Welcome to Trans Tuesday! Time to wrap this discussion up with some truth, and final, actual acceptance… right before it all breaks down. Here comes THE IMPERFECT TRANS ALLEGORY OF KPOP DEMON HUNTERS, part 4!
And I presume you wanna actually understand what’s going on, or else why are you reading this? And so, here’s parts 1, 2, and 3 for your edutainment!
1:09:35 – Rumi finds Jinu, with the two demon Mira and Zoey impersonators. He snaps his fingers and they revert to their demonic forms, before disappearing.
Rumi: “How could you do this?” Jinu: “It was all a lie.” Rumi: “It was real. What we had was real. I know it was.” Nah your dream of us fixing things and being accepted by society, by pretending to be cis, was never going to work.
Jinu: “I just needed you to trust me. That’s all.” Rumi: “No, I know your story. You were a good person, and you still are. You just made a mistake.”
Jinu: “I left them! That’s right, I lied to you. I only made a deal with Gwi-ma to get myself out of that miserable life. I left my sister, my mother, alone, while I slept on silk sheets in the palace with my belly full every night. I left them.”
Jinu’s truth was “living in luxury” from abandoning his family, and you have to understand that’s what a lot of cis people see transitioning as. A “luxury” we do for fun, or because it’s a trend, or because we just want to, not that we need it to survive and be ourselves.
This is not true for every trans person, some of us don’t need to transition but choose to, and that is absolutely valid. However the majority of us need it to survive. Two things can be true. No FALSE DICHOTOMIES.
Jinu: “You’re a demon, just like me. All we get to do is live with our pain, our misery. That’s all we deserve.” This is what society will tell you, yeah. Be yourself and all you’ll get is a life of misery.
1:10:55 – As Rumi walks, her path opens a pink tear in the Honmoon.
1:12:00 – The crowd walks in a zombified stupor, as Gwi-ma whispers to Mira: “You thought you found a family? You don’t deserve one. You never have.” Then Gwi-ma whispers to Zoey: “You’re too much. And not enough. You’ll never belong anywhere, but I can give you a place to belong.”
These are some of the lies society makes us believe about ourselves when we don’t conform in even the slightest way.
1:12:45 – Rumi, voice warbling through demonic tones, confronts Celine. Rumi: “I thought I could fix it all. Fix me. But I ran out of time. They saw. They know. There’s no denying it now. This is what I am. You knew I was a mistake from the very start. Do what you should’ve done a long time ago.” Rumi hands her sword over. “Before I destroy what I swore to protect.”
Celine: “I can’t. When we lost your mother, I swore to protect all that was left of her, but I never thought that that would be a child like you. Everything I was taught told me you were wrong, but I made a promise. So I did my best to accept you and help you.” Did you tho?? Your “best” was to not accept her and force her to hide?
Get the entire fuck out of here. You are the fucking monster.
This is literally what leads to the high rates of trans kids feeling like they can’t go on. See TRANS KIDS 1: FACTS AND DANGERS, and TRANS KIDS 2: THE INTAKE EXAM AND TRANS FLIGHT.
Rumi: “Accept me? You told me to cover up, to hide.” Celine: “Yes, until we can fix everything. And we still can. We can cover those up and put everything right again. I’ll tell Mira and Zoey that it was all a lie, an illusion by Gwi-ma to break us apart.” Rumi: “No. No more hiding. No more lies! Don’t you get it? This is what I am. Look at me. Why can’t you look at me? Why couldn’t you love me?” Celine: “I do!” Nope, conditional love is not love. Rumi: “All of me!” More ripples run through the Honmoon.
Finally, Rumi is starting to get it. But oof does, “why can’t you look at me? Why couldn’t you love me?” hit so hard for any trans person with people in our lives whose love for us was conditional.
Celine: “This is why we have to hide it. Our faults and fears must never be seen. It’s the only way to protect the Honmoon.”
Rumi picks up her sword. “If this is the Honmoon I’m supposed to protect, I’m glad to see it destroyed.” She disappears, just like the other demons do. She’s more of her true self than ever before.
Rumi is really starting to get it now. Staying hidden, lying about the truth, is not the right way for anyone to exist. The entire idea of people being forced to stay closeted is flawed from the ground up, and needs to be destroyed.
I do want to point out that it is perfectly fine for trans people to be closeted if you need to be. If you’re not ready to COME OUT, if it’s not safe for you to come out, if you could face violence or lose your home or job for coming out, the closet provides some protection.
