부패한 권력, 사라지는 공동체-근래 한국영화 서사의 주요 경향과 공동체 담론-

Abstract

This article aims to map the topography of community discourse enunciated by the Korean popular cinema since 2008. During that time five main trends can be identified in the popular cinematic narratives: critique of the power-bloc, changes in the nationalistic imagination, emergence of the narrative of catastrophe, foregrounding of traumatic losses, and resurgence of the cinema of mourning. Despite apparent diversity, they are common in depth in that they speak of our social reality or our community. Therefore they can be rearranged as discourses on the community. Sketching out the configuration of the community discourses in the Korean cinema, it appears that the pessimistic discourse is opposed to the optimistic one. The former is potentially leftist, because it is skeptical of the existing order, particularly criticising the anti-communal demeanor of the power-bloc. The latter, on the contrary, is rightist, because it approves the given order by telling that the community unites against external threats. Those two contrasting discursive tendencies are struggling for hegemony over how the reality of our community is signified. However, when comparing the quality, amount and popularity of these films, one can say that the pessimistic community discourse has overwhelmed the optimistic one. In the recent Korean cinema, pessimistic narratives stand out portraying a darkened world in which communal unity disintegrates and individuals have to stand alone while narratives of achievement and overcoming are so weak. Communal crises that pessimistic narratives feature mostly come from within in the forms of internal conflict and schism; justice is disappearing and the public system goes wry. The social reality on the screen has become darker and bleaker than ever and the future is no longer rosy. It looks as if the “we” community no longer exists. The Korean popular cinema featuring the pessimistic vision can be seen as an allegory of our structure of feelings in the post-IMF period, corresponding and reverberating our needs and desires, fears and fantasies, the senses of the world and ourselves.