TRANSNATIONAL TROPES OF THE COMBAT FILM GENRE: A COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF THE KOREAN WAR "DIVISION FILM": BATTLE OF INCHEON: OPERATION CHROMITE (2016) and WOLMI ISLAND (1982) "The war film cannot admit that modern warfare is about essentially dehumanization." (James Jones, "Phony Wars")
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The combat war film genre, established in Hollywood during World War II, in its permutations across world cinema continues to demonstrate a remarkable transnational paradox: although their ideologies are specifically determined by their nation states and film industries as reconstructed historical representations of war, together they partake in the common purpose to frame violent conflict as a constructed metanarrative of cinematic violence-one that fulfills the dual purposes of entertainment value for mass audiences as well as a cinematic expression of a collective remembrance. One unique subgenre of the combat film that North and South Korea share is the "division film" that depicts a theme based on the division of the Korean peninsula and/or uses it as an overt narrative element. The South Korean film Battle of Incheon: Operation Chromite (John H. Lee, 2016) and the North Korean film Wolmi Island (Cho Gyong-sun, 1982) respectively depict the Battle of Incheon from opposing ideological perspectives, yet they both share and employ four essential tropes of the combat film genre: (1) the Infallible Father in the form of a leader, (2) who leads a combat unit against overwhelming odds, (3) with a clear-cut purpose or mission, (4) that gives their deaths a meaningful sacrifice at the behest of the nation. Cinematically these moments of combat are rendered throughout the film with a specific visual punctuation that portrays them as sensationalized spectacles to prioritize viewer empathy and an unproblematic sentimentality towards the traumatic events. This article seeks through a comparative analysis of these two Korean War films as a case study to illuminate how cinematic warfare in this genre is thus aestheticized and anesthetized to a particular narratological and visual formula that treats war experience in the same reductive manner that crosses national boundaries of nationalism and ideology.
Abstract
The combat war film genre, established in Hollywood during World War II, in its permutations across world cinema continues to demonstrate a remarkable transnational paradox: although their ideologies are specifically determined by their nation states and film industries as reconstructed historical representations of war, together they partake in the common purpose to frame violent conflict as a constructed metanarrative of cinematic violence-one that fulfills the dual purposes of entertainment value for mass audiences as well as a cinematic expression of a collective remembrance. One unique subgenre of the combat film that North and South Korea share is the "division film" that depicts a theme based on the division of the Korean peninsula and/or uses it as an overt narrative element. The South Korean film Battle of Incheon: Operation Chromite (John H. Lee, 2016) and the North Korean film Wolmi Island (Cho Gyong-sun, 1982) respectively depict the Battle of Incheon from opposing ideological perspectives, yet they both share and employ four essential tropes of the combat film genre: (1) the Infallible Father in the form of a leader, (2) who leads a combat unit against overwhelming odds, (3) with a clear-cut purpose or mission, (4) that gives their deaths a meaningful sacrifice at the behest of the nation. Cinematically these moments of combat are rendered throughout the film with a specific visual punctuation that portrays them as sensationalized spectacles to prioritize viewer empathy and an unproblematic sentimentality towards the traumatic events. This article seeks through a comparative analysis of these two Korean War films as a case study to illuminate how cinematic warfare in this genre is thus aestheticized and anesthetized to a particular narratological and visual formula that treats war experience in the same reductive manner that crosses national boundaries of nationalism and ideology.
참고문헌 (16)
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