

But Anthony Andrews, in the 1981 BBC version, had a much nicer teddy bear. And a mother who didn't steal the show. And more time, much more time. The 1981 version moved at a much slower pace. It was languid, and decadence should be languid, should it not?

That's where YA parts ways with Brideshead; no decadence. Antin hoped for redemption of the world; Waugh hoped only for redemption from it.

s e r e n i t y

Well I havent seen the movie or read the book so I cant comment on its comparing with YA yet but about Wishaw while he is cute he is also a superb actor,