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To Catch a Whale: A brief History of Lost Fathers,
Idiots, and Gangsters in Korean Cinema
By Hyun-Suk Seo
Hyun-Suk Seo Received MFA at The School of the Art Institute
of Chicago. Currently a PhD candidate at Northwestern University.
Makes experimental videos and installation works. Recently completed
a doctoral thesis, “The Shock of Boredom: The Aesthetics
of Absence, Futility, and Bliss in Moving Images”. Currently
teaches at the Department of Theater and Film, Dankook University
in Seoul, Korea
Outcasts at the Core
Recovering from the long slump under the military regimes, Korean
cinema has finally found and fully exploited the ultimate key
to commercial success in the early 2000's: organized criminals.
From hard-boil action to tear-jerker and romantic comedy, from
low-budget realism to blockbuster loaded with computer graphics,
the prominent thematic core featuring jopoks, or organized
criminals, as protagonists has penetrated and reshaped genre conventions,
star values, gender traits, and box office rules.
The list of recent films that exploited this theme can hardly
be exhaustive. The trend gained the decisive momentum when melodrama
Promise added to a tough and dangerous mob boss some traits
of tenderness and thoughtfulness. The gangster-turned-lover has
gradually become a popular prototype as Failan, Kick
the Moon and My Boss, My Hero bent the dichotomy
of the good versus the evil. My WIfe is a Gangster, Friend,
Hi, Dharma, Guns and Talks likewise elevated jopok
characters beyond the level of ambivalence. Though antisocial
in the very basis, their wits and self-given charisma overcame
the actual societal attitudes against gang violence.
Dangerous and boastful, the heroic outlaws in these recent commercial
hits recover what cops, soldiers, teachers, and fathers could
never secure: dignity and self-respect. Jopok characters
may never meet the conventional standards for proper "heroes,"
but they certainly demand the viewers to rework the criteria of
heroism. Their outsider status reserves a space for mental integrity
and ethical purity that incapable fathers, distrusted cops, and
other fragile icons of the limitary era could never fully assume.
They certainly are in a better position to prove themselves to
be fun, romantic, reasonable, and even morally righteous than
any other social groups. More importantly, the homosocial hierarchy
that they belong to functions as a closed micro-world, within
which they ultimately redefine and exercise manhood. Mutual devotion
and group integrity became the ultimate virtue of masculinity
that the audience agrees to honor. Representations of male bonds,
often refined with wit or black humor, rationalize and even glorify
their physical violence and anti-social aggression. Cinema has
indeed become the fantastic haven for the otherwise alienated
social group, laughter, romance, goal accomplishment, and other
usual cinematic tricks enhancing its integrity.
The Absent Father in History
The privileges that these antisocial outcasts enjoy have never
been so visible in any other male prototypes in the history of
Korean cinema. Korean films, in fact, have hardly nurtured any
proper male heroes in the past. Swords, guns, good looks, and
other legitimate props couldn't secure an altar of icons as they
did in Hollywood or Hong Kong. The historical chain of Japanese
occupation, war, modernization, and military oppression has left
very little room for ideal male images on silver screen. Instead,
there has been a long parade of fallen fathers, involuntary outcasts,
shameless beggars, tramps, idiots, losers, castrated servants,
and other socially and mentally dysfunctional beings. Oppressed,
victimized, alienated, frustrated, and tormented, the male protagonists
of Korean films have submerged in the depth of bottomless failure,
agonizing hopelessness, futureless incompetence, and even destructive
self-contempt. Even the most beloved male icon of the 1960's confirmed
this unspoken crisis of manhood in Youth With Bare Feet
(1964): "I am useless! I am rubbish!"
It is the rise of realism in the early 1960's that nourished the
most candid exposure of deprived manhood. In Yu Hyeon-Mok's landmark
film The Stray Bullet (1961), the postwar devastation is
visible in the deep mental wound of the head of a poverty-stricken
household as well as in every corner of the family shack. Thoroughly
deprived in every part of his miserable life as a father, husband,
and eldest son of an extended family, the fallen hero literally
collapses to a hysteric numbness at the very end of the film.
Antonio still had his family at the deepest pit of his life in
Bicycle Thief, but the Korean Neorealist sensibility didn't
leave a room for such privilege.
The fallen father is a readily visible prototype repeated in some
of the most successful films of the 1960's, including The Housemaid
(1960), The Horseman (1962), Romance Papa
(1960), and Pig Dream (1960), to name a few. In the nuclear
families depicted in these films, the Confucius ideology only
comes in as a burden for the tortured fathers, granting anxiety
and fear instead of dignity and authority. The economically disabled
fathers' suffering deepens when they realize they can't meet the
societal expectations.
The tortured patriarchy continued to reign over the diegesis of
Korean films, as the father figures were either undignified or
simply absent. The visible absence of charismatic fatherhood,
in fact, continues to be a chronic symptom until today, allegorically
reflecting the absence of political mentor in the era of military
oppression. It wasn't until the age of Rambo and the Terminator
that a proper name of the father was pronounced in Korean cinema.
