By John Esperjesi
Will the year 2007 end up being for Korean cinema what 1997 was for Hong Kong _ the beginning of the end? During the 1980s and 90s, Hong Kong cinema was alive and kicking its way through international film circuits. As the handover approached, though, anxious self-examination by filmmakers over Hong Kong’s identity intensified as the island began to slip out from under them. Issues of time, loss, and nostalgia became urgent in the films of new wave auteurs such as John Woo, Wong Kar Wai, and Tsui Hark (remember all those expiration dates in Chungking Express?). While Hong Kong enjoyed VIP treatment at international film festivals and in film studies programs, the image of territorial China during this time told a very different story. Tiananmen Square came to symbolize a repressive authoritarian gerontocracy completely out of touch with the youthful tiger and dragon economies rising triumphantly out of the Pacific.
But there has been a dramatic reversal of fortune: Hong Kong cinema has been swallowed by the "mainland," and the image of China in the world has never been better. The global success of "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" put the final nail in the coffin of Hong Kong cinema. Prior to production of this Ang Lee epic, the wuxia, or story involving swords and chivalry, was developed exclusively in Hong Kong because the communist party had outlawed films that promoted a belief in superstition or attachment to tradition. The fact that the party allowed a wuxia narrative to be produced by a Taiwanese/New York director whose films had been banned in China, suggests that the powers that be have opened their eyes to the importance of soft power as China expands its influence around the Pacific and the globe.
Will the passage of the FTA, and the reduction screen quotas, cut off both arms and one leg of the already hobbled Korean cinema? Passage of the FTA may not only increase environmental pollution by opening the domestic market to American cars, but will most likely increase the amount of cultural pollution by further opening the domestic market to Hollywood. In the 1960s, student activists in Argentina coined the phrase ``cultural imperialism’’ to describe the increasing interference of American culture in the affairs of the nation. Globalization does not necessarily mean the end of cultural imperialism as some folks would like to believe. The global cultural landscape, like the economic landscape, is most definitely not becoming flat.
Free trade agreements do not benefit workers and owners equally. A recent report in the Korea Times stated that 80% of big businesses support the FTA. I would guess that a similar percentage of workers, in both the U.S. and Korea, are either suspicious of, or actively oppose, the FTA. We need to remember free trade agreements are for the most part done to workers, not for workers.
What is most striking to the foreigner immersed in Korean cinema, whether as fan, theorist, or both, is the prevalence of images of poverty and the working class across all genres, high and low, light and dark, and everything in between. This is especially striking for Americans subjected to a Hollywood for which the working class has become invisible, and working class issues have become unthinkable. It has become next to impossible for working people in America to go to the movies and find stories that represent their lives and struggles with dignity.
The most recent summer blockbuster, Bong Joon-ho's ``The Host,’’ put ordinary working class Koreans at center stage, the people you sit next to on the subway, slurp ramyeon with along the Han River on a hot summer night, or drink maggeolli with you on the mountain. Critics had a hard time explaining the massive popularity of ``The Host.’’ It was not extraordinary as far as sci-fi films go. Yes, there are anti-American elements, but the fact that the Korean military could not exterminate a creature that was ultimately killed by such low-tech weaponry, gasoline and a flaming arrow, is much more damning. Political allegories aside (AIDs, SARS), I think the explanation for the film's success is much more simple. Working people enjoy seeing familiar public spaces on the big screen. This is why local crowds packed midnight screenings of Hong Kong films _ the action was set on the jammed, vertical streets where they worked, ate, shopped, lived, and died. The setting of ``The Host’’ along the esplanade of Hangang Park has a sentimental appeal as a space which bridges old and new, rich and poor. Passage of the FTA could destroy this bridge.
Another recent film which struggles to hold onto a fading public sphere is Lee Joon-ik's ``Radio Star.’’ In this story, a small rural radio station becomes a public forum for a motley crew of renegades and castaways: a young runaway, an unemployed farmer, a boy abandoned by his father, a penniless punk band, the kind of people that will be hurt most by the FTA. Pastoral images of everyday life in the small riverside town run counter to the metropolis, symbolized in the film by a slimy corporate manager who tries to bring the popular radio show to Seoul.
But the film rejects the move from the country to the city, defending the small town from a predatory metropolitan culture industry. The beauty of a film like ``Radio Star’’ is that it suggests that there are other futures for the peninsula than are currently being imagined through euphoric hubspeak and the shibboleth of free trade. The film re-writes the contemporary history of the southern peninsula from the margins, suggesting that all roads to the future do not have to pass through Gangnam. It is the possibility of things being otherwise that enables people to imagine a better, more just future.
The FTA and reduction of screen quotas appears to be a done deal, so what is to be done? It would be nice if a few of the ``liberals’’ in Hollywood took some responsibility for the impact of what they do on the world, but that's probably not going to happen any time soon. Korea has a noble history of labor and student militancy _ this is the``tear gas nation’’ after all. Of course I would never endorse tear-gassing a movie theatre, but perhaps some militancy at the point of consumption is a place to start. What if the seats in just one theatre showing one American film on just one weekend were empty? That might get somebody's attention (might I recommend a conservative paramilitary defense of western civilization from a savage orient entitled 300.) I don't say this to promote some vulgar, uncritical nationalism. There is plenty of that already in circulation. But we need to have fair trade to counter the disruptive and disintegrating effects of free trade.
How many future Lee Joon-iks or Kim Ki-duks will never be born if Korean cinema crashes? How many starry-eyed young actresses will get stuck being narrator models in skimpy outfits passing out shots of soju to drunk businessmen? How many smart, funny, beautiful films like "Radio Star" will never get made? Will the number of images of the working class in Korean cinema begin to decrease while the FTA increases their numbers in reality? Korea will surely continue to make films, the question is what kind of Korea will be made by such films?
The writer is a Ph.D. in English from Carnegie Mellon University living in Seoul. He is the author of "The Imperialist Imaginary: Visions of Asia and the Pacific in American Culture" (University Press of New England, 2005), and has published on Chinese cinema.