“Tell the Kitchen That There’s Too Much Buchu in the Dumpling”: Reading Park Chan-wook’s “Unknowable” Old Boy

In all three films of Park Chan-wook's "revenge" trilogy, Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance (2002), Old Boy (2003) and Lady Vengeance (2005), one can trace the emergence of "postmodern" attitude that takes up not only the point of view that the grand ideologies (humanism, democracy, socialism, etc.) are faltering, if not entirely dissipated, but also a belief that the image is merely just that: an image. Image here is that which is not an impression of reality, but a perception of matter that approximates the verisimilitudes of both space and time that may not have anything to do with reality. This renders a sense of the "unknowable." This article probes a number of elements that typify Park's films: the trope of revenge and its relationship with Nietzschean ressentiment, the stylized use of violence, the failing gap between the plane of representation and the plane of signification, and the various spatial, historical, and ontological markers of the "unknowable." All of these issues will also investigate, challenge, and contextualize the recent Western critics' response to his work that has problematized Park's films for having failing to produce social criticism.

keywords: Korean cinema, Park Chan-wook, Korean cinema, Park Chan-wook

참고문헌

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(2005March) The Violence (and the Seafood) is More than Raw, New York Times

(1989) Translated by Hugh Tomlinson and Robert Galeta University of Minnesota Press, Cinema 2

(1962) Translated by Hugh Tomlinson, Columbia University Press

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(2004) The Remasculinization of Korean Cinema, Durham, NC: Duke University Press

(2001) Violence American Style: the Narrative Orchestration of Violent Attractions, Violence and American Cinema, New York and London, Routledge

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(2005) Unknowing: the Work of Modernist Fiction, Ithaca and London, Cornell University Press

11.

(2005Summer) Jajangmyeon and Junggukjip,

12.

both notoriously important publications for any independent films opening in the U gave harsh reviews to Oldboy,

13.

Oldboy failed to reach the US $1 million gross mark which is usually held as a benchmark of moderate success for limited-release films which is not a bad figure for a Korean film but certainly well below the U set by a Korean film,

14.

first published in 1998 was written by Tsuchiya Garon and illustrated by Minegishi Nobuaki,

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Both Oldboy and Lady Vengeance were bona-fide blockbuster hit films while Sympathy for Mr Vengeance wasnt as successful in the box office,

16.

(1988) drunkard Mansus bar brawl lands him at a police station where he is detained overnight for additional questioning A small misdemeanor that should have only led to a small fine escalates into a far more punitive action because Mansu has a father who is in jail as a long-term political prisoner The Day a Pig Fell into the Well also includes a scene in which its protagonist Hyo-seop is sentenced in court three-day detention for instigating a fight with a restaurant worker at a Korean barbeque spot, In Chilsu and Mansu

17.

See particularly the chapters 3 and 4 from my The Remasculinization of Korean Cinema Violent Sex and the Korean War in Silver Stallion Spring in My Hometown and The Taebaek Mountains and Post-trauma and Historical Remembrance in A Single Spark and A Petal,

18.

In Sympathy for Mr played by Bae Doona orders a bowl of jajangmyeon After placing her order over the phone she mistakenly thinks that her intruder Instead of getting her jajangmyeon,

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(2005) On Kafkan uncanny, see Weinstein,

20.

Park Chan-wook began experimenting with voiceover narration from Oldboy he employed an 60 year-old female narrator with long experiences in radio and television voice actor whose voice nostalgically reminded the viewers of radio dramas or popular television documentary programs like Ingan sidae,

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Vol.46 No.1

“Tell the Kitchen That There’s Too Much Buchu in the Dumpling”: Reading Park Chan-wook’s “Unknowable” Old Boy

Abstract

참고문헌

Korea Journal