-edited for clarity, 2/5/2018

 

Pardon me, do you have Grey Poupon?

I was going to write on the relevance of The Little Mermaid today, but let me test the waters first before sharing my Grey Poupon… err… my thoughts on it.  In the meantime then let’s talk about this Victor Hugo quotation, “The reduction of the universe to a single being, and the expansion of a single being until it reaches God, that is love.”

Mawang used this quote to describe the feelings OG was developing for SM. Then, in case the viewers didn’t get his meaning, his secretary spelled it out.

She meant that TO A LOVER, the beloved becomes a) his whole world. He focuses on her to the exclusion of everything else. Also, the beloved becomes b) his new “God.” He’ll do anything to worship his goddess of love…even sacrifice his life for it, if she commands it.

I can certainly see how this quote is applicable to OhGongie. For one, he burned one world to save SunMi. She was his new world.

Didn’t you see how smug satisfied he was when he brought her back safely from the brink of death? 

For another, he recognized that only SM had the ultimate power to kill him. She was like a deity who possessed the power of life and death.

However, one advantage of being a self-avowed bitch is having an independent thought. Especially when people are telling me, in unison, that there’s only one interpretation, my bitch face is on. Outwardly, my lips smile like Mona Lisa, but inwardly, my Grey Poupon…errr…gray matter is thinking, “Oh, is that so?” lol.

So, let me RETHINK Mawang’s and his secretary’s interpretation of Hugo’s quote and propose another viewpoint. Like this —

To OhGong, his universe actually expanded, not reduced, because of his love for SunMi.

Did you notice it? (The Hong sisters were being clever again. hahaha. Don’t be tricked by their sleight-of-hand.) After the scene with Mawang, we’re taken to the scene outside the preschool, where OG and SM were waiting for HanJoo’s kids to be dismissed.

This looked like a fairy tale scene from their future: mom and dad picking up their son and daughter from school, if it weren’t for OhGong’s disapproval of the kids.

What just happened? OhGong’s world was forced to include kids (lol!) which he detested. He didn’t want to be called “uncle.” SM asked him to mind the kids while she ran an errand but he refused. He said he would be terrible at the job. To me, it sounded curiously like a wish-fulfillment because, minutes after SM’s departure, he proved himself right: he was lousy at babysitting. First, he grouchily told the kids not to pester him, then he childishly engaged in a pissing contest…errr… a drawing challenge with Hanbyul. He was deliberately ANTAGONIZING them. (Edited to add this: if I was to psychoanalyze him, I’d say that he exhibited signs of jealousy. The kids were so cute that he considered them a threat to his being number one in SunMi’s affection.)

Fortunately, he quickly changed tactics when the children broke down in tears. By the end of the babysitting session, the children wanted to stay with him. His newfound skill came in handy when he had to interact with the soul of the dead child. He was the only who could elicit reaction from the child.

Stranger-danger!

Not only this, OhGong’s world expanded to include the normal world. Did you notice how he asked Hanjoo why SunMi would envy Hanjoo’s normal life? He wanted to know how ordinary people lived because SunMi aspired for ordinariness.

He didn’t care much about humans before. In Episode 1, the God Representative reprimanded him for endangering people and damaging two overpasses when he killed the accident-causing monster. In Episode 2, he also capriciously turned off the Christmas lights while couples out on a date were still enjoying the light display. Now, in the restaurant, he was willing to wait for SM to finish eating the spicy ddeokbokki before ordering a mild dish, instead of magically stealing another family’s food. Copying the “normal” behavior of people entailed observing the social niceties, even the hand-holding of couples in love.

Thanks to his love for SM, his world became bigger, not smaller. Love doesn’t mean having a tunnel-vision. In fact, it’s a paradox. The more a lover focuses on his beloved’s happiness, the more he’s compelled to broaden their circle of two to include others. Because OG loved SM, he was opening himself to people in SM’s sphere as well.  He even offered to take care of a demon for Hanjoo, whom he disliked.

Likewise, the second part of the quote could also be reinterpreted. The expansion of a single being until it reaches God, that is love.

As I mentioned earlier, the common understanding here – and the one held by Mawang and his assistant — is that BELOVED reaches divine status because the lover loves her so dearly. SunMi became a goddess and OhGong would do anything for her.

However, I think the opposite meaning is equally true. OhGong is the one who’ll achieve divinity because his love for SunMi transforms him. That’s the meaning of “expanding” — to increase in magnitude and greatness until the lover (or OhGong, in this case) reaches God and his own “perfection.” Love makes him become better. It’ll make him heroic and noble. OhGong will accomplish his long-term desire to be a god, not by racking up brownie points by killing demons. He’ll enter the heavens and rejoin the gods by loving SunMi. She is his path to enlightenment or Buddhahood.

Already in Episode 8, we saw him tempering his reaction. When the monster whispered in his ear that SunMi was the one fated to kill him, he could have struck her down with the stick if he wanted to, in order to stop the future from happening. But he chose not to.

In Episode 9, he finally realized that he was guilty of altering SunMi’s fate and burdening her with the SamJang’s mission. Then in Episode 10, we saw him CHOOSING to let SunMi live her desired “ordinary” life — freed from the SamJang’s mission — although his separation from her would pain him forever. His sacrifice for SunMi made his love more believable than a thousand declarations.

Do you see that?

In my opinion, there are different ways of interpreting that original quotation from Victor Hugo. However, since Mawang and Secretary Ma have a vested interest in the outcome of the romance between OhGong and SunMi, their perspectives can be distorted.

I choose to believe then in Victor Hugo himself. He wrote this quotation, too, you know, in Les Miserables. When his main hero Valjean was dying, he said, “To love another person is to see the face of God.” Valjean did not mean that the beloved became God in the eyes of the lover (note how this was Secretary Ma’s misinterpretation of the original quote). What he meant was that lover would understand AND EMULATE God’s selfless and self-sacrificing love when he began truly loving another person. It’s the lover (or OhGong, in our story) who BECOMES godlike, hence he can “see the face of God.”

To me, it’s a brilliant twist that SunMi is the one guiding and inspiring OhGong to learn to love (because she is the SamJang after all)  and that OhGong’s love and sacrifice will lead him to his quest to become god.