공공역사로서의 역사영화와 개연성으로서의 역사

Abstract

Th is article aims to review the issues and challenges of history films, which are one of the most problematic fi elds of historical use in the field of popular culture, and explore the direction of Korean history films from the perspective of public history. In this article, among all historical films based on history or subject matter, all historical films that are dealt with at least one of the three elements: real people, real events, and representation of a specific era are broadly referred to history films. Since the 2010s, history films have become a popular genre that has been successful in both box office and criticism. However, history films were highly controversial due to pro-Japanese issues or historical distortions and had a decisive impact on box office success, including “Cheongyeon(Blue Swallow)” in the mid-2000s, “Deokhye Ongju(The Last Princess)”, “Gunhamdo(The Battleship Island)”, and “Naratmal Sami(The King’s Letters)” in the mid-to-late 2010s. In the controversy surrounding these films, the issue is whether history films should not have negative characters as leading roles, how far can they pursue film imagination and entertainment, and whether imaginative fiction inserted in history films can be viewed as a kind of historical interpretation. Through these issues, it is argued that history films are a place where the public’s perception and emotions about history are expressed through criticism and discussion around the film as well as the content, and strategies and attitudes are set in different positions of creators/producers and users/consumers. When recognizing historical films as public history, is the problem of verisimilitude of history films, the problem of re-recognizing the meaning of history films as historical interpreters, the need to recognize that history films are films of the present rather than films of the past, and the ethics of representation in history films. After all, history films indicate history as a probability rather than history of fact. Th e film has an outstanding advantage in recreating and portraying plausible stories that might have been there at the time. It will be a strategy of history films as a public history to capture the various paths that may come to face the truth there.