Remasculinization of Korean Cinema

Kim Kyung Hyun Kim

Description

In one of the first English-language studies of Korean cinema to date, Kyung Hyun Kim shows how the New Korean Cinema of the past quarter century has used the trope of masculinity to mirror the profound sociopolitical changes in the country. Since 1980, South Korea has transformed from an insular, authoritarian culture into a democratic and cosmopolitan society. The transition has fueled anxiety about male identity, and amid this tension, empowerment has been imagined as remasculinization. Kim argues that the brutality and violence ubiquitous in many Korean films is symptomatic of Korea's on-going quest for modernity and a post-authoritarian identity.Kim offers in-depth examinations of more than a dozen of the most representative films produced in Korea since 1980. In the process, he draws on the theories of Jacques Lacan, Slavoj Zizek, Gilles Deleuze, Rey Chow, and Kaja Silverman to follow the historical trajectory of screen representations of Korean men from self-loathing beings who desire to be controlled to subjects who are not only self-sufficient but also capable of destroying others. He discusses a range of movies from art-house films including To the Starry Island (1993) and The Day a Pig Fell into the Well (1996) to higher-grossing, popular films like Whale Hunting (1984) and Shiri (1999). He considers the work of several Korean auteurs-Park Kwang-su, Jang Sun-woo, and Hong Sang-su. Kim argues that Korean cinema must begin to imagine gender relations that defy the contradictions of sexual repression in order to move beyond such binary struggles as those between the traditional and the modern, or the traumatic and the post-traumatic.

Sujets

• Sociologie, société et politique
• Korea
• Gender studies
• Film
• Corée

Informations

• Publié par: Duke University Press
• Date de parution: 08 mars 2004
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780822385585
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 2 Mo

Extrait

The Remasculinization of Korean Cinema

Asia-Pacific

Editors: Rey Chow, H. D. Harootunian, and Masao Miyoshi

Kyung Hyun Kim

   

The Remasculinization of Korean Cinema

         

    

     

  

     

   

©  Duke University Press All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper  Typeset in Minion by Tseng Information Systems, Inc. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data appear on the last printed page of this book. Frontispiece:A Fine, Windy Day(Param purŏ choŭn nal), , directed by Yi Chang-ho

For my parents Byung Kon Kim and Yeon-sup Lee

CONTENTS

Acknowledgments

ix

Introduction: Hunting for the Whale

I Genres of Post-Trauma



 At the Edge of a Metropolis inA Fine, Windy Day andGreen Fish

 Nowhere to Run: Disenfranchised Men on the Road inThe Man with Three Coffins,Sopyonje, andOut to the World

 ‘‘Is This How the War Is Remembered?’’: Violent Sex and the Korean War inSilver Stallion,Spring in My Hometown, andThe Taebaek Mountains

 Post-Trauma and Historical Remembrance in A Single SparkandA Petal

II New Korean Cinema Auteurs

 Male Crisis in the Early Films of Park Kwang-su

 Jang Sun-woo’s Three ‘‘F’’ Words: Familism, Fetishism, and Fascism 





 Too Early/Too Late: Temporality and Repetition in Hong Sang-su’s Films 

III Fin-de-siècle Anxieties

 Lethal Work: Domestic Space and Gender Troubles in Happy EndandThe Housemaid

 ‘‘Each Man Kills the Thing He Loves’’: Transgressive Agents, National Security, and Blockbuster Aesthetics in ShiriandJoint Security Area

Notes  Select Filmography of Major Directors of the New Korean Cinema  Index 

Acknowledgments

The book was first conceived during the mid-s—at a time when various South Korean newspaper and magazine articles reported that its unhealthy na- tional film industry might virtually be eliminated in a few years. Such predic- tions have proven to be capricious. On the contrary, Korean cinema in the early decade of the twenty-first century holds one of the most impressive box-office records among the active national film industries. In an exhibition environment replete with modern multiplex theaters where Hollywood films are known to have beaten every competitor, Korean cinema remains an anomaly. Its local products draw a large number of spectators—much larger than the days when quotas on import films were more restrictive and films relied on one-screen re- lease. Korean cinema reached a historical climax in  when it held all of the top five records in the annual box office. It was the first profitable year in decades for the entire industry, before production costs again rapidly exceeded the in- come revenue in . The buying, selling, bankrupting, and rumored merging between two distribution giants (Cinema Service andEntertainment) have made up the bulk of headlines in trade magazines since then. The first two years of the new millennium (–) should be remembered for the rising popularity of crass comedy films and the waning of the New Korean Cinema. Films likeKick the Moon(Silla ŭi tal pam),My Wife Is a Gang- ster(Chop’ok manura),Hi Dharma(Talma ya nolja), andMarrying the Mafia (Kamun ŭi yŏnggwang) topped the box-office chart for months and strongly reminded the Korean film industry of a tactless tagline, ‘‘the box office is never