〈괴물〉: 경험적 역사와 실재의 비역사적 중핵 사이의 변증법적 긴장

The Host: the Dialectical Tension Between the Empirical Account of History and the Non-historical Kernel of the Real

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.