Abstract
<Burning> is the most ambiguous and opaque film among Lee Chang-dong's works in terms of its genre attitude. This paper suggests that the opacity of <Burning> is due to the flaw(hamartia) that the protagonist Jong-su possesses, which acts like a filter blocking his relationship with the world. Like Oedipus, Jong-su, with his hamartia of hubris, has the potential to become the hero of tragedy, as Aristotle describes it. However, Jong-su's hamartia, unlike Oedipus, is not an-agnorisis or peripeteia. Instead, by choosing to kill Ben, Jong-su fails to integrate into society and ends up manifesting as a symptom. From this perspective, Lee Chang-dong's <Burning> can be seen as a modern reinterpretation of the relationship between Oedipus and the Sphinx. This paper explores the genre characteristics of <Burning> by exploring the process in which the protagonist Jong-su manifests as a symptomatic subject, unlike the heroes of ancient tragedy. To do so, the paper compares the enigma motifs and metaphor structures inherent in <Burning> with those in Georges Agamben’s enigma discourse and analyzes the hamartia of Oedipus and Jong-su. Through this analysis, it is ultimately confirmed that Lee Chang-dong's generic attitude, as conveyed through his camera, stems from the position of irony.
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