Colonial Film Spectatorship: Nationalist Enough?

In the last two chapters, my critical and historiographical concerns draw on theories of film spectatorship and reception in order to further extend the topography of Joseon cinema. The forth chapter considers film-viewing as a political domain in which various forms of colonial tensions were represented and mediated. Taking the dearth of local productions and the predominance of Hollywood productions into consideration, the author argues any attempt to limit Korean spectators’ movie-going and film-viewing patterns only to Joseon films is bound to be a reductionist understanding of Joseon film culture. Thus, the chapter explores the issues in colonial spectatorship in relation to not only local but imported films. It focuses particularly on how Korean spectators’ engagement with American films emerged as the main subject of political tensions and hegemonic struggles with regard to the colonial situation, detailing a variety of receptions and interpretations of the dominance of Hollywood film in the Joseon film.

Migrating with the Movies: Japanese Settler Film Culture

To adequately analyse Joseon cinema’s dual nature as a colonial and pseudo-national cinema against the colonial backdrop, it is indispensable to not only examine Korean elements but also consider the Japanese elements embedded in Joseon cinema. This chapter, therefore, brings to light the film culture of the Japanese settlers, a completely marginalized history in both Korean and Japanese film histories. As the author endeavours to integrate Japanese setters into my account of Joseon cinema, he makes a conscious effort to unearth some key figures from historical obscurity and narrate their stories in order to describe their seminal role in the advancement of Joseon film practices. As the chapter progresses, the discussion gradually expands to probe the overall settler film culture, including movie theatres, film programs, film criticism, and spectators, and its interactions with both Japanese film culture and the film practices of the local Koreans.

Conclusion: Integrating into the Imperial Cinema

The conclusion looks into the manner in which Joseon cinema lost its autonomy and became subsumed into the imperial cinema from the late 1930s onward. I discuss how the increasing influx of Japanese film capital and changing political climate jointly redefined Joseon cinema’s role and function within the empire and radically altered the entire practice of film culture to elucidate the transformation of Joseon cinema in the final stage of colonial occupation.

Film Spectatorship and the Tensions of Modernity

The interrogation of film spectatorship and reception continues in the last chapter, expanding the scope of the inquiry. While the colonial experience was one of many historical factors that affected Korea’s modern experiences, Korea’s colonialized status was not the sole force that directed the development of Joseon film culture. Preoccupied with the cinema’s relation to the subjects of colonial exploitation, nationalism, and national identity, however, few scholars acknowledge that colonial film-viewing was a much more compound activity marked by a range of political, cultural, and historical components that defined Korea’s overall modern experiences. In particular, in standard film history, the fascination film fans had with the cinema has yet to find its place. However, the novelty of the cinema, the pleasure of film-viewing, and the liberating effect the cinema could offer were crucial in generating varied social perceptions and debates surrounding the prominent modern culture. This chapter, therefore, explores the manner in which film spectatorship mediated and represented Korea’s complex modern experiences, focusing primarily on the association between the cinema and politics in gender and sexuality, the issue subjected to the most intense form of social discussions in relation to movie-going throughout the colonial period.

The Beginning: Towards a Mass Entertainment

This chapter examines early film culture prior to the 1920s in order to offer a detailed historical background for the book’s exploration of the major advancement of Joseon cinema since the late 1910s. The first half of the chapter critically scrutinizes socio-political and cultural conditions that influenced the formation of early film culture in pre-colonial and colonial Korea. Equal attention is given to the collective efforts of early film entrepreneurs and exhibitors in creating film exhibition sites, including movie theatres, defining social and cultural functions of theatre space for a society devoid of theatrical tradition, and cultivating film audiences. The second half traces the activities of the first film production entity of colonial Korea: the Moving Picture Unit (MPU) of the colonial government. The author’s attempt to uncover the forgotten history of the MUP ultimately reveals the problematic of Japanese and Korean film historiographies that have pushed this crucial film unit of the empire onto the margin of film history.

Introducing Joseon Cinema: the Question of Film History and the Film Culture of Colonial Korea

The introduction presents the main conceptual framework and historiographical methods of the book, detailing the author’s efforts to redefine the concept of the cinema of colonial Korea or “Joseon (colonial Korea) cinema.”

Joseon Cinema, Cinematic Joseon: on some Critical Questions of Joseon Cinema

This chapter looks into the varied efforts of filmmakers to develop Joseon film culture and to define what constituted Joseon film from the early 1920s up to the late 1930s. Specifically, it explores filmmakers’ endeavours to find a way to develop cinematic aesthetics that reflected something uniquely Korean but at the same time integrated Joseon’s colonial status into their filmic representation of the colony Joseon. The inquiry begins with a discussion of the cinematic tropes and aesthetics developed by the 1926 film Arirang that laid the foundation for Joseon film production. The author discusses the film’s role in the discursive formation of Joseon cinema and cinematic representation of Joseon. Then the chapter analyses a wide variety of films, recurring stylistic patterns, and critical questions Joseon filmmakers considered when they tried to cinematize their respective versions of a Joseon image.