This essay asks whether contemporary Korean films have produced a new cinema, by critically examining the criteria by which Korean films are said to be new. It attempts to posit a universalising theory rather than making particular claims about Korean films, by suggesting that whether a film text is new or not will depend on its individual mode of address. To explore this problem further, this study draws on the concept of ‘concrete universality’ from a Lacanian/Žižekian standpoint. For my purpose, it refers to examining how a kind of disruptive element in a film text’s formal structure obtrudes into the diegetic reality, thus revealing a cinematic distortion in the smooth running of reality. The Host (Bong Joon-ho, 2006) reveals what cannot be said in an explicit narrative line, thus allowing us to redefine the whole narrative line. As it provides an interpretive possibility that Hyun-seo dies at the moment she is snatched by the monster, it challenges the viewer to an encounter with the inherent contradictions of family and South Korea’s social fabric.
1. 역사적 맥락에서 영화 텍스트 내부의 긴장으로
2. 보편/특수 대당: “구체적 보편성”이란 무엇인가?
3. 〈괴물〉 그리고 현서의 죽음
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Abstract
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