My Hollow Love for ‘My Holo Love’
By: Michelle Wanha
Tags: My Holo Love, Netflix, Misogyny, Kdrama

So, Netflix recently released a K-drama titled My Holo Love, where a lonely woman (So-yeon) finds a pair of glasses in her purse. She later learns that it is a sophisticated device that houses a hologram. With this, the story follows her growing relationship with the hologram (Holo), unresolved childhood trauma and corporate corruption/competition.

As the title of this piece suggests, and even overstates: I was disappointed with the series and its conclusion. Particularly with its treatment of women and their relationship with men. From the start, viewers are signalled to prepare for a love triangle between So-yeon, Holo and Nan-do (Holo’s creator). As seasoned K-drama viewers should already be aware of, love triangles are a prized (or rather, overused) trope by K-drama writers. Therefore, amongst Holo and Nan-do, So-yeon has to choose between a fantasy of perfected masculinity or a testament to what masculinity already is. And she, unfortunately, chooses the latter.

Holo is patient, calm, dependable and caring, while Nan-do is prideful, rageful and entitled. Characteristics that I have noticed tend to define toxic masculinity. Even aesthetically, through Holo’s light coloured outfits; blueish, angelic eyes and pastier skin (literally, I can see the pale, caked-on foundation; and let’s skip on the colourism this difference suggests for today), he is juxtaposed with Nan-do’s more brooding appearance. Ultimately, what is perpetuated in this series are two key factors: the societal complacency with a mediocre/harmful masculinity and the labour women have to use to remedy said masculinity.

Boy’s will be boys

Despite Holo’s limitations in his incapacity to be physically felt or to emotionally feel (although the latter is made complicated throughout the series), I frankly fell in love with him and expected So-yeon to do the same. However, I soon realised that his purpose is to testify the limitations of men and to praise them for it because at least it makes them real or human. Therefore, Holo’s ability to cook, his ability to listen to So-yeon, his ability for honesty — all of these characteristics, and more, work to embolden the appeal of his disposition, while emphasising their vacancy in Nan-do. And in turn, like an inverted mirror, Holo is meant to pathologise a healthier version of masculinity. He asserts that this ‘perfectionism’ we expect from men, is merely a fantasy, and this is illustrated by the fact that he is a man-made device.

Holo and Nan-do from ‘My Holo Love’.

The danger with this rhetoric is that men, in all their rage and mistreatment of women, are sympathised with. Their toxicity is relegated to mere ‘character flaws’ or ‘human traits’ that most people should naturally possess. But what happens now is that we witness a denial of masculinity as a construct and the fact that all of its toxic traits are systematic, instead of unexplainable human conditions.

The labour expected from women

Besides the complacency women are expected to extend to men, women are also expected to labour so that they can rectify men from all their faults. And oftentimes, this expectation is maintained, no matter how damaging the labour could be for us. This expectation is trivially portrayed in the image below. After noticing a heap of trash strewn about in front of Nan-do’s apartment, So-yeon attempts to confront him, since it affects her as well. When she does, she informs him about the necessity of recycling, which in turn, unveils his ignorance to the process. Later, after coming from work, So-yeon briefly acquaints him with a recycling contraption outside.

So-yeon from ‘My Holo Love’.

I perceive this scene as a metaphor of So-yeon and Nan-do’s dynamic. Forced to deal with his mess, So-yeon works to help Nan-do help himself. Another, more stark example of the labour So-yeon undertakes for Nan-do’s reformation occurs during her investigation of their shared past. So-yeon goes through a potentially triggering expedition to unravel how their traumas intertwine. As a result, Nan-do’s volatile disposition is slowly appeased through her care, love and labour. Ultimately, with these two examples, So-yeon has to work to improve Nan-do, even if it might annoy or traumatise her. And by the end of all of this, she receives little to no tangible benefits, other than the arduous improvement of a man that was already supposed to match her decency.

I eventually stopped watching the series when I realised that So-yeon and Holo were fated to fail romantically. This is an epidemic prevalent in many love triangles, where the female lead settles for the more ‘complicated’ (euphemism for toxic) love interest, instead of the healthier second male lead. What is interesting about My Holo Love, is that the series seems to be somewhat cognisant of this dichotomy, and works to sympathise with the unhealthy half of it. It does this while perpetuating the idea that women should embrace these men in all their ‘flaws’. So, a man who pulls his domestic weight within a relationship; listens to his partner; and doesn’t bubble into rageful fits for trivial matters, is deemed too unreal to exist. And the fact that Holo is merely a configuration of codes further affirms his un-realness, and in turn, the perversion of his masculinity. A masculinity that real cishet men are too disinterested to attain by themselves, or at all.