시대를 상상하는 개인

Abstract

This paper examines the aspects and the functons of the period film in post-war Korea. The early post-war years and 1950s saw significant boom of the period films, many of which reflected socio-cultural changes and issues by implication. The period films were tailored to the demands of audiences, and they played an important role in expressing of concerns for the times. I have concentrated on certain themes which recurred in 1950s films in specific patterns. What I try to problematise is the theme of revenge and romantic love as a particular narrative apparatus. The same may be said of the popularity of biographical mode. My primary aim is to address the cultural function of period film from 1953 to 1960, and to explore how the cinema could foster reflection on modernity through its performance of new forms of genre film. By placing films within the context of social culture and exploring the public's interests and cultural values expressed within each, I tried to explain the formal characteristics and historical meaning of 1950's Korea's film. In the 1950s, Film functioned as a kind of immunization against the shock of modern environment, or as a compensatory response to the impoverishment of experience in modernity. Furthermore, there was a major shift in the portraits of individual in Korean film. Modernity finds its clearest definition through an exploration of individuality in mass culture including cinema and cultural discourse. Ultimately, This is a study of complex process of how the individuality is perceived and imagined in film. The motivation for this work is to try to define the status and the expression of individuality as modern subjectivity constituted in the work of 1950's Korean period Films.