Parameters of Disavowal: Colonial Representation in South Korean Cinema

Abstract

Jinsoo An claims in his book Parameters of Disavowal: Colonial Representation in South Korean Cinema that “the visualization of colonial space as the contentious site of both domination and incessant challenges to that domination informs the most enduring postcolonial imaginary of colonialism onscreen” (8). Captured in his brief analysis of the visual facade in Im Kwon-taek’s 1978 film The Genealogy is a critique of the ways in which postcolonial cinema instilled certain visual and aesthetic repertoire and tropes, allowing for a “curtailed view and willful disavowal” of the colonial past that haunts the present (132). In the nationalist historiography, An argues, “The colonial period signifies a unique conceptual conundrum, for it marks a fundamental rupture in the assumed ‘continuity’ of the nation’s linear and teleological trajectory of progress” (109). Here the author borrows from Michel de Certeau’s theory of everyday cultural practices to discuss both the colonial space as it is imagined in postcolonial South Korean cinema and its ideological aspects. An sees such cinema as a political work and argues that such ways of imagining the past “contributed to the knowledge production that was integral to the formation of a South Korean national subjectivity uniquely influenced by the bipolar order of the Cold War” (3). The introduction in this way lays out the main arguments and key concepts and also briefly summarizes each chapter and the issues that they explore.In chapter one, titled “Under the Banner of Nationalism,” the author begins his discussion with the liberation-era film genre (1945–1948) and moves on to biographical films about national leaders produced in the post–Korean War era. As he does in many parts of this book, here the author provides not only analytically sound but also essential discussion, as these two groups of films are rarely examined in Anglophone studies of Korean cinema. The films he focuses on, Hurrah! For Freedom (Ch’ŏe Ingyu, 1946) and The Independence Association and Young Syngman Rhee (Shin Sangok, 1959), are pivotal works in the consideration of the 1950s film and political culture as they “represented major advancements in the cinematic construction of a distinctive historical view toward the colonial past” (16). A study of the two films by major directors of the period thus allows the author to delve into the cultural, political, and film industry contexts of the era, which distinguishes his work from others that might simply provide film analysis. This chapter sets the tone for the book, which gives the reader rich, layered discussions of history, industry, politics, and even film technology along with detailed analyses of key postcolonial texts of the genre films it examines. The research is thorough, incorporating classical texts of film theory and innovative theoretical discourses in multiple disciplines such as literature, political economy, and social science both in English and Korean.Chapter two, “Film and the Waesaek (‘Japanese Color’) Controversies of the 1960s,” examines the impact of the 1965 Japan-Korea Normalization Treaty, with a focus on how “film policy, censorship practices, publicity campaigns, cultural discourses, and film production were newly focused on film exchanges with Japan” (35). This important historical moment has not been thoroughly investigated in Anglophone studies of Korean cinema, although more scholars are at work exploring this period as part of the growing interest in Cold War studies. As the author illustrates, it is a significant moment in many ways, not the least of which is connected to the confirmation of South Korea as a Cold War partner state of the United States and Japan. An makes an important assertion in this chapter that reverberates throughout the book, namely how the “confrontation with now-visible images of Japan triggered memories of forced assimilation and implied the failure of cultural decolonization”—memories that the postcolonial nation repressed until this moment (36). This is a significant reckoning for those working in the fields of postcolonial studies, not just for cinema studies or Korean studies. Beyond its usefulness to film scholars, the discussion he provides in this chapter is a valuable resource especially for students and scholars who seek a comprehensive understanding of South Korean culture of the period, including film policy, cultural trends, and politics of the 1960s and beyond.In terms of film analysis, the author’s fascinating analysis of The Torch, a Japanese documentary about the Olympic Games that was released in South Korea in 1960 illustrates his erudition via postcolonial theories, as the reader can see in the discussion of how and why Japanese language was prohibited in postcolonial Korean cinema. What he seems to be doing here is a kind of psychoanalytic dissection of the postcolonial state and the film market, which is both informative and engaging. The author showcases his insight, for instance, when he discusses the rampant content copying and plagiarism of Japanese film during this period, a phenomenon I have read time and again being dismissed by other scholars—and retired film industry professionals—as an embarrassing cultural trend at the time, when there were few qualified cultural producers. Instead, An puts forward an original and persuasive interpretation of the situation and reads from it more than what the surface phenomenon seems to indicate, including the sad irony of the predicament, which was partly the result of the “closed door” policy toward Japanese cultural products since