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The Affect-Politics of Korean Comedy Films in the 2000s -Laughter as Historical Affect and Liberalism

  • The Journal of Korean drama and theatre
  • 2024, (82), pp.83-123
  • DOI : 10.17938/tjkdat.2024..82.83
  • Publisher : The Learned Society Of Korean Drama And Theatre
  • Research Area : Arts and Kinesiology > Other Arts and Kinesiology
  • Received : July 14, 2024
  • Accepted : August 8, 2024
  • Published : August 31, 2024

Hogeol Lee 1

1독립연구자

Accredited

ABSTRACT

Comedy has been a particularly important genre in Korean films since 1990s. This is not only because many comedies have been produced and have won box office successes, but also because the comic mode has been established as a major cinematic custom. Considering this, this study aims to analyze comedy films in the 2000s, a period of comedy films flourishing, in relation to liberalist politics. To begin with, the methodology of comedy analysis and the psychological mechanisms of laughter are explored. Then, using the dynamics of deconstruction/reconstruction of laughter, the political implications of the laughter in “Public Enemy” (2002) are analyzed. The deconstructive/reconstructive laughter at the police has the effect of relativizing the liberalist state, which is also required by the logic of the narrative. This laughter of liberal politics was repeatedly adopted by a number of films in the 2000s. There are three main types of such films that address the problems of liberal politics and relativize them with laughter at the same time. First, police comedies, such as “Public Enemy”; second, films in which citizens become the performers of policing, such as “Break Out” (2002); and third, films in which the question of political representation is addressed, such as “Small Town Rivals” (2007). Each of these types of films centers on key issues of liberalist politics - citizens, police, and the state - and has in common a approval of the liberalist state, which is established to secure the private sphere, while relativizing them through laughter. On the other hand, the liberalist laughter of these films can be extended to Korean comedy films of the 2000s as a whole. The cinematic laughter of deconstruction and approval generated by various comedy films of this period can be explained in relation to the contradictory and dynamic liberalism in 2000s’ Korea. This provides a basis for explaining the comic mode, a major representational custom in Korean films of the contemporary era, in relation to its liberalist society.

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