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Postcolonial film historiography in Taiwan and South Korea: The Puppetmasterand ChihwaseonKim Soyoung

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To cite this Article Soyoung, Kim(2008)'Postcolonial film historiography in Taiwan and South Korea: The Puppetmaster andChihwaseon',Inter-Asia Cultural Studies,9:2,195 210To link to this Article: DOI: 10.1080/14649370801965570URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14649370801965570

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Inter-Asia Cultural Studies, Volume 9, Number 2, 2008

ISSN 14649373 Print/ISSN 14698447 Online/08/02019516 2008 Taylor & FrancisDOI: 10.1080/14649370801965570

Postcolonial film historiography in Taiwan and South Korea:

The Puppetmaster

and

Chihwaseon

KIM Soyoung

Taylor and Francis

ABSTRACT

This essay is concerned with the ways in which postcolonial historiography is inscribedin cinema. Two representative films of Taiwan and South Korea, The

Puppetmaster

by HouHsiao-Hsien

1

and

Chihwaseon

by Im Kwontaek are compared, not only to understand the work-ing of de-colonization in the cinematic apparatus but also to understand the impact, effects of colo-nial history. The notion of postcolonial filmmaking as an alternative construction of the archive isevoked to locate film practice in the intersecting spaces of repository, historiography, cinematicrepresentation and social memory. Hence, these two films are cited as instances of illuminatingretrospection on fractured pasts, the almost-invisible archive and the future cinematically envi-sioned by suggesting a sustainable postcolonial episteme in the age of global spectatorship.

K

EYWORDS

: postcolonial film historiography, filmmaking as an archival practice, comparative film studies

Filmmaking as postcolonial archival practice

As a prominent constituent of New Taiwancinema, the films of Hou Hsiao-Hsienhave illuminated ways in which modernTaiwanese history can be re-encounteredand how postcolonial historiography isinscribed within film.

The Puppetmaster

(1993) is Hou Hsiao-Hsiens first Taiwan/Japan co-production film, and it largelydeals with the Japanese occupation era. It isa part of Hou Hsiao-Hsiens Taiwan trilogyon Taiwanese modern history, which iscomposed of

A City of Sadness

(1989) and

Good Men, Good Women

(1995). When askedabout how he came to make such a trilogy,he stated that it was to interrogate the originand the founding structure of Taiwan as amodern nation.

2

The opening sequence of

The Puppetmaster

deals with two beginnings;the onset of Japanese rule over Taiwan andthe birth of a great puppeteer named LeeTien Lu. The juxtaposition of these two

origins and their respective developmentsserve as one of the narrative drives of thefilm. The double exposures and the inter-weaving of official and personal historiescompose a complex and contradictory trajec-tory of the impact and effects of colonialhistory. Dealing with the text, it will beuseful to see what it means to look at theworks of Hou Hsiao-Hsien in the SouthKorean context as his films should offer away in which the effects of Japanese colo-nialism in the region should be re-visited.

Hou Hsiao-Hsien is highly regarded asthe master of Asian cinema by SouthKorean cinephiles and filmmakers alike.Two master classes on Hou Hsiao-Hsienwere held as part of the Pusan InternationalFilm Festival and Seoul Art Cinema in2004 and 2005 respectively. Thanks to hisinfluential presence as a representativeAsian filmmaker, one can easily findengaged comments on his films on websitesin Korean as well as in film journals andmagazines. Most attention is paid to his

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signature style of long takes, long shots andfrontal shots being a distinct marker of anAsian Master. Apart from the appraisal andappreciation of the style, one of the mostintriguing responses is how to understandthe life of Lee Tien Lu as represented in

ThePuppetmaster

. It is argued that his status as aliving national treasure

3

in Taiwan wouldbe unthinkable in South Korea.

4

The careerof Lee Tien Lu as a recipient of the nationalheritage award and his previous appearanceas a grandfather figure in

Dust in the Wind

(1986),

Daughter of the Nile

(1987) and

ACity of Sadness

(1989) is well noted. It issuggested that a character such as Lee TienLus would be immediately perceived as atraitor, complicit with Japanese colonialism,owing to his service as a propagandapuppet theater performer during the colo-nial era. The postcolonial Korean history isseverely troubled by the unresolved tensionof anti-Japan policy, which manifested itselfas a prohibition of the importing of Japanesepopular culture until the late 1990s and anincomplete dethronement of Korean colo-nial traitors known as Chin-Il-Pa (pro-Japan collaborators) high ranking officials,policemen, cultural elites, landowners andentrepreneurs whose ruling power havebeen continuously utilized by the postcolo-nial government of Lee Seung Man backedby the US government.

