Description
Book SynopsisArgues that although the last two decades of Korean history were a period of progress in political democratization, the country refused to part from a "masculine point of view" which is also mirrored in Korean cinema
Trade Review“Kyung Hyun Kim’s book is a roller coaster ride through modern South Korean masculinity in the cinema. At once unflinching and sympathetic, Kim’s groundbreaking study traces Korean permutations on the gendered imagery of castration and rape and the impossible condition of postcolonial masculinity, caught between incommensurable values and demands.”—Chris Berry, coeditor of
Mobile Cultures: New Media in Queer Asia“This is an important book. There is a long tradition of scholarship investigating the representation of women in Asian cinema. This has included some consideration of Korean film, which more often than not finds the representations of Korean women wanting in one way or another. It took Kyung Hyun Kim’s writing to turn my attention to the rich complexity of the men. His focus on masculinity—coinciding with the turn to the issue by major feminist film theorists—simply makes perfect sense. His is a particularly compelling contribution to the study of Asian cinema, but is simultaneously in dialogue with all manner of gender studies.”—Abé Mark Nornes, University of Michigan
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments ix
Introduction: Hunting for the Whale 1
1: GENRES OF POST-TRAUMA
At the Edge of Metropolis in
A Fine, Windy Day and
Green Fish 31
2 Nowhere to Run: Disenfranchised Men on the Road in
The Man with Three Coffins,
Sopyonje, and
Out to the World 52
3 “Is This How the War Is Remembered?”: Violent Sex and the Korean War in
Silver Stallion,
Spring in My Hometown, and
The Taebaek Mountains 77
4 Post-Trauma and Historical Remembrance in
A Single Spark and
A Petal 107
2: NEW KOREAN CINEMA AUTEURS
5 Male Crisis in the Early Films of Park Kwang-su 136
6 Jang Sun-woo’s Three “F” Words: Familism, Fetishism, and Fascism 162
7 Too Early/Too Late: Temporality and Repetition in Hong Sang-su’s Films 203
3: FIN-DE-SIECLE ANXIETIES
8 Lethal Work: Domestic Space and Gender Troubles in
Happy End and
The Housemaid 233
9 “Each Man Kills the Thing He Loves”: Transgressive Agents, National Security, and Blockbuster Aesthetics in
Shiri and
Joint Security Area 259
Notes 277
Select Filmography of Major Directors of the New Korean Cinema 313
Index 321
