The Load Bearing Paper

Just how much does your country depend on money? Netflix's Paper House series posits that all of it does. Actually, the title for English language countries is Money Heist, another intensely stupid re-naming of a Korean movie/series that already have a perfectly fine, much better, English title in its native country. "Paper House" is much more to the point.

But actually, it was originally a Spanish series, and the South Korean series is a remake and a loose side-quel. The South Korean series seems to be more popular, as everything from South Korea seems to be nowadays, and it was recommended to me by a 15 year old student at the junior high school I'm currently working at here in Japan. This particular school has a delightful group of delinquent girls who don't like going to class, so they often just hang out in the halls. Japan may be famous for conformity, but the funny thing about that is there often seems to be no mechanisms in place for people who don't conform. So the increasingly rebellious junior high school age students have become a perplexing problem for many.

Anyway, one of these students is a kick boxer who shows up late because she's practicing kick boxing until 10pm every night. She told me she dressed as a character from Paper House for Halloween, so I watched the first episode.

South Korea's version is set three years in the future, when North and South Korea have been unified. Things are tense but there's now a massive new mint on the former border. A mysterious man called The Professor assembles a team of thieves from North and South to storm the place, take it over, and hold for hostage the employees and a group of high school students, who there for a tour. Each of the crooks assumes the name of a different foreign city.

The first part of the story is told from the perspective of the one called Tokyo, a young woman who was once a soldier in the North Korean army. She complains about capitalism when she finds a real estate agency has lied to her about her new apartment. There's an implication that things were bad in North Korea but the show spends a lot more time complaining about capitalism without a harsh word for communism.

I'm not sure if the writers have a clear philosophical motivation or if they're just having the characters complain about capitalism because it's the hip new thing to do. I've noticed Fight Club is really popular in Japan recently and The Professor's plan on Korean Paper House reminded me a little of Project Mayhem, in that it's intended to cripple the economic system while avoiding physical harm to innocent bystanders. The difference is that Fight Club seems to have some awareness that this is a dangerous pipe dream.

But Paper House has some clear charm and style. It's available on Netflix.