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Moving Pictures, Umigwan, and Action Film: The Influence of Early Cinema in Mu-jeong

Sangmin Kim 1

1연세대학교

Accredited

ABSTRACT

This article analyses the influences of early cinema which is prominent in Lee Gwang-Su’s Mu-jeong (1917). In the previous literary criticisms of Mu-jeong, there has been a tendency to treat the influence of visual media such as moving pictures of that time to be secondary. However, I argue that Mu-jeong discloses crucial factors that cannot be explained by simply limiting them in terms of literature and print media- from depiction to its motives, there exists the pivotal points at which the influence of the movies of that time projected strongly. To articulate these aspects, this essay focuses on ‘moving pictures’, ‘Umigwan’, and ‘action film’ as key words to examine the influence of the movie culture at that time on this novel. First of all, when reading “What is Literature?” (1916) and Mu-jeong together, the depiction theory stressed in “What is Literature?”, which emphasizes visual effects, is materialized through moving pictures in Mu-jeong. As we can see, the depictions related to moving pictures of Mu-jeong have been used as methods to develop modern novels, with important conceptualization starting from the theory of literature. Also, it appears that these depictions in Mu-jeong were influenced by Byun-sa (Korean film commentator) of motion picture regarding its narration at that time, and some of the lines could not have appeared on Mu-jeong without a descriptive model of Byun-sa. Besides this, at the time when modern sensationalism had taken over, action and disaster scenes could also be observed in Mu-jeong. It is not possible to show the influence of the moving pictures in Mu-jeong in any other specific movie, but we can see it by checking the context of the broad film cultures of the times.

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