decolonization. In the end, the author declares that “critical engagement with colonial history and postcolonial reckoning and reflection were regarded as backward-looking resistance to normalization and were criticized as showing a timid reluctance to embrace change and progress” (51). In the name of progress and national cohesion, an honest assessment and accountability never truly take place in postcolonial South Korea, and as a mirror that reflects the sociopolitical reality of the times, postcolonial cinema is fraught with things never spoken and never visualized.Chapter three considers the Manchurian action genre films, which “project the militant struggle of anticolonialism into the multiethnic space of Manchuria and affirm the relevance of a combative, anti-Japanese nationalism in the shifting socio-cultural landscape of South Korea in the 1960s” (52). This was another illuminating chapter, with its many insights: his discussion of the affective dynamics—the sense of loss and displacement—as a key theme in Manchuria discourses during the colonial period, the fact that he sees the combination of war film and the Western in this genre, and that these films “operated through multiple ideological filters in presenting narratives of anticolonial struggle” because of the ideological land mine that was South Korea of the 1960s (56). Furthermore, he alerts the reader to the ways in which Korean war films close off the “larger matrix of the perpetual war, which structured the 1950–1953 war in the first place” and illustrates that antiwar South Korean war films “obsessively resort to a nihilistic form of humanism and, in so doing, limit the discursive parameters of inquiry into the relationship of South Korean state violence to the overarching Cold War structure” (66).In chapter four, “In the Colonial Zone of Contact,” An provides a reading of two popular film genres, the kisaeng film and gangster film, through a close analysis of two film examples. He analyzes these postcolonial films and their depiction of the all-too-close “Japanese Other,” to expand the discussion into an investigation about space, identity, internal and external national boundaries of the colonial and postcolonial nation, and their portrayal in cinema (98). As he does in the preceding chapters, the author deepens and expands the discussion in new and surprising ways, illustrating his philosophical pattern of thought that allows the reader to consider old films in a very different light.The last chapter, “Horror and Revenge,” discusses the representation of the colonial past in horror genre films in terms of the return of the repressed through two films that are disparate in periods, aesthetics, and dramaturgy yet connected in their thematic concerns: Yeraishyang (Chung Chang Wha, 1966) and Epitaph (Chŏng Pŏmsik and Chŏng Sik, 2007). The following seems to capture a central concern of the book: that in the context of the complex intertwining of the colonial past and the postcolonial present, which is all too palpable in contemporary social order, “the persistent displacement of historical perspective and imaginings reflects a distinct but peculiar logic of time that South Korea has produced to render the dilemma of colonialism manageable” (109). The horror and revenge genre films fit especially well in this book, and their exploration persuasively ends the book in this regard because their “retrospective tendency . . . offers exceptional instances for the investigation of history and memory” (109). However, I would have liked to see a longer discussion of gender, especially in this chapter, as the two categories of film it treats present ample opportunity to explore a gender-inflected viewing position and to further investigate how such perspective would lead to new considerations of coloniality, postcolonial memory and desire, and the very notions of horror and revenge.Parameters of Disavowal: Colonial Representation in South Korean Cinema is a significant work that elevates the level of Korean cinema scholarship, written in any language, in a number of ways with its scope, depth, and erudition. When the author writes about the Manchurian action film genre, for instance, he gives a literature review of how Korean historians have regarded Manchuria throughout the twentieth century. All the genre films he studies in the book are fascinating and helpful for scholars and general readers alike because several of the categories have never been studied at length in English. The period and the films that An examines are also important in terms of Korean cinema studies because, as he puts it himself, they are located at “a crucial historical juncture, a point when colonial imagery and imagining gained new currency, shaping the South Korean film industry in the years to come” (79).Publication of Korean cinema study texts like Parameters, which delineates the deep connection between the colonial, postcolonial, and contemporary Korean cinema, is especially important because it allows the reader to see the interconnectedness between Korean cinema’s present renaissance and its past, both recent and remote. Although it is auspicious that a number of monographs on contemporary Korean cinema have been published in recent years, a book like this is a good reminder of the importance of historical knowledge and the larger cultural issues and preoccupations that run through Korean national cinema. The book will be very helpful for those working in cinema studies, Korean studies, postcolonial studies, and East Asian cultural studies as well as those interested in genre cinema and narratology. Furthermore, it seems quite readable for advanced undergraduates as well.