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[Drama chat] Hotel happy
by missvictrix
Dramaland’s long-standing love affair with hotels as a central point of action goes way back. One of the first that truly blew up this construct might be 2005’s My Girl. And from that time straight through this summer’s big romances — King the Land and See You in My 19th Life — we have seen luxury hotels as our drama’s main setting again and again.
I fancy a story about a hotel much more than a law office or police precinct, but the total fascination with hotels as a setting does make you wonder why. So, I sat down and thought about it for a bit.
One reason I think dramas love hotels is because they can carry a feeling of legacy. Rather than a mere corporation to hand down to your heirs, a hotel has soul behind it. Recent drama Curtain Call explored this idea with its setting, and See You in My 19th Life is touching on the same with Seo-ha trying to recreate his mother’s legacy: the hotel becomes a place that stands for something.
In the same way, hotels are likely preferred because they offer another benefit to the drama: a strong sense of place. Because really, the workstations and offices inside a skyscraper — though we might see them for 16 hours straight — don’t offer the same depth of feeling that a hotel does. Neither are they as visually pleasing. And the beautiful shots that are possible in a hotel lobby, atrium, courtyard, etc. definitely up a drama’s charm.
Hotels are also a place where a wide assortment of people naturally converge — so, this makes it easy for characters to come and go and interact without the need for three dozen trips to a coffee shop just so characters can run into each other.
And finally, I think hotels cast an interesting balance between private and public sphere. On one hand, you have people working in a professional environment, forced to deal not only with regular work drama (bureaucracy, hierarchy, etc.) but a public job that requires a lot of social grace (here, King the Land is really exceeding its setting by using it to tell a story about the industry as well). But in addition to all the public happenings, a hotel setting also offers that private sphere on the same exact ground, and within seconds. Get behind any closed door and you’re immediately in a private and intimate space where different interactions and conversations are suddenly possible.
The more I consider the different aspects of a hotel setting, the more I’m convinced it’s actually genius. While we can probably discuss for hours the different ways dramas use, misuse, or don’t use their settings, I think we can agree there are very few settings that can accomplish quite as much as a hotel does.
Why do you think K-dramas use hotels as their main setting so frequently? What are some of your favorite hotel settings and how were they incorporated into the plot?
Let the chatting begin!
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