With the continuous improvement of the visibility of female creators, over the years, there have been many film and television works focusing on the relationship between mother and daughter. Especially in some female film festivals at home and abroad, the relationship between mother and daughter is one of the most frequent creative themes of female filmmakers. It's just that many female works retain more artistic edge, have not been able to meet the public for a long time, or are in the minority, and it is difficult for the creators to deeply think about the relationship between mother and daughter to reach the public. It has become a difficult problem in the creation to make a novel expression of the relationship between mother and daughter with a modern core, but also to be popular. Prior to this, the domestic drama "Rock and Crazy Flower" made a good attempt.

The recently hit Korean drama "Outsider" (also translated as "The Stranger") has also achieved this. The series is adapted from the webtoon of the same name, and tells the story of an alternative mother and daughter in a relaxed and popular way.

"Outsiders" poster

Mother Kim Eun Mi (played by Jeon Hye Jin) tasted the forbidden fruit for the first time in high school, became pregnant unexpectedly, and gave birth to her daughter Kim Jin Hee (played by Choi Soo Young). Kim Jin-hee's father is missing, and the mother and daughter, who are 18 years apart, depended on each other and lived happily for 30 years. Now the mother is a physical therapist, and the daughter is a policeman who has been transferred from the police station to the police station. The mother and daughter have become sisters for many years. Although they are intimate under the same roof, sometimes they seem to be "outsiders" with conflicts and boundaries.

Mother Kim Eun Mi (played by Jeon Hye Jin)

Daughter Kim Jin-hee, played by Girls' Generation's Choi Soo-young

Although "Outsiders" has a suspenseful shell from beginning to end (this is a bit like the operation of "Crash Course in Romance"), and is also involved in some sporadic cases through the daughter's identity as a community policeman, the plot is mainly composed of mother and daughter. The daily chores of flying dogs jumping together. It has the atmosphere of a light-hearted essay, but it does not appear light and shallow. Instead, it makes a different thinking and presentation of the mother-daughter issue.

At the finale of the series, the audience rating has become the second in the history of the newly established ena TV station.

The mothers in the play, first of all, have the biggest commonality of mothers in the world, love children. The current Kim Eun-mi often appears to be more "childish", sloppy, and more in need of protection than her daughter, but she has been working hard to give her daughter plenty of love during her growing years. For example, Kim Eun-mi longs for love, and she has never stopped dating because she is quite pretty, but because the man cannot accept her daughter, no matter how sad she is when they break up, Kim Eun-mi will choose to break up.

It's not easy for a single mother to raise her daughter

Although Kim Eun-mi retains many characteristics of East Asian mothers, she also broke the "motherhood" discipline bound to East Asian mothers. This is the key to why this pair of mother and daughter look different - the mother is very "different".

"Motherhood" in East Asian society not only emphasizes that mothers take the main responsibility in raising children, but also emphasizes that a mother should have the "likeness" of a mother-for example, she must be simple, hard-working, tolerant, and selfless Paying, sacrificing, suppressing one's own desires, becoming the child's eternal harbor and relying on... Such an image of a mother was once the mainstream in literary and artistic works, and people in the past didn't think there was anything wrong with it. The praise and eulogy of "job" form an invisible discipline for all women invisibly-if you don't become such a great mother, you don't deserve to be or be called a mother.

Now this concept has been slowly broken. Becoming a mother has obligations that she must fulfill, but beyond that, a mother is also an individual. However, in many cases, the mothers we can accept as independent individuals are those mothers who devote themselves to their careers and neglect their families. Although there will be some mothers who follow love in film and television works, nine out of ten they appear as negative supporting characters, using the mother's irresponsibility to exaggerate the protagonist's childhood trauma. We still subconsciously believe that mothers who pursue personal desires other than career are not qualified.

"Outsiders" doesn't think so, it faces up to the mother's personal desires: Kim Eun-mi loves her daughter very much, but she also loves men very much.

It's like Kim Eun-mi's endless dating, seeing handsome men often can't move their legs. She didn't have that kind of pressure that I have to look like a so-called "mother" in front of my daughter, and she didn't have any worries about what my daughter would think of me if I was a "nymphomaniac" to men. Of course, although Kim Eun-mi is very masculine, she has no love brain. As mentioned above, her daughter has always been her bottom line. No matter how good a man is, she will say no if she cannot accept her daughter.

The most daring part of the plot is nothing more than the daughter bumping into her mother watching a "small video". The mother didn't change her face, and the only one who was messed up in the wind was her daughter. And when the daughter complained about her mother's move, the mother made a grimace and complained about her daughter, "Only state officials are allowed to set fires, and the common people are not allowed to light lamps, which is annoying." Later, after the daughter apologized to her mother, the mother and daughter happily went to the sex toy store.

