영화 속 전쟁미망인 표상 연구 -<미망인>, <동심초>, <동대문 시장 훈이엄마>를 중심으로-

Abstract

This study is on the representation of Korean war widows in three films of 1950s and 60s : <The Widow>, <Dongsimcho>, <Hun’s Mother>. Three years of the Korean war experience brought a huge change in the South Korean society. The biggest change was the collapsing of existing class structure, which meant every member of the society needed to start over from nothing. Especially, women who had stayed at home before were forced to labor for survival and it caused the unexpected discourse on these women. Even though the diffusion of liberty and self-indulgence which had been accelerated by the influx of American culture was a society-wide phenomenon, particularly the war widows engaged in prostitution were blamed as a cause of the chaos. Actually, the Korean War was a struggle between all conflicting values in the homogeneous nation rather than a struggle of classes and ideologies. Because the conflict was not completely resolved due to the ceasefire, the South Korean government tried to resolve the confusion by making people to think the nation as one big family. In order to subjugate the individuals to the big family, it was required to suppress the prevalent licence in the society. For this situation is well reflected in the films, looking to the representations of widows is quite interesting. Produced in 1954, the film <Widow> covers the reality of widows who were faithful to their individual desire under the crisis of patriarchy and shows related post war questions of 1950s. In the film <Dongsimcho>,the social discourse on dissolute women of the day are projected and shows the reality of repressed life of a widow due to the discourse. On the other hand, the war widow in <Hun’s mother> is portrayed as a extremely passive being who does not speak out for herself at all. According to the ending of the film, her happiness was reached by being completely incorporated into the new patriarchal system. It is the result of reflecting the then ruling ideology. While each representation of war widows is consistent with the real life,there also are differences according to how they were defined in the eyes of society. And those differences tells us that the post war Korean society of the day underwent certain changes. However, these changes brought further attention to the negative images of the widows and they were still described as a wounded being who needed to be protected by males eventually.