On the margins: action heroines in Coin-Locker Girl and The Villainess

Abstract

ABSTRACT In this paper, I examine Coin-Locker Girl (Chainataun, Han Jun-hee, 2015) and The Villainess (Aknyeo, Jung Byung-gil, 2017), two recent examples of women-centred action genre films through the key concepts of surveillance, usefulness and the Freudian concept of the uncanny, which structure the films’ plot and meaning. In both films, usefulness becomes the reason for the characters’ survival and makes one recognizably human, while being useless makes one a ghost and even leads to death. Both films also present mentors and quasi-parents, who constantly put the protagonists, who exist in the margins of society, under surveillance and demand proof of their usefulness. In response, the protagonists struggle to overcome their marginalized existence but they are thwarted by larger external forces, such as the network of spies or criminals that determine the conditions in and against which the protagonists must work to survive. Furthermore, I hope to also show that China, which the films imagine and visualize in particular ways, provides the context of the characters’ marginality. Cinema reflects reality – in this case, it reflects the reality of contemporary Korea’s marginalized female subjectivity that exists beyond the film screen.