Three Periods of Korean Queer Cinema: Invisible, Camouflage, and Blockbuster
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ACTA KOR ANA VOL. 14, NO. 1, JUNE 2011: 117–136 THREE PERIODS OF KOREAN QUEER CINEMA: INVISIBLE, CAMOUFLAGE, AND BLOCKBUSTER By PIL HO KIM and C. COLIN SINGER The LGBT movement in Korea may have a relatively short history dating back to the mid-1990s, yet Korean queer cinema has had a unique role in breaking ground in the LGBT realm well before the onset of social activism. We break down the history of Korean queer cinema into three distinct chronological periods, according to the manner in which queer content is displayed and the reception of the films by both the government authorities and the public: the Invisible Age (1976–1998), the Camouflage Age (1998–2005), the Blockbuster Age (2005–present). The Invisible Age could reach as far back as the earliest days of Korean cinema, but two landmark films deserve attention: Ascetic and Broken Branches. The former in particular characterizes the period when its lesbianism was too invisible in the eyes of the public to create much of an impact. Even with the relaxed ‘ethical standards’ since 1998, homosexuality was still deemed too explosive. In the Age of Camouflage, there- fore, such popular films as Memento Mori and Bungee Jumping of Their Own masked their homosexual content with horror and romance fantasies. The mega-success of The King and the Clown has proven that LGBT-themed films can compete in the box office, opening the Blockbuster Age of queer cinema. While the ‘flower boy’ formula of beautiful gay character in The King and the Clown has been widely adopted by the main- stream film and entertainment industries, No Regret exemplifies a genre-bending strategy to express queer sexualities in Korean independent cinema. Key words: queer cinema, LGBT movement, periodization, flower boy, genre-bending INTRODUCTION A modern South Korea might balk at the idea of having its political leader engaging in an ‘immoral’ act of homosexuality, but this was not always the case throughout Korean history. Several kings, such as Hyegong of the ancient Silla 118 Acta Koreana Vol. 14, No. 1, 2011 and Kongmin in the Koryŏ period, were known for their homosexual behavior. The Neo-Confucian Chosŏn may not have been as lenient as the previous kingdoms, yet there is plenty of evidence for the continued existence of homo- sexuality in publicly or semi-publicly acknowledged forms. Even the introduction of sexology and the establishment of modern heterosexual norms under Japanese rule failed to wipe out their persistence at least until the 1940s (Chŏn 1980; Pak 2006; Ch’a 2009). Thus it is no surprise to see Korean queer cinema often bor- rowing its motifs from the pre-modern times, as the wildly popular film The King and the Clown (Wang ŭi namja, 2005) did with a midong (beautiful boy) character that typically played female roles in a namsadang all-male entertainment troupe. The beginning of Korean queer or LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender) communities in the modern sense is said to date back to the mid-1970s when the Nagwŏndong area, in the venerable Chongno district of Seoul, emerged as a “Gay Paradise” with a number of bars, bathhouses, and movie theaters attracting pre- dominantly male homosexual clientele. Perhaps there is no better symbol for the deep connection between homosexuality and cinema than the legendary Pagoda Theater at the heart of Nagwŏndong, where Korean gays had secret encounters with one another or their international partners (Ch’oe 1996; Seo 2001; Cho 2003). About two decades later, the LGBT movement sprang out in the aftermath of the democratic breakthrough in South Korea. A few glimpses of the early Korean LGBT movement were captured by The Grace Lee Project (2005), in which a Korean-American activist paid a dear personal price for her involvement in the very first Korean homosexual organization Ch’odonghoe and then the first lesbian advocacy group Kkirikkiri (Pak 2000, Shimizu 2007). Ever since the beginning, the Korean LGBT movement has been closely tied to the film culture/ industry in one way or another as we shall see later on. A decade has barely passed since Jooran Lee wrote, “Discussing Korean gay and lesbian films is like drifting in a space without sunlight or oxygen” (2000, 273). We may be still drifting, but now there is much to bask and breathe in thanks to many filmmakers who ventured to fill the dicey space of homosexuality and queerness with their work. What we do here is to take a first stab at periodizing the history of Korean queer cinema in the hopes for more detailed, interpretive research to follow. In terms of visibility of queerness, we divide the history into three periods: the Invisible Age, the