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Cracks and Resistance in the Family Narrative of Park Chung-Hee Regime : On Kim Su-Hyun's Melodrama Films
Journal of Popular Narrative
2009,
(22), pp.283-313
DOI : 10.18856/jpn.2009..22.010
Publisher : The Association of Popular Narrative
Research Area : Interdisciplinary Research
DOI : 10.18856/jpn.2009..22.010
Publisher : The Association of Popular Narrative
Research Area : Interdisciplinary Research
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Cheongnyeon Culture, a sort of youth culture led by male intellectuals in 1970s' South Korea, is the key concept which has been mainly discussed as the representative cultural practice during the Yushin(Revitalizing Reform) period of the Park Chung-Hee regime. This is considered as the critical and countervailing practice against the ‘hegemonic’ popular culture, but, while concentrating only on the subjective cultural productions of highly educated society, is missing cultural practices conducted by diverse subcultural subjects who could not be assigned to such specific status. Kim Su-Hyun's melodramas of 1970s bring forth an useful counter-argument against such fragmentary tendency. Even though she started her career as an agency of reactionary Shinpa(new-school) drama in 1960s, her family narrative owned and enlarged its distinctive features which opposed the paternalistic values of existing melodramas. This grew into more a political attitude in late 1970s' Yushin period, as descriptions on gender/class conflicts, destructive narratives on patriarchal values, and fundamental skepticism on masculine youth. This inclination is worthy of notice, because it was revealed not by the auteurism of the Cheongnyeon Culture, but by the popular TV scriptwriter Kim Su-Hyun who was devoted to the desire of the mass. In melodramas, which were easily defined as ‘conventional’ or ‘governing’ culture, subcultural subjects could occasionally cultivate the potentiality of dynamic cultural practices destroying hegemonic narratives.
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