Thread by @drama_analyst

🧵#MyLiberationNotes is full of religious symbolism and allusions. A thread on the strangest of them all: the Pietà, how it's the perfect motif for our worship couple Mi-jeong/Mary and Gu/Jesus, and what it could mean for their possible ending.
#MyLiberationNotesEp15

Gi-jeong describes the pick-up girl as the "noblest romance": If need be, she would gently pick up her lover’s severed head. She wants an abundant love, not shying away from gore. Given the bible references in MLN, this may even allude to Salome demanding John the Baptist’s head.

Oscar Wilde’s Salome was obsessed with John, demanding and kissing his severed head. Gi-jeong dances that fine line between love and obsession, too. She has a lot of love to give, but she doesn’t always realise, if the other person is ready to receive it yet.

Gi-jeong goes on to describe another "noble romance" that may seem even stranger at first. She admires the Virgin Mary for taking Jesus from the cross and mourning his dead body in her lap. The image she insinuates is an iconic religious motif: the Pietà.

A motherly love is a strange romance ideal, but in Renaissance, religious iconography was mostly about sensuality. Michelangelo’s Pietà perfectly illustrates this erotic charge. Mary is so young, she could never have given birth to this naked and muscular man in her lap.

The Pietà as a “mixture of Divinity and sexuality, a powerful expression of the human body as the contact point between Heaven and Earth” is the perfect motif for our worship couple and the strange allusions to Mary, and Jesus start making more sense.
mutualart.com/Article/From-G…

Visually, Mi-jeong is often depicted as innocent, and pure, especially from Gu’s POV. Her hood is reminiscent of Virgin Mary iconography, she has a halo, and her colour seems to be blue, Mary’s colour, representing transcendence, mystery, and the divine. A heavenly color.

Gu’s Jesus parallels are even more striking. He comes down to earth from another world to live as a carpenter. There’s always a cross around his neck, he walked out of his own grave, his clothes are plain linen, and to save Mi-jeong, he gives up his life in Sanpo to conquer hell.

Mi-jeong's musings about carrying Gu at one-year-old, as a newborn, seem to be alluding to the Pietà as well. Mary is depicted larger than Jesus, as German mystics believed that in her grief, she imagined holding him as a baby in her arms once more. Compassion and sensuality.

#MyLiberationNotes consistently uses allusions and motif like the Pietà to underline its storyline and themes. Will we see a "dead" Gu lying in Mi-jeong's arms next? There's been some foreshadowing for his symbolic death, but like Jesus, he should be reborn. Hope springs eternal.