LCST2568

[Tracks C & S] This course will examine the shifting Korean-icity of contemporary Korean Cinema according to several key historical, ideological, and aesthetic frameworks by which ‘New Korean Cinema’ has been understood – as a response to the social and political turmoil of the 70s and 80s, its emerging status festival and commercial status as ‘World Cinema,’ the 1997 Asian Financial Crisis, the emergence of a corporatized ‘Hollywood’ style studio system, and the politics of transgender and queer representation in South Korea. This course will consider the history of production and reception for a range of Korean films from the 90s to present under the theoretical lens of psychoanalytic, queer, feminist, Marxist, and post-colonial theory. The course seeks to answer the following questions: what makes a Korean film Korean? How has Korean Cinema of the 90s to present day informed and been informed by shifting attitudes toward genre, style, and South Korea’s socio-political history? And how has Korean film today been made to become, like K-pop or Kimchi, a global export? Most importantly, we will interrogate our relation to these films as Western viewers – the way in which non-Korean viewers of Korean Cinema are “hailed” to see Korean Cinema – and think critically about what sort of domestic and international audience these films imagine for themselves. [Tracks C & S]