Militarism, Enlightenment, and Colonial Korean Cinema

Abstract

This chapter is a study of the late colonial era films released from 1940 to 1945, including Homeless Angels, Love and Vow, Volunteer, Portrait of Youth, and Suicide Squad at the Watch Tower. They are enlightenment films, which assume the position of the audience to be that of pupils and thus aim to educate and transform them. The colonial audience was always already targeted as collective recipients of knowledge and education from the beginnings of Korean cinema. Taking this as the point of departure, my reading of the abovementioned films focuses on the intertwined issues of colonial enlightenment and propaganda, as well as of ethnography, censorship, and narrative strategies of the films. Lastly, the chapter will conclude with a consideration of the postcolonial desire for a national cinematic tradition, and the implied ethics of film-viewing in postcolonial worlds.