But I also want you to know that all of those reasons are the fault of an unaccepting cis society. To the point:
If society were not like that, none of us would ever have to be in the closet.
And that is what Rumi’s realized. It’s the system (or “cis-tem,” if you will) that is bullshit.
1:15:55 – The Saja Boys do their midnight performance, as their true demon selves, and Gwi-ma appears.
1:17:46 – Rumi enters, voice demonic. “We are hunters, voices strong. Slaying demons with our song. Fix the world and make it right. When darkness finally meets the light.”
Gwi-ma: “You come here like this? You think you can fix the world? You can’t even fix yourself.”
Rumi: “I can’t.”
Gwi-ma: “And now everyone finally sees you for what you really are.”
Rumi: “They do.”
Yes, yes! Go go go!
Gwi-ma: “And the Honmoon is gone.”
Rumi: “It is.”
YEAH!
Rumi: “So we can make a new one.”
Wait… what?
There are transy colors in Rumi’s eyes as she says they’re going to make a new Honmoon.
1:18:24 – Rumi walks forward, singing.
Nothing but the truth now
Nothing but the proof of what I am
The worst of what I came from
Patterns I’m ashamed of
Things that even I don’t understand
I tried to fix it
I tried to fight it
My head was twisted
My heart divided
My lies all collided
It’s waking up Mira and Zoey from the demonic trance they were in with the audience.
I don’t know why I didn’t
Trust you to be on my side
Wellllll Mira and Zoey gave Rumi good reason to believe they wouldn’t be on her side, though…
I broke into a million pieces
And I can’t go back
But now I’m seeing all the beauty
In the broken glass
The scars are part of me
Darkness and harmony
My voice without the lies
This is what it sounds like
Zoey sings.
Why did I cover up
The colors stuck inside my head
Mira sings.
I should’ve let the jagged edges
Meet the light instead
All three:
Show me what’s underneath
I’ll find your harmony
The song we couldn’t write
This is what it sounds like
Important to note here that this is not Golden, which they were sure was what would defeat Gwi-ma, but was about upholding the lie even when it hurt Rumi to do so.
This is something new, something different. Which is what it takes to beat hate, and is the point of this song.
Acceptance. Compassion. Love.
Gwi-ma sends hordes of demons to stop them.
We’re shattering the silence
We’re rising, defiant
Shouting in the quiet
“You’re not alone”
We listened to the demons
We let them get between us
But none of us are out here on our own
Huntrix fights the waves of demons. It wakes up the crowd.
So we were cowards
So we were liars
So we’re not heroes
We’re still survivors
The dreamers, the fighters
No lying, I’m tired
But dive in the fire
And I’ll be right here by your side
They hug each other, and it sends a Honmoon over the crowd.
But they destroyed more demons in doing so, even though they know all the demons have been manipulated by Gwi-ma, just like Jinu and Rumi were…
1:21:11 – As they continue singing, Gwi-ma draws all the demons into himself, growing ever more powerful. Gwi-ma: “Your voices cannot defeat me.”
1:21:36 – Rumi’s overwhelmed by Gwi-ma’s attack, until Jinu steps between them and saves her. Jinu: “I’m sorry for everything.” Rumi: “I wanted to set you free.” Jinu: “You did. You gave me my soul back. And now, I give it to you.” He’s destroyed by Gwi-ma (or maybe just sent back to the underworld?).
In any case, this is community: we protect us.
1:22:22 – Empowered by Jinu’s sacrifice, Rumi splits Gwi-ma in two, but he recovers. But the audience, now awake and aware, lend their support and the power of their souls to Huntrix. Community is the only way we can make it through, no one can do it on their own. Huntrix destroys the rest of the Saja Boys.
1:23:24 – Rising into the sky, Huntrix sings together, in harmony. It destroys Gwi-ma, and fixes the deteriorated Honmoon. The sky is transy!
The new Honmoon is not just blue, but pink and blue and gold mixed together, something altogether new that didn’t exist before.
1:24:15 – Huntrix stands on stage united as the crowd cheers, Rumi showing her patterns, unashamed. She’s accepted herself and, at least as much as these humans understand demons and these cis people understand trans people, she’s accepted for who she is.