Camouflage Age, and the Blockbuster Age. Describing each of the periods, we will try to contextualize some of the repre- sentative films in the broader sociocultural milieu. THE INVISIBLE AGE, 1945–1997 The name ‘Invisible Age’ is garnered from the idea that for many years, those Kim and Singer: Three Periods of Korean Queer Cinema 119 filmmakers who wanted to bring homosexual themes to the forefront of their movies were unable to do so because of societal pressures against it, and instead laid the themes down discretely, invisible to the heterosexual eye; such themes would only be recognizable by members of the audience already familiar with homosexual content and indexicalities. In this sense the Invisible Age might well have begun at the birth of Korean cinema, but there is one problem. As early as in 1931, a film project entitled Women of Tomorrow (Myŏngil ŭi yŏin) was an- nounced in a daily newspaper, inspired by the much scandalized real-life story of lesbian double suicide (Ch’a 2009, 69). Apparently this project never materialized, but it does suggest more visibility, and less inhibition, in dealing with the issue of homosexuality among filmmakers and the public in the colonial times rather than after. If the modern heterosexual norm and homophobia settled in during and after the Pacific War mobilization and the Korean War periods as some of the afore- mentioned studies indicate, then it might be prudent for our purpose to set the starting point of the Invisible Age in 1945, when Korean ‘national’ cinema formally launched its post-colonial journey. This period runs until 1997, a turning point that will be discussed further on. There were films released in this era that exhibited explicitly homosexual themes, however, they remain elusive and hard to learn too much about beyond discussions of them in a few academic articles. The actor and filmmaker Ha Myŏng-jung once claimed that The Pollen of Flowers (Hwabun, 1972), which his legendary brother Ha Kil-jong had directed and in which he himself had played the role of homme fatale, was “the first gay film in Korea” (Ha 2008).1 While homosexuality and the tension it creates among the characters were clearly on display, as a hypersexual avant garde film Pollen had so many other “shocking” and “perplexing” aspects at the time of release that even those critics and scholars who rediscovered the importance of the film decades later did not seem to regard it primarily as a queer film (Pak 2009; Yi 2009). Nevertheless, Pollen is the earlier and better known one of the two films queer activists of the 1990s–2000s dusted off of the shelves of the national film archive. The other has the more explicit title though—Ascetic: Woman and Woman (Kŭmyok: Yŏja wa yŏja, 1976). Ascetic is the tale of two women, a young aspiring fashion model named Yŏng- hŭi and her middle-aged patron Mi-ae, who is an artist. They begin cohabitation after Yŏng-hŭi had a mental breakdown during her model debut. Mi-ae’s intimate 1 To be sure, this kind of ‘first ever’ claim is almost always disputable at some level. The film magazine Cine21 argued that Kim Su-yong’s Starting Point (Sibaljŏm, 1969) could qualify as the first Korean film depicting homosexuality (Mun 2003). But in fact Sin Sang-ok’s Eunuch (Naesi, 1968) had already done just that a year earlier. 120 Acta Koreana Vol. 14, No. 1, 2011 care helps her younger lover get back on her feet personally as well as professionally. But now-recovered Yŏng-hŭi falls in love with a man, leaving her partner in the cold. Having suffered from a physically abusive husband in a previous marriage, Mi-ae begs Yŏng-hŭi not to take the heterosexual path. Nevertheless, Yŏng-hŭi goes with the man who eventually betrays her, and then comes back only to discover Mi-ae’s suicide. Kim Su-hyŏng, a specialist in the so-called ero yŏnghwa (erotic film)—ero in short—genre that would later come to dominate the Korean film industry from the late 1970s through the 1980s, made Ascetic as racy as possible given the circumstance of heavy censorship. Mi-ae is seen body-painting all over Yŏng-hŭi’s naked body in one scene, and releasing cockroaches on her bare back in another. All these thinly-veiled sex acts are described as “therapy” for Yŏng-hŭi, who had been sexually assaulted and traumatized by three unknown men. In terms of eerie atmosphere and shocking display of sexuality, this film provides a bridge between such experimental cult films as Kim Ki-yŏng’s Housemaid trilogy and the com- mercialized soft pornography of ero in the 1980s.2 Despite winning an award the year it was released, Ascetic remained a fairly unknown film. It was lost in between the worlds of lesbianism and feminism, with critics from both sides arguing that it does not go far enough to be truly a film for either cause.