Abstract

This study aims to examine what is at stake in Shim-Hoon’s film criticism that constitutes the first scene of “Film Criticism”. Shim’s “Film Criticism” is a film criticism in itself and serves as a meta-criticism on film criticism at the same time. What are striking about his film criticism are its specialty based on the objective evidences and its audience-oriented interpretation with universal validity. Indeed, Shim’s film criticism can be interpreted as a “resistant signifier” defying that of the contemporary literati who made a significant contribution to the inauguration of Chosun film criticism. Critiquing the arbitrary film criticism of the literati and their license to intervene in the other kinds of art than their own, Shim proposed a criticism specific to the objective constitutes of the medium of film. With the success of the film “Arirang” triggering the formation of the mass audience in Chosun film industry, the film criticism was supposed to mediate between the Chosun film and the audience, which is crucial to the development of the Chosun film. Through his criticism based on his acute awareness of the discrepancy between literature and film, film and the reality, Shim tried to problematize an assumed hierarchy between literature and film and redress the inferior status of the latter.