식민지 흥행/장과 검열의 역학 - ‘이승희(2021), 『숨겨진 극장: 식민지 흥행장의 치안과 통속』, 소명출판’에 대한 서평

Abstract

This paper is a book review of he Veiled Theatre : Security and Popularity of Entertainment Field in Colonial Korea (hereafter, Veiled Theatre) by Lee Seung Hee. Veiled Theatre closely traces the power of regulations and control, in other words, the censorship system, which was at work in the overall entertainment culture in colonial Korea. The book is a research report, which has woven the theatrical history of sedition and popularity by focusing on the political performativity of theatre generated by censorship system. Lee Seung Hee explores the historical changes, which start from the regulations of entertainment/field during the period of Japanese Resident-General of Korea and lead up to the mobilization system under the wartime control and the rules of regulation on Korean entertainment in 1944. Simultaneously, the author keenly observes and sees through that the flow of money relied on the national plans and policies called the colonial management. In other words, by clearly stating the position that relationship between censorship and theatrical history is something fundamental, she meticulously explores the process, in which the regulation system, which was Japan’s management strategy of colonial Korea, lured in, negotiated with, and ruptured with the Korean entertainment. The study does not stop at this, but goes on to follow the cultural resistance and political practices of theatrical space, which has endured the power of system. She paid attention to the seditious crowd of amateur theatricals and ethnic identity of Korean theatre, and extracted the cultural plans and political practices of Koreans, who were the colonized agent. In the end, she reinstates the texts by focusing on the representations, narratives, and emotions of the texts, which existed as something extremely secular in a manner of hastily displaying or bypassing voluntarism under the condition of censorship and control. Now the author’s research has moved on from the censorship in colonial Korea to the censorship in the Cold War period, which leaves me anticipating about how her follow-up work would unearth the performative memories and traces of colonial culture, which remains in a latent state.