만주 웨스턴의 지정학적 구조: 포스트모더니즘에 대한 두 가지 해석

Abstract

The Manchurian Western exemplified through The Good, The Bad, The Weird (2008) throws questions as to the organization of time and space in cinematic texts, opening up issues of the geopolitics of Korea. Replacing the American west typified in such films as The Stagecoach (1939) and Red River (1948) to symbolize the frontier on expansion, Machuria sheds its geographical confines and bcomes an imaginary space where the colonial past and the neo-liberal present of Korea collide. As a product of genre hybridization, the wilderness of Manchuria depicted in the film becomes un-grounded and uncertain to be a floating signifier free from the role of representing the real. Polysemous post-modern phenomenon has arrived on the locality to re-locate Manchuria on the map of power, capital, competition, sustainable reproduction and consumption pattern. In this sense, the textual space of the post-modern flexibility is a reflection of neo-liberal capitalism which, according to David Harvey, reproduces itself through uneven geographical development where an absolute border between the nations yields to the imaginary sections divided to fit the need of the late capitalism. However, it does not mean that the text solely contributes to depicting the change in the geopolitics of Manchuria caused by the shift in economic infrastructure. As Scott Lash points, postmodernism is figural as well, demanding psychological energy rather than intelligent signification to forestall its close link with the economy. It means that the Manchuria connects to the past of dictatorial development of industrialization in the 1960 in Korea, on the basis of analogy that works in the realm of psychological energy, since it was also a backdrop of the films categorized as a genre simply known as the Continental genre. The Manchuria explodes to become an analogical metaphor of the forced development, repression, and the marginalized identities. In the end, it holds back the Manchuria as a space imagined for the need of the late capitalism. The post-modern text is two folds, one reflecting the demand of the economic infrastructure, and the other exploding to become a metaphor, which compete, rather than co-exist in harmony, to dominate the text.