Hallyu's Modern Oedipus: "Alice" and the Tragedy of the Self-Fulfilling Prophecy
Imagine this: you spend your entire adult life searching for your mother's killer only to discover that the murderer is, in fact, your own future self. Not only that, but this outcome, abhorrent and appalling as it is, has been predetermined to be your Fate before you were even born. If this sounds like something so far-fetched as to be straight out of fiction, that's because it is. This strange series of events forms the climax of the 2020 Korean drama, Alice . Billed as a science fiction story, it combined both scientific concepts from quantum physics and high fantasy tropes relating to Fate and prophecy to tell a story about the unintended consequences of scientific advancements that would allow humans to "time travel" - in reality, travel to parallel universes representing alternate versions of their pasts - by the year 2050. Perhaps it is this eclectic mishmash of genres that led Alice , ultimately, to flounder. Although the cast members received widespread prai