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KOREAN STUDIES REVIEW
Contemporary Korean Cinema: Identity, Culture and Politics, by Hyangjin Lee. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2001, 256 pages
(ISBN 0-7190-6007-9, cloth; ISBN 0-7190-6008-7, paper).reviewed by Isolde Standish
SOAS, University of London[This review first appeared in Acta Koreana, 6.2 (July 2003): 180-183. Acta Koreana is published by Academia Koreana of Keimyung University.]
As set out in the introduction, Hyangjin Lee ambitiously aims at a comparative ‘ideological’ study of films from both North and South Korea. Within the context of her stated aims, films are utilized as a mechanism through which is revealed ‘the ideological orientation of the society in which it is created and circulated’. The primary issues of the study, alluded to in the sub-title of the book ‘identity’, ‘culture’ and ‘politics’, are questions of ‘gender, nationalism and class’.
In setting an academic agenda for the subsequent chapters, the introduction gives an account of the historical trajectory of the adoption and adaptation of Marxist- derived theoretical paradigms deployed in classical film studies. Theorists cited include Louis Althusser, Antonio Gramsci, and Michel Foucault. While also drawing on the work of the anthropologist Clifford Geertz, Lee locates her theoretical basis in a ‘hermeneutic’ approach. This she does on two grounds, first, ‘a hermeneutic understanding of cultural texts is fuller and more dimensional than the ‘scientific’ explanations of social lives’ (p. 9); and secondly, ‘the hermeneutic approach exempts researchers from arguing on the quality of texts’ (p. 10). Lee concludes, ‘From the hermeneutic point of view, how and why people impart a significance to works of art in their local context should be the locus of investigation’ (p. 10).
The three principal analytic chapters ‘Gender and cinematic adaptations of Ch’unhyangjon’, ‘Nationhood and the cinematic representation of history’, and ‘Class and cultural identities in contemporary Korea’, are contextualised within a first chapter, ‘The creation of a national identity: a history of Korean cinema’ that gives in outline a potted history of the development of the industries in both North and South Korea from 1903 to the latter stages of the twentieth century. This chapter is clearly structured into three segments. The first covers the period from the introduction of cinema into Korea just prior to its annexation by Japan in 1910 to ‘Liberation’ in 1945. The second examines the industry of the North as a political tool of indoctrination utilized by both Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il respectively, while the third, focuses on the development of cinema in the South. By locating the development of Korean cinema within the context of political constraints, first, the rigidities of the Japanese colonial government, and later the constraints imposed upon the industries by both the North Korean and the South USA-military-backed regimes, Lee’s account stays closely within dominant Korean academic discourses, which can best be described as following a ‘progressive’ model of film history. The ultimate point of cinematic maturation, and in this case artistic freedom, is the time when the given historian writes. Lee concludes this first chapter with the following observation regarding contemporary South Korean directors: ‘this group of young directors offers a promising future for the industry. The final abolition in 1997 of the long-standing censorship helps them to explore their artistic visions with an unprecedented degree of freedom’ (p. 62).
The following chapter, taking up one of the study’s principal themes, that of ‘gender’, focuses on a detailed analysis of the character Ch’unhyang drawn from five films made between 1961 and 1987 based on the classic Korean morality tale Ch’unhyangjon. In this comparative analysis, three versions produced in the south and two from the north, Ch’unhyang’s ‘femininity’ is explored as a gendered site that is symbolic of an idealized Confucian-derived ‘femininity’ that transcends state divisions. The character Ch’unhyang and her role as faithful wife of the magistrate’s son, Mongnyong, as represented in the five film versions discussed, is further deconstructed to reveal how both the South and North have appropriated this legacy within the dominant value systems of their respective cultures.
