Who Is the Real Demon King in Kpop Demon Hunters?
What would you do if you met a demon? Besides calling Netflix KPOP Demon Hunters, that is?
This animated film with the goofy title, ear-worm songs that get stuck in your head, a heart-warming moral, and stellar production, is taking the world by storm. (A few spoilers ahead – if you haven’t seen the film yet, go and enjoy.)
In the film, the demon king, Gwi-ma, feasts on human souls which he turns into demons. Our heroines battle them through inspiring (and rather fierce) songs that light up their fans souls (that and a few amazing weapons). So how does the demon king control his minions? Simple. By manipulating the voices in their minds the body follows.
Interestingly, when Gwi-ma discovers a weakness or flaw in a human’s sense of self, he exploits this by tempting them, whispering in their ear like a secret friend “You may be a failure, but I can give you what you are looking for...” When he exploits his victim’s sense of unworthiness, “you don’t deserve a family” or “you’re too much and not enough,” the voice whispering in his victim’s ear is their own! That’s the clue that the real demon king in this film is the negative thoughts in our own minds – our fears, shame, regrets, sense of unworthiness and failure. Tara Brach says that people’s biggest fear is of being a failure – not failing, of “being” a failure, as in a failed human being, a being unworthy of love and acceptance, too flawed to belong.
Demon voices get started by harsh parenting and trauma, often passed down to our parents from their parents. Demeaning external voices become inner voices, made worse by hope-stealing life circumstances like poverty or systematic racism. These voices combine to make us feel unworthy and undeserving, which makes social media (distracting Netflix films!) and other distractions a temporary relief from our misery.
When we become separated from our own experience, losing our soul, so to speak, we experience a deep sense of desolation. Our connection to our deeper self occurs through our on-going experience of life. We experience a deep loneliness when we have lost connection with the sensuous flow of life, illustrated beautifully in David Abram’s book, The Spell of the Sensuous. The lack of capacity to accept and feel our own feelings, especially unpleasant ones, with compassion and kindness means we have less warmth and care to bring to friends because we can’t tolerate our own emotions, let along theirs. We end up hiding from ourselves and those closest to us, just like the heroine in the film. This only adds to our deep loneliness. Many of us get seduced, looking for the next distraction or dopamine hit (handily supplied by social media) as we try to quell the demon voices in our mind. But these empty experiences only distract us, dissociate us from our own lives, further exacerbating our loneliness for a deep sense of a worthy self, and opening the door wider for Gwi-ma’s seductions.
This is painful as evidenced by both Jinu's and the heroine, Rumi’s, experiences with their hidden shame. The anti-hero, Jinu, lives with these voices in his mind that keep him dissociated from his experience of daily life (which doesn’t look too great for demons anyway!) Shame and regret devour his sense of worth and hope. When he finds that Rumi understands and share the shame of making/being a mistake with the heroine, her acceptance of him provides a bridge to his own sense of self, allowing him to recover his own “soul.” Having one person see him in more of a holistic way enables him to recover his own sense of his human self. This connection between demon and hunter enables the heroine to accept herself fully as well.
In one of the song sets, the heroine lays out the path to freedom: facing what is “broken.” As the heroine discovers, our ability to hold our mistakes with compassion, to accept our brokenness, is what enables us to remain human and not turn into soul-less demons, devoured by our negative thoughts, to find the "beauty in the broken glass."
What do you do if Gwi-ma starts whispering in your ear and there are no Huntr/x demon hunters nearby? First and foremost, return to the present moment. Presence means you are using your senses, vision, hearing, touch, smell, taste, and your own felt sense of your physical body-being, to connect with life in this moment. Now is the only moment you can feel your life. Often, we find emotions lurking that we have hidden, concealed even from ourselves. Embracing and naming what is there allows those feelings to move, to shift and change in the kind embrace of our attention. Breathing slowly and deeply also helps feelings move. Stuck feelings hurt!
If you're struggling with feelings or parts of you you can't accept, I can hold that space for you with kindness and compassion until you can accept them and find the "beauty in the broken glass."
