해방 조선에서 할리우드 전기 영화의 수용

Abstract

Following Korea’s liberation from the Japanese colonial rule, the U.S. Military Government Korea (USMGK) began to distribute Hollywood films in April 1946, mainly through the Central Motion Picture Exchange (CMPE) in Seoul. Its censorship and permit policy in effect restricted local production by Korean filmmakers and turned out significantly oppressive through a mixture of ideological control over the entire film-related systems and aggressive market-oriented policy measures. Against this backdrop, massively introduced Hollywood films had a dual implication to Korean films: an object of admiration with their exceptional technical and industrial prowess; and a potential threat to the development and survival of Korean films if too many of them were to be imported to Korea. The USMGK distributed a selection of films made in Hollywood or by the U.S. Department of State in order to spread contemporary development in American society and American values regarding democracy and anti-fascism. The biographical films introduced to Korea—Abe Lincoln in Illinois (John Cromwell, 1940), Madame Curie (Mervyn LeRoy, 1943), and Rhapsody in Blue (Irving Rapper, 1945)—all demonstrated the excellence of American democracy, America as a liberal country embracing multiculturalism, and individuality of citizens in a democratic society and the value of successful individuality. Whereas some Hollywood films distributed by the CMPE were criticized for being excessively pleasure-seeking and spreading American decadent culture, the biographical films were the only genre praised by the Korean audience and critics. The USMGK and the CMPE also shared biographical films were proven effective for re-education and re-orientation in occupied Korea and useful cultural tool, or model motion picture, to propagate American values and democratic ideals. Despite cold-minded democratic reason maintained by the critics and audience of the postcolonial Korea, they could not overlook that those biographical films contained something Koreans could learn and take advantage of. Consequently, they positively accepted Hollywood biographical films, since the narratives of successful figures who overcome ordeals and develop their own aspirations and world through liberal and democratic means in a temporal and spatial background of sophisticated and civilized American democracy presented an image of independent characters with which Koreans could identify themselves in the face of postcolonial challenges and in the process of nation-building.