Partly in an effort to compete with the enormous popularity of
the hard bodies from Reaganite Hollywood, Im Kwon-Taek devised
a physically strong and politically judicious fighter in The
General's Son (1990), who learns the true identity of his
long-lost father to be a famous military leader against the Japanese
colonialists. This rare symbolic pronouncement of the father's
name grants the young hero the ultimate reason for being and just
cause for his future violence. The formula for ideal heroism seems
precise, perhaps too conservatively so.
The Long March of Fools
Im's call for the proper father is an adequate response to the
loss and lack of the father. It is indeed this evident absence
of father figures that the young heroes of the 1970's and the
1980's had suffered the most from. Even the most apolitical and
religious depictions of youth confirm to this tendency. For example,
the inner world that the tormented Buddhist monk finds himself
within in Bae Yong-Gyun's Why Has Bodhi Dharma Left for the
East? (1989)is harshly empty, his only mentor silenced by
death. This painterly film captures the mental desolation of the
postwar Korea under continuous military oppression in a poetic
portrait of an agonized and disoriented youth suffering from the
absence of the paternal mentor.
It is in some of the most pronounced political gestures that the
agony of absent paternal guidance became most visible. In The
March of Fools (1975), a film that was severely censored
under President Park Jung-Hee's tightened dictatorship, American-educated
Ha Kil-Jong depicts two frustrated and confused college boys as
an implying gesture of resistance against Park's military coercion.
The lack of direction and goal leads them into a deeper predicament
as they find no father, teacher, or mentor to guide them through
the darkness of the oppressed youth. Not unlike Bae's monk's impediment,
these secular youngsters' deceptively bright world is thoroughly
devastated and vacant, granting no hope for the future save an
escapist fantasy to "hunt a whale" in the vast ocean,
an inaccessible object that metaphorically signifies male virility.
The fragmented, episodic plot structure with no motivation or
goal leads Byung-Tae, one of the "fools," to the illusory
"whale" in a passage that can be taken only by death.
The march of lost youth goes on in the 1980's, after military
leader Chun Doo-Hwan seizes the country following the assassination
of President Park. Unemployed, impecunious, intellectually incapable,
and socially unsuitable, Lee Jang-Ho's deadened young protagonist
in Declarations of Fools (1983) alludes to deeper psychological
ruin than what Ha's college boys showed. The film is deceptively
apolitical and naïve. The crippled dummy's numbness is given
no obvious cause, and the narration makes no reference to the
political situation. In his Oshima-influenced Brechtian discourse,
however, director Lee shows enough signs of his own frustration
by jumping off from a building top in a brief cameo appearance
during the first sequence. The less than manly protagonist has
to suffer in the world that the director leaves behind, failing
even the simplest mission that he gives himself, to kidnap and
marry a beautiful college girl, when the girl of his dreams turn
out to be a domineering prostitute.
Bae Chang-Ho's Whale Hunting (1984)depicts in a totally
different light the same suicidal college boy of the same original
novel by Choi In-Ho that Ha's resistance film was based on. Rock
composer and singer Kim Soo-Chul stars in this romantic comedy
at the peak of his career, making the film one of the biggest
hits of the 1980's. The repressed idiot has the same fantasy and
same character traits as Ha's Byung-Tae but different friends
and goal. Bae's Byungtae is surrounded by some of the advantages
of the Hollywood-influenced genre traits, including bright humor,
quick wit, sex, and a goal-oriented plot. Even better, instead
of the equally incapable college mate, he's given an elder mentor
in his search for a "whale": a philosophical beggar.
The simple plot configuration involves simple icons: a college
boy, a prostitute, a beggar, and a gangster. The narrative that
balances between goal and conflict unfolds as the unintelligent
college boy tries to take a numb prostitute back to her hometown
with the guidance of the beggar against severe jopok obstructions.
The innocent boy's passion for this hard and dangerous journey,
which simply comes from the fact that he gave away his virginity
to the prostitute who had been forcefully captivated in the brothel
by the gangsters, becomes a harmonious and melodic, however dangerous,
tale not dissimilar to Dorothy's search for Oz. The plot is driven
by romance, friendship, courage, conflicts, and wit, and needless
to say, the goal is accomplished at the end.
The Whale's Demands
Unlike Ha's dark vision of the harsh reality, Bae's fast-paced
witty gestures lighten up the otherwise skewed, somber world of
the less than heroic youngster. His alienation and lack of confidence
in the society turns upside down when he encounters the street-wise
and sometimes charismatic tramp, or "the boss," played
by Ahn Sung-Ki, the most popular actor of the 1980's and the 1990's.
Two outsiders maintain a contractual vertical relationship, through
which the elder demonstrates manhood, intelligence, and wisdom
for the youngster to look upon. The mentor shows everything a
young man has to learn to be properly masculine, psychologically,
physically, and sexually. This rare father figure of the 1980's
is a near perfection, except he is only strong in words, not in
action, not even able to fight for a penny in the rough world.
