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The Politics of Affect and Youth in 1970’s Korean Cinema

  • The Journal of Korean drama and theatre
  • 2021, (71), pp.103-138
  • DOI : 10.17938/tjkdat.2021..71.103
  • Publisher : The Learned Society Of Korean Drama And Theatre
  • Research Area : Arts and Kinesiology > Other Arts and Kinesiology
  • Received : February 14, 2021
  • Accepted : March 17, 2021
  • Published : March 31, 2021

Young Suk Oh 1

1성공회대학교 동아시아 연구소

Accredited

ABSTRACT

The primary interest in this paper is the youth's cinematic representation. Under the premise that genre phenomena are barometers that will illuminate a period, this study analyzed how young people's worries and emotions are revealed through repeated narrative patterns and customs. The specific object is Korean films produced in the 1970s. Targeting films produced under the name of youth films, this study examines the way the young people's experiences are ordered and explores the position of the youth in the realities of the times. The purpose of this is to ask questions about the affective appeal that the symbol “youth” was in charge of at the time of rapid social change and the direction of politics that it mobilized. What the youth representation of this period confirms is the difficulty of growth. Most of the young people on the screen appear to be weak and preoccupied with inferiority or pretend to be more awful adults and then ruin. If the straggler or underdogs represent the former, the young snob who has become a monster while pursuing ambition represents the latter. The two representations are very different in appearance, but they resemble each other in that they show difficulties in growth. Difficulties in growth had been observed in the previous ere. However, in the 1970s, the pattern became more complicated as the cause was found inside. What this representation reflects is the pressure of the state-led development narrative and a sense of crisis about the success narrative without growth. It is true that young men do not meet the desires of the state, but it is difficult to say that it is resistance against the father or the state. There are few moments that deserve to be called a challenge to authority, and it is a complex appearance that leaves room for negotiation as well as dissatisfaction with the older generation. The young man's attitude toward his father, who is a snob, seems to be more of a self-loathing arising from his failure to be completely deny his father, rather than a total rejection of his father. What the youth film’s of the 1970s repeatedly confirm are the small but important affective evidence that the body is denied and the mind trembles about the system, although it is impossible to logically resist the hegemonic development narrative. It is different from the enlightening awareness, but it is not unrelated to the political landscape. Gestures such as running or sharing emotions in their own space are small but meaningful politics performed in a complex connection with the times.

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This paper was written with support from the National Research Foundation of Korea.
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