Hula Girls Character Analysis

Dynamic characters play an important role in relaying a story: they are a relatable vehicle for delivering a message to an audience. Two modern films by Asian directors explore the path a dynamic character takes when exposed to a community with antithetical values to their own. Daming, protagonist of Shower directed by Zhang Yang, struggles to find his way as he is suddenly caught between the fast past modern world and the more traditional bath house life his sickly father and mentally retarded brother live. Daming is forced to change his lifestyle as a looming teardown of the old bathhouse community is stirring up trouble. Hula Girls, directed by Lee Sang-il, tells the story of a coal mining town near collapse in 1965 Japan. A dance instructor from Tokyo, Madoka Hirayama, is hired to save the town by training the local coal miners daughters to dance at a soon to be constructed Hawaiian spa resort and entertainment center. Hirayama clashes heavily with the communities traditional values as she tries to accomplish her goal. While each film takes a …show more content…
This event is what brings brings the main characters together: the dance instructor Madoka Hirayama, Kimiko and her mother and brother, and the other hula dance students. At the beginning of the film, a young girl named Sanae convinces her friend Kimiko to join the Hula dance group after she sees an advertisement. Unfortunately, the townspeople are not so quick to abandon their way of life and Kimiko’s mother, brother and fellow towns members disapprove of the Hawaiian community center. Furthermore, many of the japanese women in the town are shocked at the scandalous nature of the hula dancing and are scared off. Although, Sanae does convince Kimiko to stay. And so the dance instructor Madoka Hirayama arrives to the town with few potential students and a townsfolk that hates her and what she