This incompleteness in the father figure is forcefully compensated
by another character at the most unexpected plot twist when the
dumb boy finally reaches the small island that his lover belongs
to. Dumfounded by their own accomplishment, the three companions
stand still to admire the clearly visible goal of the plot across
the blue sea, just before the tenacious gangsters make their timely
appearance for the final conflict of the narrative. The climactic
duel between the good and the evil is concluded rather quickly,
for the physical strength of the pseudo-family is no match to
the gangsters'. The fatherly tramp is subdued and overthrown at
an eye's blink, and the victory of the illegal violence seems
evident as the jopok boss finally claims and starts dragging
away the resisting woman of his illegal possession. With no competitive
fighting skill or strength, the young weakling refuses to give
up his first love and makes his last feeble resistance by dangling
strenuously on the jopok boss's forceful leg. The final
overturn of the obvious power relation is initiated not from the
desperate idiot or his subdued mentor, but from the numb prostitute,
who dramatically breaks her long silence and clearly spells out
her will for her wounded lover and his enemies to bear. The logic
of her lesson is self-sacrifice, instructing the boy not to trouble
himself for her sake and to accept the reality; she claims that
she will willingly follow the gangsters back to their brothel
on the condition that they spare her friends' lives. Moved by
the numb girl's shocking vocal enunciation of selfless wish, the
jopok boss decides to leave behind everyone alone along
with the strong impression of his heroic smirk. The three protagonists
don't quite restore their dignity and pride but certainly recover
their shared goal and melody, thanks to the unexpected benevolence
of the evil man.
"They Aren't Such Bad People."
This overturn of the social evil may reflect the director's
interests in Christian virtues, and yet the affect it creates
holds an important clue to understand how jopok has stolen
the hearts of Korean audiences and taken the status of the hero.
Unlike Ha's and Lee's subversive intentions, Bae's box-office-friendly
wit is far from being an explicit political statement. Nevertheless,
Whale Hunting faithfully reflects the defeatist sentiment
that Chon's violent regime has induced. The cinematic affect in
the final duel activates forced reconciliation with and reluctant
acknowledgement of the dictatorial, violent force. Its emotional
effect reduplicates the Stockholm syndrome, in which the oppressed
within an isolated power relation accepts and honors the unjust
force behind the confinement of their freedom, as did the hostages
of the armed bank robbers at Kreditbanken in Stockholm in 1973.
The goodness displayed by the coercive oppressor may be slight,
but this slightness is exactly the magic potion. A thin slice
of mercy perfects the shaky superiority. With the unexpected signs
of good intention, the evil chaser assumes supreme authority and
supremacy. With the last heroic smirk, the abuser magically turns
every bit of his former ill deeds into solid integrity of what
is defined as "manhood."
However ironic, this dramatic ambivalence of good and evil explains
how the coercive heroism marched into the vacant seat of the father.
This perverse psychological mechanism serves as the salient narrative
logic in many recent jopok films, putting together the
fragmented pieces of male heroism long lost in Korean cinema in
one hard body: physical strength, charismatic presence, willful
action, and a token of mercy. In countless examples, the social
outcast turns into the benevolent hero, who ultimately allows
the grand illusion of the "whale" to be a concrete accomplishment.
With the magical combination of coercive violence and slight mercy
shown at decisive moments, the aggressors determine the course
of the plot as well as the fates of other characters, let alone
his own dignity, and it is this determination that fulfills the
desperate demands of the hero-hungry audience. This is to say
that it is the very ambivalence of social evil and ethical benevolence
itself that earns commercial success in Korean cinema, not necessarily
graphic violence, machine guns, or hard muscles.
Fools and Heroes
It is important to note that the parade of fools never came
to a complete halt even after the general's son claimed his idealized
father in 1990. Most of the popular Korean films in the 1990's
maintain cynical glances over the society by preserving the core
of the plot for socially alienated, mentally incompetent, and
sexually frustrated young males as protagonists. Hovering above
the young protagonists of such young auteurs as Jang Sun-Woo,
Hong Sang-Su, and Kim Ki-Deok is the very legacy of the ruined
youth of the past generations. The Road to the Race Track,
Lies, The Day a Pig Fell into a Well, The Power
of Kangwon Province, Virgin Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors,
Crocodile, and The Isle portray young unmotivated
men, who face no visible obstacles and at the same time bear no
goal or dream. Life is disturbingly hollow and destructively meaningless,
their desire fragmented, and their frustration aimless. The loose
plot structure of these films lacks causality or narrative goal,
deepening the agony of the passionless, the bored, and the restless.
It is this continuous, profound lack of charismatic male presence
in such films that the excess of jopok balances out to.
In other words, the place for heroes has never been reserved inside
the dominant society of the cinematic diegesis. Heroism had to
come from its outskirts, and the history tends to honor some repeating
narratives, as it happens to be the armed and organized outsiders
like Park and Chon who seem to make their way into success with
the magic combination. Cold fists, proud shoulders, and a good
smile sell.
The following films are available to purchase
on DVD at HKFlix.com.
Click below for more information on each film.
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| Kick the Moon |
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