Arang: Seeking Justice in a Wondrous Strange Universe

You remember that scene in Hamlet, right?  After having seen a ghostly figure stalking about the castle parapets Hamlet tells Horatio that:

“there are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio
 than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”[i]

Horatio, like his good friend Hamlet was a student at the University of Wittenberg, a noble bastion of Protestant humanism.  They would have been students of a classical education, studying ethics, logic, natural science, and of course philosophy and theology.  This sort of rational, logical, scientific study left little time for superstitions and ghost stories. 

I’ve had no personal experience with a ghost, much to my continued disappointment.  I have never heard the shriek of a banshee, been thrown across the room by a poltergeist, witnessed an apparition from the etheric plane, or found ectoplasmic residue from a spiritual encounter.  But I’ve always believed in ghost stories, or at least I’ve wanted to believe in them. Like agent Mulder and his UFO’s, I’ve wanted to believe in the strange and inexplicable all my life.

The world is a strange place but most of the time it makes sense, most of the time the world behaves in an orderly and predicable manner.  Scientists would have a difficult time if their experiments produced different results every time without a rational explanation. We live, as we do today, with electricity and internal combustion engines and chemical pharmaceuticals and etc… because the world behaves in a rational and orderly and predictable way.  Usually…

But we’ve all heard those stories. A friend of a friend heard a voice speaking to him in that empty house or so-and-so’s great grandmother got off the Titanic at the last moment because she felt a presence warning her not to go.  We’ve heard stories about haunted houses and strange happenings and we wonder.  Maybe you’re like me and you’ve wanted to believe that they might be true.  Maybe you hoped, as I did, that some of those stories might be true.

But at some point people tried to tell me, for my own good – of course, that ghosts and vampires and other assorted supernatural lore are not appropriate material for a Christian young man to study.  Ghosts, I was told, were nothing more than demonic spirits masquerading as departed spirits in order to lure people into the occult.[ii]  There was no room for a wondrous strange world.  And there was no room in my instructors’ philosophy for ghosts.[iii] 

And, for a time, I believed them.  I tried to put away those childish things, but I began to wonder.  Stories and legends about wraiths and ghosts are numerous and varied  but it seemed to me that most of the stories about ghosts involved departed spirits lingering in this physical world for one of two things (and sometimes both).  Either spooks and haints haunted a place seeking justice for a wrong committed upon them while they were alive or they haunted a place were a great and terrible tragedy occurred.  And if ghosts are nothing more than demons trying to lure us into a diabolical snare – why do they so often seem to be trying to find justice in this world – if not in the next? 

But, as I said, I’ve never had a personal encounter with a ghost, demonic or otherwise.  To this point it’s all been stories from a friend of a friend of a friend or something I’ve read,

or a movie that I’ve watched.  And since I’m watching a horror movie every night this month[iv] it was inevitable that I would eventually watch the movie version of a ghost story.  Arang (2006) is my first ghost story this month. 

It’s also my first Korean horror film. And as such there was a lot in the film that was difficult for me to understand.  Filmmakers (and storytellers in general) make certain assumptions about what their audience knows or doesn’t know.  If I tell you a story about my family loading up the station-wagon for a summer vacation visit to my great-grand parent’s home in Kansas I probably don’t have to explain to you the idea of summer vacations, Kansas, or station-wagons (unless you’re under twenty years old and you’ve only ever known the station-wagon’s marginally cooler cousin, the mini-van…).  These are things that we understand together.  But if someone in my audience was unfamiliar with these things, the story would be more difficult for them to understand.  It wouldn’t be impossible; visiting family and being cooped up with others for long and difficult travel are probably universal enough that anyone anywhere can understand them even with cultural differences but it might be difficult.

And that’s how watching Arang was for me. 

It probably would have helped if I’d have known the legend of Arang before watching the movie.  The Legend of Arang is a fairly well known ghost story – at least in Korea – but I had to look it up.  Thank God for the internets…

It is the story of Arang, the daughter of a city magistrate.  A servant in her father’s house conspired with her wicked nanny to seize and rape Arang. But Arang resisted and the servant stabbed her death and hid the body.  Her father, thinking that she had either eloped with a stranger or that she had been abducted, resigned his position in shame and spent the rest of his life trying to find her.  Newly appointed magistrates were visited by the ghost of Arang, who pleaded with them to find her murderer.  But the visit was so frightening that they all died from fear.  Soon no one was willing to take the position.  But at last a bold and good man was appointed to the post and he promised Arang’s ghost that he would seek out justice for her. He found the wicked servant, arrested him and had him executed.  And after that Arang’s spirit ceased to haunt the town.

Maruyam Okyo's painting
The Ghost of Oyuki

It’s a pretty typical ghost story, and one that we’ve probably heard before with a different name and with different details.  So it’s not as if the story was completely foreign to me.

But it’s the details that differ.  If you’ve seen the recent American versions of Japanese[v] horror films like The Ring (2002) (based on Ringu) or The Grudge (2004) (based on Ju-On) you’ve seen a pretty typical example of a Japanese ghost – the pale skin, white robe, and the long disheveled dark hair.  These are things that the Korean audience of Arang would notice immediately. 

But even with the cultural gap, the story plays well.  It is one part ghost story and one part detective thriller.  After a series of bizarre deaths two police detectives, So-young – a young but experienced woman with her own intense reasons for becoming a police officer – and Hyung-gi, her new and naïve partner – realize that in order to solve the mystery they’ll have to investigate a 10 year old crime.

To say more would be to give away the story and I don’t want to do that.  I encourage you to watch the movie and to experience it for yourself. 

The bible really says very little about ghosts.  To insist with dogmatic certitude that they are nothing more than demonic lures goes beyond what the bible actually says and leaves us in world without the potential, at least, for the wondrous and strange things of this queer universe.

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[i] Hamlet Act I Scene v

[ii]  Citing 1 Timothy 4:1 " [they] come to deceive people and draw them away from God and into bondage."

[iii]  They wouldn’t have agreed Hamlet or with the British geneticist / evolutionary biologist J.B.S. Haldane who said, “...it is my suspicion that not only is the universe queerer than we suppose, it is queerer than we can suppose.” 

[iv]  …or almost every night. I’ve fallen behind alittle bit.

[v]  Yes. I am aware the Japanese and Korean cultures are different.  But they are more similar than American and Korean…