Fleeting Update

Posted on July 3, 2008
Filed Under Korea, SF, esl & other teaching, personal |

Let’s see:

Personal Stuff

Teaching

Events

Worthy Reading Material

Upcoming Posts

Sorry to those anticipating them, but my Gin Lane/Soju-ro posts will be waiting till August, I suspect. This month, I’m going to be cutting back and focusing my posts on the stuff I’ll be working into my paper for the Congress this fall (about the general failure of SF (not speculative fiction — fantasy and horror are quite popular here, but I mean science fiction — in Korea, as in, its failure to be adopted into Korean popular culture, be retooled for specifically Korean anxieties or concerns, and attain popularity anything like what we see in the English speaking world, Japan, Europe & the former Soviet Union, and (arguably, but I need to research this more) Taiwan and China. It’ll be some analysis of the use and significance of science-fictional tropes in the following Korean SF movies:

I suspect I’ll start with The Host, since it’s the one film in that list that was a critical success, and because it was the one that started me in on this inquiry. Plus I have my thinking about that film in order and won’t need to re-watch it again in order to put my post together.

As for soju and gin, I wanna do that subject justice, and to do so, I need to do some more reading and also to get some other stuff out of the way. I may start a series sometime, but for now, if you’re interested, two other bloggers are exploring similar terrain right now: James at The Grand Narrative is looking at the role of military conscription in what I’ve (cleverly?) termed the Ajeoshization of Korean men, and here’s a good place to start with that. Meanwhile, The Joshing Gnome has been laying down some wisdom on the concept of jeong (humane feeling toward other human beings) and the role of this concept in a society that is, on basic operating principles, a society of amoral familialism. Start here, and then catch up: post 4 should be up soon! (And, I’ll be back at those comment threads soon!)

I’ll be referring back to both of those series of posts when I do get to my own Gin & Soju series, so you can tell they’re mining worthwhile ground. In fact, of late I’ve felt kind of excited, as if, despite all this activity being outside the academy, there is a kind of network of people evolving who’re asking related sets of questions about Korea, and building up a kind of view that synthesizes personal experience, academic knowledge, and speculative theories.It’s a cool time to be reading Kore-related blogs. Well, as long as you’re not just reading the nitterings of the Fleas that plague the Marmot’s comment sections. Marmot’s Fleas, they’re experts on everything… except on not pulling random claims out of their own backsides.

(Though I should nicely thank Robert for linking me in his sidebar and from time to time in posts, and his generally nice demeanour toward me personally. I’m criticizing the fleas, at this present moment, not the mammal on whose back they ride.)

PS: Stephanie, I’ll try knock that Lost post out soon, but it’ll be a while yet. Got one article for a magazine pitched and needing to get done before I even think about it.

Comments

6 Responses to “Fleeting Update”

  1. Jennifer Lee on July 3rd, 2008 6:57 am

    On the concept on minjok, if your student is looking for any academic work, Henry Em (formerly of the University of Michigan, but teaching at Koryo University recently) has written on the concept of minjok here:
    “Minjok as a Modern and Democratic Construct,” appears in Colonial Modernity in Korea, Shin and Robinson, eds. (Harvard University Asia Center, 1999)
    If you want any more info or his contact information you can e-mail me.

  2. gordsellar on July 4th, 2008 1:03 am

    Jennifer,

    That’s great, thanks! I’ll pass that reference on. If she wants to meet him, I’ll put her in touch with you, but I’m sure she’ll be as glad to read the book instead.

    I’d like to look at the book myself, too.

  3. Robert on July 4th, 2008 9:02 pm

    I’m criticizing the fleas, at this present moment, not the mammal on whose back they ride

    Consider yourself lucky — half the time, I’m afraid to look at what’s in my comment section in the morning, and I pay US$100 a month to Media Temple hosting for the privilege.

  4. gordsellar on July 4th, 2008 11:35 pm

    Robert,

    Owch. That’s expensive hosting! Well, probably not for the traffic, but…

    Yes, those comment sections just disturb me sometimes.

  5. mark on July 5th, 2008 4:31 pm

    SAVE THE GREEN PLANET had the best critical reception out of those films.

  6. gordsellar on July 6th, 2008 12:49 am

    Mark,

    Yes, and it’s my personal favorite, but as far as I remember it also wasn’t a box office success in Korea. The DVDs are out of production here, indeed — I had to order one from the US. I’m remembering that right, am I not? I remember when I saw it first (in a DVD-방 in Jeonju), we’d asked whether they had any Korean SF in their collection and the proprietress recommended it, saying most Koreans either hated it or had refused to see it because their friends hated it (and that it had bombed domestically), but that it was absolutely brilliant and a must-see movie for an SF fan. (And indeed it was. It’s a bit fast and loose in bits, but there’s such abandon, such wicked glee, that I can’t help but be swept away by it.) I also remember editing a student article about brilliant films that had bombed in Korea but were getting a second life on DVD, and the students mentioned Save the Green Planet second, right after Please Take Care of My Cat, another worthy film, though not SF, but which I’ve bubbled about here before.

    Definitely The Host was the most popularly successful of the bunch, both here and abroad; I think, though, that it’s not hard to see why Save the Green Planet would appeal more than The Host to non-Koreans; The Host simply has too much stuff that non-Koreans (or those unfamiliar with modern Korean history) won’t really get. And I suspect the deeper historical resonances in The Host (about which I’ll be posting later) were lost on a lot of the Korean audience, too; I say this because I presented my analysis of the film to my Popular Cultures course as an example of how knowing some history and culture can help you unpack all kinds of layers of meaning in even a film that looks like fluff. My students were mostly shocked that anything in terms of an allegorical reading could even be found in a monster movie. (Oddly, since it’s so obvious in, say, King Kong or Godzilla.

    I’ll say more about all that when I’m discussing The Host, which I’ll be doing sometime in the next couple of weeks. Maybe even in a few days, if our gambit to get tickets to Hong Kong fails. (I didn’t know it was a maybe thing, but it turns out it is.)

    By the way,. I’ve added a film to the list I’ll be examining and discussing, the indie film Teenage Hooker Became Killing Machine in Daehakroh, which I’d once heard of but forgotten, but which definitely belongs on this list, even if it is a total B-movie.

    But I am leaving out some other films which could be fit into genre, the way Alice in Wonderland seems to be an honorary SF text: films like Oldboy and Arahan, though they’re more comic-book or fantasy respectively, which is why I’m leaving them out. Likewise, no horror gets in unless it’s technohorror. I’m being pretty tight about the limits of the SF genre for this paper I’m writing, out of necessity. I can always attack Korean horror or fantasy later, I suppose. The focus, for me right now, is the general failure of the SF genre to take hold in Korea, and horror, fantasy, and manga-styled films (of a non-SFnal type) seem to be doing relatively well here, compared.

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