Goody Jeanne d'Arc
구디 얀다르크
Gudi Yandareukeu
A young IT planner worn down by crunch, subcontracting and harassment quits, starts a union and a podcast, and becomes “Goody Jeanne d'Arc,” the Joan of Arc of Seoul's tech district.
Synopsis
Guro Digital Complex, “Goody” to the people who work there, is where Seoul's IT industry actually gets built: a maze of conglomerates, startups, contractors and sub-subcontractors where all-nighters are routine.
Sa I-an joins a big IT company as a planning recruit and finds that “maintenance” means taking abusive calls from clients, while the male seniors give the presentations. When she finally gets real work, a manager starts pestering her, and the housing loan she took out when she was hired keeps her from quitting.
After five years she leaves for a startup, then hops between jobs across the district: casual insults, sexual harassment at company dinners, vacation days that exist only on paper. One night, hailing a taxi, her nose starts to bleed for the first time in her life, and she hands in her resignation the next morning. Fighting just to make a living, she finds herself founding a union, running its culture department and hosting a podcast for workers. Goody's Joan of Arc is born.
Around her stands a gallery of defiant underdogs: the colleague who walks out of the hostess bar his boss dragged him to, the contract teacher who won't flatter her vice-principal, the minor-league ballplayer who knows he can make it in the majors.
Why it works on screen
- Guro Digital Complex, “Goody” to the people who work there: conglomerates, subcontractors and sub-subcontractors tangled together in one district, where Korea's IT industry actually gets built.
- Abusive client calls that go by the name of “maintenance,” harassment at company dinners, vacation days that exist only on paper, and the housing loan taken out at hiring that keeps a new recruit from quitting.
- One night, hailing a taxi, she gets the first nosebleed of her life; the next morning she resigns. Then she founds a union and hosts a podcast for workers, whose episodes can become the series' episodes.
- A colleague who walks out of the hostess bar his boss dragged him to, a contract teacher who won't flatter her vice-principal, a minor-league ballplayer who dreams of the majors: supporting characters who can each carry an episode.
Praise
“A powerful, provocative work that looks squarely at the changed reality of 21st-century Korea.”
“A 21st-century labor novel, and an avant-garde one: it gives fictional form to the post-capitalist symptoms already upon us, and searches for a way beyond that hell.”