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Square and Court—Social Imagination of Korean Cinema in Blacklist Era
Journal of Popular Narrative
2019, 25(4),
pp.159-190
DOI :10.18856/jpn.2019.25.4.006
Publisher : The Association of Popular Narrative
Research Area : Interdisciplinary Research
DOI :10.18856/jpn.2019.25.4.006
Publisher : The Association of Popular Narrative
Research Area : Interdisciplinary Research
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This paper aims to examine to the political unconsciousness of social movies that have caused social repercussions in the 2010s, and to study the social imagination of Korean films at that time. Korean Movies such as <The Attorney>(2013), <1987>(2017) and <The Taxi Driver>(2017) reflect the ethos of civil society based on common sense and justice. The epic structure was the same as that of ordinary citizens, who move toward a public space (court, square) after awakening their political correctness. More than anything else, the fact that such films were based on “a historical fact” could have been a strategy to avoid censorship in the era of the blacklist. In these social films, courts and squares have become places for democracy. The conservative government of the time was tired of anti-government resistance and the politics of the square. Thus, films from directors and producers blacklisted were difficult to produce. That’s why the court in the movie during this period could become a symbolic proxy for the “legitimate” reenactment of the politics of the square, which was subject to censorship and avoidance by the regime of the time. Meanwhile, the square has gradually become the main venue for political films that advocate “historic true stories.” The square of the 1980s, which appeared in the movies, will be connected to the Gwanghwamun candlelight square that audiences experienced in 2017. Furthermore, it was able to reach the concept of an abstract square as an “open space for democracy.” At the foundation of these works is a psychological framework that equates the trauma of the failed democratic movement of the 1980s to the trauma of the failed progressive movement of the 2010s. Through this study, we were able to see that social political films in the 2010s were quite successful, emphasizing “political correctness” and constitutional common sense. But they also had limitations as “de-political popular films” that failed to show imagination beyond the censorship of the blacklist era.
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