Daughter treats, invites mother to go shopping

Here is the first meaning of "outsider": Can a mother break the shackles of the concept of "being a mother must be like a mother" and appear in front of her daughter as an ordinary woman/"outsider"? A daughter is obviously not surprised by the desires of other women/"outsiders", but if this woman is her own mother, will she still accept it calmly?

What the series wants to say is that you must learn to look at yourself and your family from the perspective of an "outsider". Don't demand and treat your closest family members harshly with all kinds of so-called "mother-like" or "daughter-like". Otherwise, equal communication between each other is difficult to achieve.

For many people, the mother-daughter relationship is a heavy topic, and they are likely to be in a mother-daughter relationship that is not ideal. Or a controlling mother-daughter relationship, where the mother interferes in all her daughter's decisions in the name of love; or a competitive mother-daughter relationship, where the mother has "misogynistic" jealousy towards her daughter, such as thinking that her daughter has taken away her husband's love; or In the dependent mother-daughter relationship, the mother uses her daughter as an emotional outlet, and puts all her hopes on her daughter, which makes the daughter overwhelmed; or in the absent mother-daughter relationship, the mother has not fulfilled her basic obligations as a mother, and the child's need for maternal love not being satisfied...

Another point that the mother in "Outsiders" is "different" is that the relationship between her and her daughter is not the above-mentioned negative ones. She does not control, preach or morally kidnap her daughter, but loves each other, takes care of each other, and has compatible and complementary temperaments. What's more, they have that sense of boundaries that see each other as "outsiders."

Kim Jin Hee had no sense of boundaries when he was a child. A beautiful mother is like a lovable goldfish, but no matter how beautiful a goldfish is, it will also have dirty stools that cannot be shaken off. Jin Jinxi is worried that she will become a "goldfish poop". Although her mother will not abandon her, she is still afraid of delaying her mother's search for a lover, and she feels guilty towards her mother. "Goldfish poop" has always been a knot in Kim Jin Hee's heart.

Someone described her daughter as a "goldfish poop", and her mother pulled her hair angrily

Fortunately, the mother and daughter finally untied this knot after a quarrel. The mother is a beautiful goldfish, and the daughter is also an independent and beautiful goldfish. They are independent and need each other, and no one is a burden to the other. No matter who the mother falls in love with, it is the mother's choice, and it will not change the relationship between the mother and her daughter.

In order to highlight this "sense of boundaries", the plot allows Kim Eun-mi to reunite with her first love and Kim Jin-hee's biological father, Park Jin-hong (played by Ahn Jae-wook) 30 years later, and fall in love again. Even though Park Jin-hong is Kim Jin-hee's biological father, he has never fulfilled his obligation to support him, so he is just Kim Eun-mi's new boyfriend. In Kim Jin-hee's eyes, what kind of person is Park Jin-hong and whether his personality fits with him? , it doesn't matter, "It's the person who met my mother, the point is my mother."

Although her mother's love partner is her father, Kim Jin Hee just treats him as her mother's ordinary lover.

Kim Eun Mi will not change her and Kim Jin Hee's lifestyle because of Park Jin Hong, "Even if the object is you, there will be no difference."

Ahn Jae-wook, the first male god of Korean dramas, plays the father who comes back

For many years, mother and daughter have become sisters, and an ideal mother-daughter relationship has been achieved. Give each other enough love and trust to establish a stable, solid, and interdependent relationship. You can drink and chat together, or talk about love and life together; break the shackles of identity, liberate your true personality, respect differences, and communicate frankly , use language to express love, eliminate misunderstandings, and sincerely apologize, instead of creating confrontation, mutual criticism, and fighting; maintain an appropriate and necessary sense of boundaries, and let the other party pursue new possibilities and explore differences life...

Mother and daughter travel from the same airport to different destinations.

This is of course a very ideal relationship, so that some viewers asked: Does such a mother really exist, and does such a mother-daughter relationship exist? I believe it exists. Perhaps it is difficult for the mothers of the previous generation to break away from the traditional norms, but the mainstream audience of this show is a new generation of young audiences, some of whom may become mothers in the future. Under the influence and influence of new concepts, They may become "alternative" mothers, and when there are more such mothers, they will become mainstream.

"Our culture has always lacked a kind of introspection, which is the aggressiveness of love." Therefore, sometimes you might as well learn to examine and treat close family members from the perspective of "outsiders". The aggressiveness of the name will be reduced.