조선인 위안부에 대한 영화적 재현 양상: 영화 <귀향>을 중심으로

Abstract

The movie <Spirits’ Homecoming> symbolizes comfort women as ‘girls’ or ‘grandmothers’. The ‘gazer’, that is, the male-centered gaze dominantly lies on the base of this representation. However, such a representation makes the multifarious life of a victim of a comfort woman from a chaste and weak ‘girl’ to a helpless and aged ‘grandmother’ disappear. Instead, the film suggests that they have lived only in pain for the rest of their lives since the ‘incident’. This creates a trap that makes victims of the comfort women look helpless and weak, that is, fixing them as stereotyped victim image. On the other hand, the film presents Eungyung, a victim of sexual violence, as the only person who can console the suffering of comfort women victims. Eungyung performs a homecoming exorcism at the end of the movie, consoles the soul of the victim and heals the victimized survivor’s mind. However, this process is mostly depicted only as a solidarity among those inside the ‘incident’. It is because those outside the ‘event’, even the audience, are unable to stare at the ‘incident’ as they are degraded to marginal people. Nonetheless, the film draws as if the people inside/outside of the ‘incident’ are harmonious and healing through this exorcism. However, when correcting the social convention and perceptions surrounding the victims of the comfort women and not pushing their lives into the stereotype of the victim, then it will be possible to truly harmonize with and heal the victims in the ‘incident’.