Noh Gyeong-mu, director of “Find out how to Get Your Man Pregnant,” poses with a trophy after profitable the grand prize within the brief movie class on the Monterrey Worldwide Movie Competition in Mexico, Oct. 6. Yonhap
By Lee Hae-rin
In 2030, a remedy that may make males pregnant turns into obtainable in Korea in an effort to extend the fertile inhabitants because the nation hits a record-low fertility fee of 0.4 in Noh Gyeong-mu’s brief animation movie and webcomic “Find out how to Get Your Man Pregnant.”
In a current interview with The Korea Occasions, the filmmaker mentioned the award-winning piece, which gained the grand prize at Mexico’s Monterrey Worldwide Movie Competition within the brief movie class final month, is a “satire criticizing Korea’s patriarchy.”
The movie, which reverses stereotypical gender roles in a fictional future, revolves round a younger, annoyed couple scuffling with infertility. Pressured by her in-laws for allegedly “breaking the household line,” the protagonist Kang Yu-jin and her husband be taught from breaking information of a brand new know-how enabling males to turn into pregnant, after one other of their in vitro fertilization therapies ends in failure.
“The concept started with what our moms typically informed us, ‘Males ought to think about the shoe on their foot and get an opportunity to turn into pregnant and provides delivery themselves.’ I simply wished to make it come true,” Noh mentioned.
Poster of Noh Gyeong-mu’s animated movie, “Find out how to Get Your Man Pregnant” / Courtesy of Korean Academy of Movie Arts
Kang’s husband seeks recommendation from different male mentors who’ve skilled male being pregnant earlier than him, which leads him to be taught that pregnancies typically lead to profession disruption and private frustration.
Though the movie presents a fictional state of affairs by Noh, it’s based mostly on a sensible dilemma confronted by many Korean girls right now.
Being pregnant will not be a lady’s alternative over her physique however reasonably a social accountability and a software to hold on her husband’s bloodline. The plummeting birthrates and bodily and financial penalties of giving delivery and childrearing are positioned upon the feminine fertile inhabitants with none systematic assist.
Introduced up in a conservative household based mostly within the southeastern Gyeongsang Province area, Noh mentioned she and different girls in her era’s upbringing and dilemma on marriage, being pregnant and youngster rearing offered fertile floor for the thought of male being pregnant within the story.
“I want the movie would lead younger {couples} throughout the viewers to ask amongst themselves, ‘What would you do if males might additionally get pregnant? Would you get pregnant for me?'” Noh mentioned.
The director mentioned she has seen blended reactions from her acquaintances and audiences. “Some males mentioned they’d be prepared to turn into pregnant for his or her companions, whereas some others did not bluntly say they’d, however shunned the thought,” she mentioned.
Noh believes the movie’s message will probably be related so long as the nation’s demographic disaster lingers with none substantial options. Korea reached a record-low fertility fee — the common variety of youngsters born to a lady in her reproductive years — at 0.78 this yr, rating lowest amongst developed nations.
“I began writing the state of affairs within the winter of 2020, however there isn’t any prospect of overcoming the plummeting birthrates in sight. So I assume the movie might resonate with audiences for an extended time than anticipated,” Noh mentioned, including that though patriarchy will not be the one issue accountable for the demographic disaster, the social and financial disadvantages girls face after being pregnant and childrearing should obtain the highlight.
Noh plans to talk up on discrimination in opposition to the socially weak in her future works. Lately, she realized of systematic and social injustices that marriage migrants in Korea from Asian international locations face.
“Many issues upset me and such anger is a supply of inspiration for my work. Discrimination from gender and age are a few of what drive me the angriest,” Noh mentioned, explaining that the sad and discriminatory experiences she had as a Korean lady have impressed her artistic work.
The movie was screened at a number of home and worldwide movie festivals, together with the twenty fourth Jeonju Worldwide Movie Competition, the nineteenth Incheon Ladies’s Movie Competition and the sixteenth version of Poland’s worldwide animated movie pageant “Animator.”
“Find out how to Get Your Man Pregnant” will probably be revealed as a graphic novel in Korean in December, with an English translation to observe after, so as to achieve a wider, extra world viewers, Noh mentioned.