But also she was instrumental in saving all of their lives, which might make them biased. I’m just saying that there are a contingent of cis people who think the one trans person in their lives who was nice to them is okay, it’s “all those other trannies” they have a problem with, y’know?
It’s like saying you can’t be racist because you have one Black friend. That’s not how it works.
1:24:36 – Rumi has finally gone to the bathhouse with Zoey and Mira. She’s comfortable with her body now, as it is, patterns fully visible.
She, sadly, gets no apologies for the way they rejected her, other than what comes in their last song together. Which was an admission of not being accepting, but not an actual apology for the ways they upheld and perpetuated the beliefs and the system that were causing Rumi harm.
Which is unfortunate, but not what really makes this allegory imperfect. I’ve shown you everything I could about the ways this film speaks to trans people, and a fairly strong trans reading that works all the way through the film…
So what the heck makes this an imperfect allegory, Tilly? Well I was just getting there, give a gal some dramatic license, willya?
Because the allegory works all the way through the film until the end, and I don’t mean the scene in the bathhouse.
Rumi’s realized the old system has to be torn down so something better can take its place, where she can accept herself, and be accepted by others, for who she really is. Which is great! And correct!
But then what do they do?
They create another Honmoon, which… traps all demons in the underworld, seemingly forever! Or until a couple years from now when we get the sequel that’s in development, but we can’t count on that here. We have to take this story on its own terms.
And what it ends up saying is that for Rumi to accept herself and be accepted by cis people, she had to force every other trans person back into the closet and uphold their oppression. And she was “allowed” to do this because she saved a whole bunch of cis people.
It equates to pick-mes like Caitlyn Jenner and Brianna Wu, who routinely sell out the entire trans community (they literally “sacrifice” Jinu/community to the hatred of Gwi-ma/transphobia!) because they believe it will allow them the ability to live as themselves and be accepted by the hateful people in power.
They don’t realize, of course, that they’re supporting the leopard and that their faces are next on the menu. There’s nothing to indicate the crowd at the end is going to suddenly turn on Rumi, but this is still what it draws allusions to.
Because Rumi basically says “I got mine” and never mind all the other trans people suffering in the closet. She asks one of them if they’re suffering under Gwi-ma, remember, and doesn’t get an answer… and never mentions it again. The allegory is saying the only way we can maybe be accepted and live our truths is by selling out every other trans person, and forcing them to go back in the closet.
And if the entire story doesn’t hold up in terms of an allegory, to me that makes it not an allegory. Or, in softer terms, it’s an imperfect allegory. It’s almost a trans allegory, but it doesn’t quite work.
That doesn’t mean Rumi’s story doesn’t resonate with you. Or that we can’t see ourselves in her. She resonates with me, a lot! It doesn’t mean that some scenes don’t speak deeply to our experiences as trans people. All of that can be true, and it can not quite work as an allegory on the whole.
Two things can be true. No FALSE DICHOTOMIES, remember.
And there is definitely queerness at work. Hannah McMechan, one of the film’s six writers (there may have been more that we don’t know about, movies just work that way) said that the process of writing the film helped her realize she’s bisexual!
But I think, in these times where we can never be sure what’s real at first, due to the rise of disinformation, propaganda, and LLM-generated nonsense, it’s more important than ever that we’re clear about what things are and aren’t.
Words mean things. They have to. Because the fascists want them to not.
I mean, that’s not the only reason words mean things, but it’s a very important one right now.
And if Kpop Demon Hunters were an allegory on the whole, it would be advocating for the forced closeting of trans people, and that’s not good!
So, to me, we have to be careful with what we say is an allegory, because otherwise some folks who are just discovering the beauty of transness, via allegory and metaphor, could accidentally take a really harmful message from some things.
Thank you for coming with me on this journey, keeping an open mind, and being curious enough about art to want to dig in and explore it in detail. It’s one of my favorite things to do, even though it’s so much work it flattens me. I’m delighted to do it, there’s nothing better than wrapping yourself in art for a while and looking at all its nuances.
Kpop Demon Hunters is a remarkable, wonderful movie that I love a lot. It is also an imperfect trans allegory that I still connect with, and see much of myself in. But it is imperfect in that regard.
That doesn’t mean it’s bad. That doesn’t mean it’s not important. That doesn’t mean it’s not meaningful.
It just means it’s an imperfect allegory.
And that’s okay.
Tilly Bridges, end transmission.
tillysbridges@gmail.com