为国族身体卸装：晚近韩国电影的跨国性

              Jiwon Ahn                    (2006-01-14 11:15:45.0)                            

Disrobing the National Body: on Transnationalization of Recent Korean Cinema

第二届中国影视高层论坛论文

The main idea in this project is to consider some of the recent Korean films that proved successful in international markets as well as in domestic box office and examine “transnational” qualities in the films.  It can be, of course, deeply misleading to suggest that there exist inherently “transnational” qualities within the texts of the films.  However, we can get valuable insights into the dynamics of globalization and localization in the current trans/national film cultures and industries, through a comparison of some of the successful contemporary Korean films including My Sassy Girl, which are consistently apolitical, a-historical and personal, and some of the internationally successful period films from the previous decades such as Sopyonje (Winner of the Best Director and the Actress Awards at 1993 Shanghai International Film Festival), which both the government and filmmakers tried to promote as the “Korean national cinema.” In other words, by looking at the “disrobing” of traditional costumes in representative films of Korean national cinema from two different periods, we can see how the recent success of some Korean films at international markets and film festivals is related to a shift within the Korean film industry from the production of consciously nationalist, self-orientalizing costume dramas to more transnational, culturally non-specific films about everyday life.  

Further, we can reflect upon how to understand the critical discourse of the current Korean film circle, which read the success stories of recent Korean films in a seriously negative and pessimistic way.  Indeed, such a concerned opinion is currently dominant among film critics and scholars in Korea, who argue that the transformation of contempo...