Copyright © 2012 Jung Yeon Sohn
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Copyright © 2012 Jung Yeon Sohn 24 FRAMES A SECOND THE COSMOPOLITAN CINEPHILIA OF SOUTH KOREANCOLLEGE STUDENTS BY JUNG YEONSOHN DISSERTATION Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in East Asian Languages and Cultures with a minor in Cinema Studies in the Graduate College of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2012 Urbana, Illinois Doctoral Committee: Professor Nancy Abelmann, Chair Associate Professor José B. Capino Assistant Professor Jungwon Kim Assistant Professor Jinsoo An, University of California at Berkeley ii Abstract This dissertation is an interdisciplinary ethnography of the culture of young cinephiles in South Korea where I conducted research in 2008-9. The ethnographic heart of my work is a university film club ( tongari ) located in Seoul. I also observed a student-run film magazine as well as major and minor international film festivals. Demographically, the age cohort of university students represents the most active users of film in South Korea which boasts the fifth- largest film market in the world. I have approached the film club as a speech community from which I collected a group discourse on film and spectatorship as an intimate window on the culture of local cinephiles. Based on my fieldwork, I make a central argument that cinephilic culture as exemplified by the film club is largely cosmopolitan in nature, reflecting the enormous circulation of international movies and film scholarship across national borders. The opening chapters first discuss how cinephiles have come to share cosmopolitan tastes through various means such as art houses in Seoul; the tradition of watching canonical films and studying film theory in university film clubs that emerged on university campuses in Seoul in the 1980s; and the Internet and personal computing technologies. The core chapters examine precisely how (close reading) and why (affective and personal experience) young cinephiles watch global cinemas that they encounter through theaters, friends, and the Internet. In these chapters, concomitant to my observation that the culture of South Korean cinephiles is largely cosmopolitan, I illustrate how the culture of studying American film scholarship as well as consuming Western classics and art films does not necessarily sustain the traditionally unequal power relationship implicated in cross-border cultural transactions. The last chapter, moreover, iii situates cosmopolitan cinephilia within the contemporary social and cultural context of South Korea, which is most notably marked by neoliberal and multicultural politics. iv Acknowledgements I am indebted to an innumerable number of people who have helped to bring this dissertation to completion, but two come to my mind first without whom this project would not have seen the light of day. First and foremost, I would like to thank my dissertation adviser, Professor Nancy Abelmann, an extraordinary teacher and person whose unswerving faith in me has been nothing short of a gift. Her three children—Carmen, Simone, and Isaac—also cheered me through some of the most difficult as well as happy times I have spent in graduate school. I also thank Kelly Frazier for her wonderful assistance at the office, making everything so much more manageable and enjoyable. Next, I would like to thank the film club where I did the bulk of my fieldwork and where I was accepted as one of them. The undergraduate students in this club have been my teacher, inspiration, and friends to the degree I had never imagined possible before the fieldwork. It is my hope that they will read this dissertation and find it compelling even if they had to disagree with, hopefully, a few points. The fieldwork was supported by a Fulbright IIE Fellowship for which Professors Jinsoo An and Dong-Hoo Lee acted as my local advisers. I was also fortunate to meet Professors Danny Wedding and Sugwon Kang, Fulbright senior scholars, who provided help and guidance throughout my stay in Korea. I also owe thanks to Nicole Guarino at Korean- American Educational Commission whose friendship made the year so much more pleasant. I also have received help from numerous others during the writing process, which was supported by a Korea Foundation Graduate Student Fellowship. Professor Jungwon Kim, a passionate historian of Chosŏn Korea, has shared with me her energy and enthusiasm for my very contemporary project as she served on my dissertation committee. Taking her history v courses also gave me the final relief that I at last understand Korea to be working on this dissertation. Professor José B. Capino, with whom I began studying film joyously, has never failed to amaze me with his insights; and Professor Jinsoo An, whom I thank