Sliding through genres: The Slippery Structure in South Korean films

ABSTRACT

This paper analyzes the genre mixing strategies of a number of salient South Korean genre films from the New Korean Cinema and argues that these films present an innovative approach to genre hybridity. By examining the use of abrupt genre shifts in films such as The Host, Welcome to Dongmakgol, My Sassy Girl, Failan and Save the Green Planet!, it is argued that while scholars have shown that the practice of genre mixing is usually done by preserving a certain consistency throughout the film, these South Korean films not only shift genres but follow this shift with a change in tone; thus creating a unique phenomenon that will be referred to here as 'The Slippery Structure'. This practice creates a shift in the film's attitude towards its subject matter midway through the film, resulting in an inconsistency that demands the spectator to re-adjust their expectations. The discussion of this Slippery Structure presents a novel way of understanding generic classification in relation to a film's tone, and points to a new way of thinking about cinematic experience; both defying as well as expanding upon the conventional perception of hybrid genres and genre-bending in cinema.

KEYWORDS:

• Hybridity
• genre studies
• South Korean Cinema
• cinematic tone
• genre-bending
• cinematic experience

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Pablo Utin is the author of the books The New Israeli Cinema: Conversations with Filmmakers (Resling, 2008); Orson Welles (Ministry of Education, 2010); The New Violence in Israeli Cinema (Asia Publishers, Forthcoming, 2016); A Requiem for Peace: The Israeli-Palestinian conflict in Israeli Cinema (Safra Publishers, Forthcoming, 2016); He is the co-editor of the booklet The Transparent Look: Filmmakers on the cinema of Eitan Green (TAU, 2008) [All of them in Hebrew].

Notes

1 In this sense it is interesting to notice Bordwell and Thompson’s Film Art (2008), a book that systematically defines and introduces elements of film language. The authors use the concept of tone several times when analyzing films (extensively in their discussion of A Movie by Bruce Conner in pages 365–370). But in contrast to other concepts that appear in the book, the concept of ‘tone’ is never defined or explained. It does not even appear in the glossary of terms at the end of the book.

2 Although this article analyzes South Korean films from the point of view of a western author, I am not interested in the cultural misunderstandings this gap might entail. I am also not interested in audience research in order to establish the actual response from different viewers to the different films. What I analyze is the textual traits that pose a certain challenge. The way the text relates to itself and its potential spectator. In Pye’s words, I am not focusing on the cultural differences but on the ways a film makes it difficult to say what kind of thing it is.

3 Interestingly, some scholars use the term ‘bending’ in connection to other Asian cinemas in a different context. Darrell Davis, for example claims that Japanese cinema ‘bends’ the language of classical Western cinema in order to accommodate it to Japanese cultural needs (1996, 6). In this sense, the term ‘bending’ becomes associated with the hybridization that the Asian culture is going through in its encounter/collision with Western culture. In this context, to ‘bend’ a genre could also come to mean to create a cultural hybrid.

4 Director Bong is also fond of physical slips in his films; once in a while one of the characters physically falls, slides or slips; possibly as a metaphor for the instability of their lives, but also of the filmic experience. In this sense, it is possible to see how Bong turns this idea of ‘slippery’ into an authorial characteristic that gives the film a certain consistent logic.

5 For example, in his book Planet Hong Kong, Bordwell indicates several times that both Kung-fu and action films from Hong Kong have a tendency toward momentary shifts in tone. In this case, however, the tonal shift does not lead to a change of genre (2011) and further research is needed to argue the presence of ‘a slip’.