Nat¡Onal Tamiliar Other to It. for Instance, Rve Learn Rvhat Is "Uniqlle"

South l(olean Film ilelodrama: State, llation, Woman, and the lran¡nat¡onal tamiliar KATHLEF,N MCHUGH Nations arise from interactions, rvhether material or discursive. The nation, as nation-state, says no; it defines its contours b), nsga¡ian, artic- ulating r,vho is not a citizen, rvhat acts are forbidden, u,here its territory and authority begin and end, rvhat fieedoms will be taken au,ay fiom those rvho transgress its laws, and r,r4rat limits rvill shape the flow of cur- renc1,, traflìc, and communications.'Yet the state's ncgatiolls coincide and overlap r,vith the affinnative interactions that cornprise the nation as homeland, interactions that involve knol,vleclge, imagination, memory, and identification. These affìrmative interactions shape the citizens' experience of national culture, among other things. But the presurnably unique components that make up that experience tend only to become salient, visible, and identifiable in encounters q,ith that rvhich is alien, other to it. For instance, rve learn rvhat is "uniqlle" about our orvn culture lvhen \\'e tra\¡el abroad or otherwise encounter diffèrent cultural practices; the structure and grammatical particularities of our mother tongue only become evident lvhen r.e study or learn a second language. As with any other identity, ive Llnclerstand our national iclentity and who we are as a nation through historically contingent ancl variable interactions u,herein lve encoullter, iclentifj,, and name rvhat lve are not. In this essay, I u'ould like to consider South Korean cinema as an instance of a national cinema fi'om this perspective: as a complex and contradictory entiry Llsually only iclentifìed ancl affìnned in encounters r'r'ith and negations of that l'hich it is not. These encounters traverse personal, econornic, political, aesthetic, intellectual, ând international fields and concerns) and include, of course, encolrnters benveen fìlm scholars and films. As such, I must first define uly own position. I am a U.S.-born and -educated fìlm scholar, trained in a version of r'vorld cinema that, marked by the various economic and international exigencies of a specific histor- I7 Kathleen McHugh State, Nation, Woman, ar-rd the Transnational Familiar ical moment (I980s), did not include exposure to Korean cinema. Fur- acatlemy ancl its er-nphasis or-r interdisciplinarl' and cultural studies research ther, I do not speak, read, or understand the Korean language. Yet rather provided the context u'herein a dinner conversafion between colleagues than being deterred by mf ignorance, I would rather propose it as an and friends in very different disciplines became a viable research project. exemplary component of knowledge production concerning other The IJniversity of California's interest in developing ties r,vith Asia and national cinemas: that the insights generated about Korean cinema or any East Asia led to the fìurcling of this project I'ia a Pac Rim grant. This grant other national cinema can only derive from error) or better, from u'hat is and this interest derives from a more per\¡asive and recent example ofwhat not familiar to the non-national film scholar, from what s/he does not Rey Chow calls "western European and North A¡nerican fàscination with know. East Asian cinema,"' itself perhaps a complex part of or reaction to the contradictory priorities of a millennial moment characterized by global- First Contact ization, multinational corporations, and the United States' intransigent, Over clinner several years ago, East Asian anthropologist Nancy Abel- unilateral investment in its or'vn irnperial brand of narionalism. wrile the mann told me about her lvork with a group of South Korean u'omen who fascination of which Chou' speaks is for contemporary Asian cinema, in had come of age right after the Korean War. As they remembered the this volume's fàscination rvith the Golden Age, there is perhaps a nostal- period, they repeâtedly invoked a group of South Korean and An-rerican gia for the idea of nation and national cinema as resistant, as ernergent film melodramas that, as she explained to me, "somehow resonated with r.rnder conditions of duress, as a perceptible if r.vhol\' ephemeral coales- the quotidian reality and the imagination of these women's youth; with cence of fi,vo utterly different orders of representation-material and sym- equal verve they recalled the films and the drama of their own lives in bolic. those times."'