for joining the dissertation committee later in my dissertating stage, has made the committee complete with his invaluable and thorough comments. The Advisee Group—John Cho, Hee Jung Choi, Sangsook Lee-Chung, Yoonjung Kang, Dohye Kim, Heejin Kim, Sujung Kim, Alex Lee, Kyou Ho Lee, Jason C. Romero, Yoonjeong Shim, Agnes Sohn, Erica Vogel, Soo-Yeon Yoon—have been not only faithful readers of my writings but also great friends who have made my graduate work an awesome experience. I also would like to thank Katherine Lee, J. L. Murdoch, Frank Rausch, and Michael Sprunger of what we have called KSDSG (Korean Studies Dissertation Support Group) for their camaraderie and support. James Welker was also a fun writing partner who learned to specialize in giving me pep talks. I am also grateful to Professor Young-a Park for sharing her book manuscript with me; and to Professors Christopher Hanscom, Nicholas Harkness, Jiyeon Kang, and Sunyoung Park for their careful reading of and much appreciated comments on my first chapter that is to be published as a separate journal article. There are, moreover, innumerable others whom I have met through, to name a few, the Korea Workshop (University of Illinois), Korean Studies Dissertation Workshop (SSRC), and Popular Culture and Social Change Graduate Student Dissertation Workshop (AAS). Professor Theodore Jun Yoo whom I met through the SSRC workshop, in particular, has since been a faithful mentor. Last but not least, I would like to thank Professor Jin-kyung Park who was my study buddy as well as a dearly respected and loved sister when she herself was a dissertator at the University of Illinois. I also owe special thanks to Sally Cook and Dena Schumacher who loved me and taught me to love; and helped me stay hopeful throughout my writing. And I am vi fortunate for the friendship of Nara Han, Song Han, Esther Kim and Sarah Park—they make me a better person. There are many a thing that I could say of Minkyun Kim, an ever patient and loving friend; but the credit for the archival document research goes to him who, at the National Library, was a pro bono research assistant to help carry and photocopy stacks of journals. I also thank my family who never really understood why I wanted to stay in school for so long but was always good and supportive about it. And, lastly, I dedicate this dissertation to the loving memory of my mother. vii ote to Reader All transcriptions of Korean in this dissertation follow the McCune-Reischauer romanization system except in the cases where personal names and other proper nouns have been romanized previously (e.g., Kim Dae-jung; Yonsei University). East Asian names are presented with surname first and given name last even in the cases where names in Western form are in wide circulation (e.g., Ozu Yasujiro). All English translations, including literature, quotations, and interviews from both Korean language materials and fieldwork, are my own unless otherwise noted. viii Table of Contents List of Key Informants ………..………………………………………………………………… ix Filmography …….……………………………………………………………………………….. x Acronyms …...………………………………………………………………………………….. xii Introduction: Cinephiles in a Cinephilic City ………………...…………………………………. 1 Part I: Timing Cosmopolitan Cinephilia ...................................................................................... 34 Chapter 1: A Vignette: A Day in the Life of Kubo the Film Critic .……………………………. 35 Chapter 2: Cinema as Everyday Practice: A College Film Club …………………….....……… 64 Part II: A Close Look at Cosmopolitan Cinephilia ...................................................................... 95 Chapter 3: The Bordwell Regime: “A Different Kind of Fun” ………………….…………….. 96 Chapter 4: Affective Cinephilia: The “Taste” and “Feeling” of Film ……………………....... 125 Part III: A Broad Look at Cosmopolitan Cinephilia ………………………………………….. 150 Chapter 5: Local Cinephiles, Cosmopolitan Cinephilia …………………………………….... 151 Bibliography …….…………………………………....…………………………………......... 167 ix List of Key Informants I understood that one should never underestimate the intelligence and comprehension of the audience, despite what professional distributors and the purveyors of big spectacles say. - Agnès Varda 1 * Some of the details in the descriptions are not mentioned in the dissertation itself. Alex | M Is a name I borrow from Alejandro Amenábar who directed Tesis (1996) on which Alex led a group discussion (Class 2 of 2005) Director Lee | M Is his nickname (he has a different last name); wants to become a filmmaker (2004) Haejin | F Joined the club “to study film more systematically” (2008) Hongjun | M Wants to become a film critic (2003) Juhee | F Has taught Film Art ten times in the club (2006) Jun | M Says that using Bordwell is “a different kind of fun” (2004) Junsu | M Is an