In the third chapter Lee shifts the focus of the study to the crucial question of ‘nationhood’ in an artificially divided state. She argues that films as cultural texts ‘vividly expose the coexistence of political discontinuity and cultural continuity in contemporary Koreans’ perception of their nationhood’ (p. 104). In the three films analyzed from the North, Ch’oe Hakshin’s Family (1996), The Sea of Blood (1969), and Wolmi Island (1982), Lee finds Korean ‘nationhood’ defined in the oppositional terms of the ‘other’, namely, the Japanese of the colonial period and the Americans during the Korean War. Paralleling this process of defining ‘self’ against ‘other’ is the ‘effort to mount Kim Il Sung as the ultimate definer of Korean nationhood’ (p. 106). This cult of Kim Il Sung, Lee links to his son’s increasing involvement in the North Korean film industry from the late 1960s. By contrast in the South, the main issues that arise from the three films analyzed, the classic A Stray Bullet (1961), The Banner Bearer Without a Flag (1979), and the more recent epic Southern Guerrilla Forces (1990), are related to the forced division of the country. While The Banner Bearer Without a Flag centres on a simplistic binary anti-communist theme encouraged by the successive USA-backed-military regimes, the other two more complex films analyzed show considerable scepticism for this sensibility. Lee makes the further observation that this scepticism about ‘anti-communism as the ideological basis of national identity’ was one of the ‘major shifts’ in South Korean social discourse in recent years. After providing a detailed analysis of the differences in the portrayal of ‘nationhood’ in films from the North and the South, Lee concludes this chapter with a section that returns to the concept of the Confucian family as providing a meta-narrative in which these differences are framed.
The final chapter explores ‘class’ as a definer of cultural identity. This Lee explores on two levels, both the economic and the ‘cultural legacies of the Confucian occupational order from the traditional period’ (p. 144). Through the analysis of six films produced between 1980 and 1990 (three from the North, Untrodden Path, The Brigade Commander’s Former Superior , and Bellflower ; and from the South A Nice Windy Day, Kuro Arirang, and Black Republic), she concludes that films ‘inevitably expose problems of the established social structure through textual interstices, which are often hidden under an ideological rhetoric’ (p. 149). In other words, pre-modern cultural traditions related to social respect are just as important, if not more important, in determining social status than economic factors.
As stated at the outset, Lee’s study is ambitious, and she should be commended for tackling such a broad topic at a time when the imperative of the Research Assessment Exercise and the constraints of institutional organization within the UK university sector are increasingly forcing academics into the minutiae of established academic subject areas. However, given the slenderness of the text and the breadth of the topic areas stipulated in the sub-title of the book—identity, culture and politics—it is only to be expected that as an academic text (as opposed to an undergraduate textbook) it leaves many questions unanswered. In the opening introductory chapter much is made of an Althusserian-derived concept of ‘ideology’ and, within the context of the ‘reproduction of shared beliefs’, this is most appropriate for a study of this nature. However, within the discussion of the films, Lee tends to focus on the meta-ideologies that have supported the divisions between the two societies. This is particularly the case with examples taken from the North. Confucianism, as can be argued for Christianity in the West, is put forward as being the foundation for a shared system of beliefs and social structures that can over-ride the political ‘ideologies’ upon which state political divisions are based. Althusser himself (in ‘Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses’), makes a distinction between what he terms as ‘theoretical ideologies’, that is, the formal conscious beliefs of a class or other social group; and ‘ideology in its practical state’, by which he means the way ‘ruling imperatives’ are actually transmitted into forms of routine behaviour, becoming the characteristic world-view (‘common sense’ in Gramsci’s terms) of class or other social groups. If we are to understand the relationship of the individual and society to film, then I would suggest we should focus on Althusser’s latter sense as ‘ideology in its practical state’ rather than on the meta-ideologies of communism versus capitalism.
The other major problem with studies of this nature is the temptation to select films to fit the theory. Rarely does Lee offer any substantial criteria by which particular films have been selected for analysis. In my opinion in studies of this nature that purport to shed light on ‘how and why people impart a significance to works of art in their local context’ (p. 10), the focus should be on popularity within the relevant country/region as the principal criterion for selection. Whether they have received critical acclaim at ‘major film festivals’ is another matter related to ‘art house’ cinema, which is often not a good indicator of popular appeal and therefore not a good indicator of social discourse. One only has to think of the Japanese example of Kurosawa Akira whose films often received favourable acclaim both abroad and in domestic ratings, yet many of whose films remain inaccessible to the majority Japanese audience. However, having raised the obligatory reservations regarding the book as an ‘academic’ text, I am sure that it will be most valuable as a textbook in the burgeoning field of ‘world cinema’ courses.
Citation:
Standish, Isolde 2006
Review of Contemporary Korean Cinema: Identity, Culture and Politics, by Hyangjin Lee (2001)
Korean Studies Review 2006, no. 09
Electronic file: http://koreaweb.ws/ks/ksr/ksr06-09.htm