In this context, it is indeed very challeng-ing to depict a person such as Lee Tien Lu inSouth Korean cinema with due respect, notto mention the title of a living national trea-sure. The closest example recently engen-dered in Korean cinema is a big budget film

Blue Swallowtail

(

Cheungyeon

, 2005), whoseheroine is the first woman aviator, ParkKyongwon. She was represented as inevita-bly caught up with Japanese modern educa-tional institutions in pursuit of a career as aprofessional aviator. Slightly sidestepping athorny but a repeated sentiment of anti-colo-nial and nationalist rage, the film in its proto-feminist tone focuses on the sisterly friend-ship and affiliation of the heroine of

Chongyeon

and a Japanese woman aviator.Even before its release, the film was subjectto heavy criticism in the internet movie

review section for the films arguably benignperspective on the life of the first womanaviator. The box office result was disastrous.In the popular imagination, pro-Japancollaborators do not deserve an alternativeperspective other than a full condemnation.The protagonist, being an actual NewWoman, also played a significant role in themassive disavowal of the film prior to itsrelease. The comments of

The Puppetmaster

found on internet discussion rooms, seem toobserve and ponder about different attitudestowards a putative Chinilpa or pro-Japan(shinnichi). These views are somewhat inaccordance with Leo Chings comment:

Despite, or precisely because of, thetumultuous relation between colonialTaiwan and mainland China, there is adisconcerting but commonly heldimpression about Taiwanese reactionsto Japanese colonialism. Unlike theKoreans, who vehemently detested andtenaciously opposed the Japanese andtheir colonial occupation, the Taiwanesespeak of modernization and develop-ment. This diametrically opposing viewof Japan and its colonial rule, despitesubstantial documentation of resistanceand collaboration in both colonies,remains the commonsense andplebian understanding of the differ-ence between Korea and the neo-colo-nial psychology of Taiwanese nativism. Although the supposed contrastbetween colonial Taiwan and colonialKorea has more to do with their respec-tive precolonial and postcolonial histo-ries than Japanese rule per se, it isundeniable that Japanese colonialismhas had a profound impact on thesubsequent developments of theseformer colonies. (Ching 2001: 89)

In an interview, Hou Hsiao-Hsien providesan explanation why many native Taiwanesewere nostalgic for the Japanese period(Rayns 1989/1990). It was a rule of thebrutal general, Chen Yi, sent by Chiang Kai-Shek that led to the February 28 massacre in1947 and the imposition of martial law.

Noting the difference of pre-colonial andpostcolonial conditions of Taiwan and Koreaand taking up

The Puppetmaster

as an instance

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of postcolonial film historiography, I wouldlike to enter an oblique counterpart,

Cheeh-waseon

(2002), a South Korean film made byIm Kwontaek, in an effort to engage with anotion of postcolonial film historiography atwork in Taiwan and South Korea. The above-mentioned difference is also manifested inpostcolonial trajectories of representinghistorical trauma. Observing diverse mani-festations of a certain blockage in thinkingforward and backward in terms of modernityat work in Korean cinema, including a recur-rence of a final freeze frame, a culturalconstellation and global reception anddissemination just prior to a sudden take-offof the Korean wave in 2000, it is argued thatthe contradiction of Korean modernitycoupled with Japanese colonial rule areamong the causes of such a blockage(Willemen 2002). Furthermore, the stateviolence in the postcolonial era, such as the4/3 incident of 1948 in Jeju island, indeedtakes Kim Seong-naes metaphor of Mourn-ing Korean modernity as an apt and piercingone (Kim 2000). The metaphor is used toevoke both colonial modernity and statemodernization. This aspect might also workfor Taiwanese modernity. The third film ofHou Hsiao-Hsiens Taiwan trilogy,

GoodMan, Good Woman

in particular reflects quiteintensely on the 28 February 1947 incidentand 1950 white terror but the events are nottranslated into and insurmountable traumaand impossible blockage in the film. It is,rather, acting out and working through theprocess of employing an actress to enter intocontact with the past by taking up the role ofa leftist.

