The much awaited return of the singer-actor Kim Hyun Joong to the small screen has began to take shape. His last drama was Playful kiss in 2010. He could have had another drama, City Conquest, but it failed to secure a time slot at KBS.
This week it was reported that the major member of the cast led by KHJ for the drama Inspired Generation has started reading the script.
The setting and time of the drama is the 1930′s Shanghai, known then as the Paris of the East. The 1930′s Shanghai was home to the British, American, French, Japanese, European Jews who lived in the International Settlement as they conducted trading in one of the world’s busiest port. All kinds of businesses and services one could think of including prostitution and brothels, drugs and goons for hire were available. It was also the fertile ground for the birth of communism in China and subsequent fight between them and the nationalists. The Japanese attack to expand its clout and territorial ambitions in China was a trigger point in making the area a flash point prior to world war two.
This was the Shanghai that the drama Inspired Generation must recreate. The recreated ambiance -the set, must make us viewers believe we were transported to that period of time. But most of all the characters with their costumes, makeup, way of speaking and behaving must match the dazzling era.
This is what Kim Hyun Joong through his character will find himself in -an exciting but dangerous Shanghai when the cameras start rolling for his newest work in progress. There will be romance and the usual twists created by fate. Is he ready for this period drama? Though he has indicated in an interview that he is worried about the accent to be used, it is not the first time he will be immersed in a setting of a historical past in the same century where he was born. He starred in the 2006 MV Eru’s Dark Glasses supposedly set in the 50′s (the tram,the cars,the building, the fashion style of the people,the black and white color of the film) more than 30 years before he was christened Kim Hyun Joong.
I am imagining KHJ in the forthcoming drama will look and act similar if not better than his character in Dark Glasses. In addition, he will not find it difficult to prepare himself psychologically and mentally as there are a lot of movies and literature both fiction and nonfiction that utilized Shanghai and the 1930′s as a backdrop. He could start watching Empire of the Sun,The Flowers of Shanghai, The Snow Flower and the Secret fan to name only a few. Hollywood produced quite a number of movies on and about Shanghai as it was the most decadent, wheeling and dealing as well as the opulent most cosmopolitan city of Asia. Shanghai made history and vice versa. Even the Philippines was linked to Shanghai in the 30′s as stationed American troops were pulled from there and shipped to the contested area.Shanghai was the place to be for business transactions and political ideologies.
KHJ is no stranger to Shanghai as he had concerts and fan meetings in that place. But it would be a different Shanghai this time for him to encounter. Another world, another era.
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