1970년대 한국 공포영화의 대항문화적 상상력 -<수절>(1973), <묘녀>(1974), <너 또한 별이 되어>(1975)를 중심으로-

Abstract

In this article, I examined the counter-cultural imagination of three horror films released in the mid-1970s, Fidelity(Sujeol)(1973) directed by Ha Giljong, Myonyeo(A Cat Woman)(1974) by Hong Pa, and You Become a Star, too (Neo ttohan byeol-i doe-eo)(1975) by Lee Jang-ho. Fidelity(Sujeol) resisted the legitimate notion of nationalism of the period allegorically, By thoroughly focusing on the other side of the heroic narrative conveyed by a female ghost, this work emphasized that collective ideology was nothing more than a medium of confrontation and antagonism that inflicted violence on each other in the interests of people who were united and gathered according to the variation of their circumstances. Hongpa's Myonyeo(A Cat Woman) revealed the self-destructive inner world of modern man subjects who were engulfed in the fear of castration by expressing the doll-like life of a man possessed by a female monster with excessive sexual desire. While expressing this distorted inner world, the film reflected the Korean reality that could not rightfully symbolize the transition from the pre-modern to the modern through the motif of witchcraft to kill a cat. You Become a Star, too directed by Lee Jang-ho was produced based on the fashion of the occult culture that was popular around the world at the time. In this film, occultism connected with the consciousness of enlightenment by glorifying the world of death and persuading the girl’s ghost in pain to accept reality. However, the afterglow of romantic fantasy, which exposed the imperfection of modernized society, maintained the impression of resistance that accompanied the emotions of depression and frustration by replacing the indelible consciousness of anxiety and agitation with sentimental sensibility. The three films creatively expended the possibility of resistance of horror film based on different imaginative foundations such as trans-nationalism, eroticism, and romantic youth culture of the 1970s. By depicting the traditional female ghost motif from a different perspective, the three films implicitly disobeyed the violence of the oppressive growth policy of the military regime and implied a counter-cultural will to resist the ideology imposed by the closed political environment.