Performing recalcitrance: film The Pregnant Tree and the Goblin (2019) beyond social death of sexual violence in the United States military camp-town, South Korea

Abstract

ABSTRACT The Pregnant Tree and the Goblin (2019) is a fantasy-documentary film directed by Kim Dong-ryung and Park Kyoung-tae. The film narrates the story of Park In-sun, a former sex worker in the United States military camp-town in South Korea. This paper closely analyzes four key scenes from the film – interview, field visit, revenge, and recalcitrance – to present two arguments. Firstly, the film illustrates the infliction of secondary violence by academia. I specifically examine scenes involving scholar figures’ interviews and field visits to disentangle the politics of knowledge production in the posthumous memorialisation. Secondly, this paper expands the sociocultural meaning of death, considering it as the starting point for imagining new ways of memorialising past violence. To achieve this, I demonstrate how the film’s brilliant delivery of creative and performative re-enactment of survivors’ dream images proposes recalcitrance as a generative analytical concept for memorialising difficult histories.