Korean Cinema, Essay Example

The Struggle of Korean Film makers to Establish a Cinematic Identity

Scholars remain divided about the question of ascribing national identities to cinema. For obvious reasons, this division is not in any way misplaced considering the fact that the idea of ascribing national cinemas within a stated milieu is not conspicuously exclusive by itself. Citing a historical reference base will seek to further enforce this assertion; it is known that in the early days of film production when the industry was still in its infancy films (the early parts of the twentieth century), the thrust of players in the industry ranging from financiers, directors and actors were drawn from a wide geographical spectrum thus making it highly fallacious to ascribe any produced film to any particular individual nation state (Abel, 1999).

This notwithstanding, the steady leaning towards associating films to nation-states gathered momentum into a forceful factor in the industry, which obviously cannot be overlooked in any meaningful discourse about the industry. It can also be said without hesitation that the trend is still ongoing; coupled with a growing evidence of a strong link with the definition of the collective national identities of contemporary national cultures. It is in the light of this fact that, the central focus of this paper will be focused on subjecting the Korean film industry under a microscopic examination in other to highlighting the shifting dynamics that has grappled its structures.

Any attempt to treat this topic in isolation of the influence of the dynamic political milieu at the various strata and how they have contributed covertly or overtly to the continuous evolution of the Korean film industry will be vulnerable of losing site of relevant indicators. As a case in point, it is well known that the advent of the maiden Korean Film was introduced in 1923 (Allan 2002). As of today, little is known about subsequent productions spanning that period into the Second World War. An obvious reason for this is the Japanese occupation of Korean territory during the period under question.

Among other things, the main source of struggle for the Korean film industry has to do with its quest to define and accept the most comprehensible genre that will best serve the insatiable cravings of the huge audience that patronizes it. It is the same genre that provides a convincing insight into the role of the historical contribution of the existing state of the Korean film industry. It is easy to spot that, the Korean cinema terrain has steadily tilted towards a close association with melodrama genre as part of its national definition. Arguably, the Korean society has being profoundly steered towards a candid fondness for the melodrama genre—this evidenced by the fact that close to 70% of all Korean produced films are along this line. Reasonably, the continuous surging patronage allegiance by the Korean audience is a clear indication of the level of satisfaction of the pattern in use.

Another conspicuous aspect of the industry that internal heavyweights such as Lee Chang-dong and a host of others have claimed attribution to is their persistent insistence of towing an allegedly known path of inclusive “realism.’ Suffice to cite Lee Chang-dong’s classic the Peppermint, produced and broadcasted in the year 2000. The film has won commendable applause for being stylistically real in every sense of the word. But the use of the term “realism” in its apparent sense has sparked some jittering effects among some other keen critics, who have a hard time recognizing the place of such a term as realism in the current world order. For such critics, the easiest place to find such a rapturous word “realism” is in the political corridors.

On the question of the specific place of the so-called realism in the Korean melodrama movie genre then the obvious direction is towards the engendering of a subtle egalitarian predisposition that has a cogent motive of instigating emotions that will eventually culminate into pragmatic public reforms. A likely tendency is for a misrepresentation of the Korean melodrama to be misconstrued for a conventional satirical posture; of course there are basic similarities but lacks wholesale qualitative forces to tentatively justify such a posture. A point that should also be noted is that much as there is a recent highly suggestive trend that seems to point to Korean films being melodramatic, they have in some ways achieved their sense of exclusiveness by having a reputation for being simply routinely crude.

That having being said, there is also an increasing evidence that clearly indicates a kind of subtle renaissance that is engulfing the domestic Korean film industry. At the heart of this reformation is hinged on the core value of creating a definition that will herald an exclusive contemporary “Korean Film Industry.” Surrounding this daunting task is the question of timing, viability and possible sustainability of such an ambitious consciousness. On the timing factor, this paper is of the opinion that in many ways the timing is indeed over due. For instance with the dawn of the Asian economic crisis in the latter part of 1990s, the domestic Korean Film industry witnessed a massive shake up that served as the turning point of the industry which is arguably resonating into happenings of our day and age. It is known that the economic crisis inadvertently dried up massive funding that the industry use to enjoy from the huge financial conglomerates that served as the financial hub of the industry. For the survival of the industry to be assured, rapid austerity measures had to be put in place. Venture capital became a viable option, in that it provided new funding and massive opportunities for budding players in the industry.

Massive patronage also triggered a new self-sustaining foundation that promised to usher the industry into higher altitudes of success. By and large, the domestic Korean film industry managed to carve a niche for itself. In other words, a new dawn of disengagement from the status quo into paths that were leading to overt autonomy had being ushered in. Whatever the future holds for such a move is difficult to tell under the mundane scope.

The 1999 movie entitled Nowhere to Hide provides interesting features for analysis as part of highlighting the transition that the industry is going through. In many ways the film can be said to be within the revolving framework of the Korean film industry. By way of genre, the movie owes much to the Hollywood accolade of action orientation. It is known of most action movies to experience strong moves of energetic displays and all that comes with it, with always the hero working assiduously to surmount an evil villain.

The movie in a classical fashion highlights what is expected in such menial contexts in which romance is relegated to the background in the phase of mounting aggression. The director’s message is also explicitly brought to the fore by the ability to skillfully articulate the technical components of the process of producing the movie.

Critics have described Nowhere To Hide as yet another artistic work of exceptional caliber that is leaning credence to progress in the reform taking place in the domestic Korean film industry. Notwithstanding the engagement of minute elements of conventional action film traits, overall the movie shows an emerging dispensation of Korean national orientation that owes no allegiance to the past on no account.

Finally, this piece up sums up on the notion that steadily but progressively, the Korean film industry in its quest for the creation of an identity has broken allegiance with the conventional past by initiating a new wave of structures that will guarantee exclusiveness on the paradigm of a national platform that has clearly Korean fingerprints. Most importantly, the industry is receiving massive domestic popular patronage, a clear testimony of what can be achieved on the alter of national identity creation.

References

Abel, Richard, The Red Rooster Scare: Making Cinema American, 1900-1910, Berkeley, University of California Press, 1999

Alan Williams (ed.), Film and Nationalism, New Brunswick, NJ, Rutgers University Press, 2002.

Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, London, Verso, 1983.

Elizabeth Ezra and Terry Rowden (eds), Transnational Cinema: The Film Reader, London and New York, Routledge, 2006.

Frederick Engels, Anti-Dühring, Moscow, Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1969 (originally published 1878): pp. 302-03.

Mette Hjort and Scott Mackenzie (eds), Cinema and Nation, London and New York, Routledge, 2000.

Natasa Durovicovà and Kathleen E. Newman (eds), World Cinemas, Transnational Perspectives, New York and London, Routledge, 2007

Valentina Vitali and Paul Willemen (eds), Theorising National Cinema, London, BFI Publishing, 2006.