Abstract

This study locates the mutual negotiation of literature and film in the colonial era of Chosun in intertextuality between two media, not in the ways in which one medium emulates the specificities of the other. Through a close reading of the specific cinematic quotations in Lee Hoy-Suk’s novels, this study explores how Lee’s perception of the Hollywood films affects his bent for the European films. Ultimately, this is an essay on the socio-cultural implication of the Hollywood representations in Chosun literature of the colonial era. The Hollywood film quoted in Lee’s novels connote the commodified sexuality or sexual desire itself, that is, a commodity serving to colonize what is European. The metaphor of the apple that frequents in Lee’s novels such as Orion and Apple and Juriya(1933) can be traced back to Morocco, a 1930 Hollywood film. “The philosophy of apple” championed by the women in these novels is nothing more than the philosophy of market, speaking to the ways in which their sexualities are misused and appropriated by capitalism. The apple even serves as a metaphor for the world dominated by Hollywood, evoking the pity for the European film devastatingly colonized by the Hollywood film industry. Lee’s admiration of Pépé le Moko(1937), a French film, in his novel, Yeosu(1939), is predicated on his “imaginative” association of Hollywood with the other, not so much as attesting to his European style. However, Lee’s negative perception of the Hollywood films and counterpart predilection for the European films are problematic due to his negligence of the difference between Chosun and Europe. Lee’s lop-sided attitude towards Hollywood and Europe is more problematic in that this kind of attitude is still effective in the present.