? While the Korean films the \4/omen referenced were con- It is fitting then that m)' fìrst encounter with South Korean cinema temporaneous, produced and exhibited in the 1950s and l9ó0s, the Hol- had to do u,ith a genre or mode generated fiom issues of representation llnvood films dated from the 1930s and 1940s and were just being shon'n and duress. Abelmann described her research to me because of my schol- in South Korea for the first time. Thus the ethnography that Abelmann arly work on Classical Holll.n'ood melodrama and domestic labor. As she was conducting involved an encounter between Classical Holll'wood cin- told rne the plots of the Golden Age films, whar srruck me immediately ema and the Golden Age of South Korean cinema (L955-72) in the cul- lvas their o\¡ert attentiolt to women's r,vork and their relationships with tural imaginary of these wonten.. money) class, and economic value, a range of concerns generally sup- As the Golden Age lvas precipitated by Korea's liberation from pressed by or subsumed rvithin romantic and emotional issues in Classi- Japanese occupation, it provides both an exemplary and provocative cal Holllnn'ood cinema, especialll, after the institution of the Production instance of a national cinema for a number of reasons. First, Golden Age Code in 1933. Rrther than highlighting corulecrions berween rhe emo- South Korean cinema'vvas self-consciously engaged in imagining and nar- tional ancl economic, A'rnerican rneloclrama tends to use femininity to rating South Korea as an emergent and divided nation and one now dom- rnystify class issues.' But) as the fìlms themselves amply demonsrratecl, inated by a Western power. Second, the claims of the state, in the form of lvorrlen in South Korean melodramas cluring this period, though abject Park Chung Hee's [Pak Clröng-hùi] euf-orcement of censorship larvs in in the areas of love and romance ) ne\/ertlìeless possess valued economic IgT2, thintately curtailed, for a time, this national imagining. Third, the agency and power-they work, they make money, often enough to save divided nation of Korea rvas embedded in cold war politics, out of which honres, lives, and social status.'' ollr contemporary sense of the uation emerged. Finall¡ this historical Thus I fìrst rneaningfully encountered South Korea not as a narion, period rvas also the one in which film studies, including the study of per se) but via a fìlm genre-melodrama-and my orvn research priorities: national cinemas, emerged as a viable scholarly discipline in U.S. unit'er- in what I perceived to be a different and comparabll' s¡rout.r constmc- sities. tion of femininity in its South Korean variant than in that of the Holly- Yet this moment of emergence must be placed in relation to the wood cinema r,vith rvhich I r,vas fàmiliar.t Several factors contributed to moment of encounter and reception thirty years later that ultirnately gen- this perception. The first r,vas that, in this body of fihns, the significance erated the essays in this volume. The changing character of the U.S. of rvomen's relationships r.vitl-r other women frequently exceeds that of t8 t9 Kathleen McHugh State , Nation, Woman, and the Transnational Familiar their relationships u'ith men.t The second \\/as that the plots of these fih¡s sionisnr, Germøn Expressionism, and Soúet Montage. ofìen featurred u'omen r,r4ro rvere more ambitious and economically sarruy 2.'îhe nationâl cinemas and national film movements whose than their husbancls. Finally, the u'omen's econollic skills, their labor, identity as such vvas fàcilitated by international frlm festi- and their employn-ìent were fòregrouncled and generally vah.red in these vals that came to prominence after World War II, a circuit films rather than being dernonized, renclered abject, or adversely com- that "invests in and promotes the ctiscovery of new nat- pared to emotional and leisure pttrsuits as $'omen's econornic iltt'oh'e- ional cinemls."" ment fì'equently u,as in Classical Hollpl'ood urelodramas." Conseqr'tentll', the difference in narrative collstructions of fèrnininity became a primarl', Yet the ar'vard structure of these fèstivals designated prize-winning salient component of r,vhat I perceivecl South Korean cinema to be. films, by definition, as exceptior-ral products of their respective nations) produced b)'-ast.r auteurs: in Japan by Yasujiro Ozu, I(enji Mizoguchi, The Question of National Cinema and Akira Kurosawa; in India by Satyajit Ra\'; in Mexico, by Luis Burluel. Since the carll' years of silent cinema, national iìlm industries have existed This structural imbrication of aesthetics and nationalism, while providing nearly everlnvhere. But the economic, industrial, and social conditions r.ery limited international access to a verlr small number of films fi'om that shape critical ancl theoretical understandings of national ciuema nations other than the lJnited States, nevertheless reified Hollpvood's began after World War I."'The devastation of Europe resulted in Holly- normati\¡e and dominant position, r,vhile also insuring that the products r'vood cinema's rise to international dominance, a position this industry of other national cinemas rvould be selected and would circulate as "art" has held ever since . This clominance, though predicated on econotnics, cinema rather than as narratives in direct cornpetition rvith Hollyr,vood technology, ancl issues relating to the state, registers lnost fòrceftlll)' in products.

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