Whereas the antagonism was gearedtoward Mainland China in postcolonialTaiwan, South Koreas main target wasJapan. The military regime mobilized popu-lar anti-Japanese feelings as a nationalisticplatform for nation-building, although thestate barely launched the crucial task ofremoving the colonial elites from the stateapparatus. This kind of contradictorymove has generated a certain impasse inconstructing a critical postcolonial narrative.Moreover, the neo-colonial dominance ofthe US in South Korea after the Korean

War consumed a critical energy that shouldbe spent on de-colonization. Some continen-tal action movies (a.k.a Manchu Western)made during 1960s and 1970s, however,gesture at parodying hyper-national andhyper-masculine elements in anti-Japanesenationalist discourse propagated by the mili-tary regime (Kim 2006). The excess in theanti-Japan discourse becomes an object ofsarcasm.

Similar to

The Puppetmaster

, which isbased on the true life story of Lee Tien Lu,

Chihwaseon

(2002) deals with a well knownpainter named Jang Seung-ub (18431897), apainter active in the final days of the Joseondynasty. The director of the film, Im Kwon-taek, represents South Korean cinema as thenational (Kukmin) director. His status bothas globally and nationally representativedirector in South Korea can be compared tothe one of Hou Hsiao-Hsien in Taiwan. Thetwo films, despite their obvious differences a mode of address and a mode of exhibi-tion offer something in common; that is, toreconstruct a historical reference pointthrough tracing the real lives of twomasters of their respective cultures tradi-tional art forms puppet theater and paint-ing who have met the challenges of theadvent of imperialism and disintegration ofthe past. As Fanon observes, the brutaldestruction of system of reference matched by sacking cultural patterns values are flaunted, crushed emptied(Fanon 1970: 3341, re-quoted from Haroo-tunian 2004) is foregrounded in

Chihwaseon

,drenched in the forces of imperialism, capi-talism and colonialism. With scarce refer-ence materials and haunting epistemicviolence, one needs an inspiration andimagination to reconstruct the past thatwould offer graspable, indexical andsymbolic historical moments. Hence, thesefilmmakers put their efforts into construct-ing the virtual archive on the screen ratherthan simply using the existing archival foot-age in their works. They create periodpieces from the colonial period. Unlikespectacular period pieces coming from theformer empire, the postcolonial periodpieces tend to represent the perished.

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Here, what archive means is not justhistorical repositories but a complex ofstructures, processes and epistemologiessituated at a critical point of intersectionbetween scholarship, cultural practices,politics and technologies In the broadestsense, archives thus embody artifacts ofculture that endure as signifiers of who weare and why? (Blouin and Rosenberg 2006:preface ).

And it is precisely this fracturedcomplex of structures and processes andepistemic violence and identification oftroubles that these two film makers areengaged with as postcolonial archivists.With archival reconstruction from the ruinsvia filmmaking, what should be thrown intorelief is the fact that two countries likeTaiwan and South Korea have become theso-called Four Dragons of East Asia. Theeconomic growth has also enabled the statesof Taiwan and South Korea to protect thefilm industry as keeper of national culturalvalues. The Korean Film commission hashelped to distribute Korean films to globalart-house theaters and film festivals bysubsidizing the fees of subtitling and thetravel costs. The Taiwanese New Wave caseis well illustrated in an essay called TaiwanNew Cinema, or a Global Nativism? (Chen2006). In the essay, Chen criticizes the collab-oration between Taiwan New Cinema andgovernment organizations (the Ministry ofDefense in a case of

All for Tomorrow

[1988]).Considering this context, both films shouldbe looked at as an unexpected compositeproduced out of colonial debris and postco-lonial capital, a government policy forconstructing nationalistic cinema and asbeing implicated under the gaze of a globalspectator. The postcolonial historiographyand archiving practice employed in the filmsare fortified by advanced cinematic technol-ogy, state apparatus, cultural capital andglobal spectatorship. These four factors colonial debris, capital, a state policy and aglobal circuit are are crucial constituents ofthe two films. Therefore, the postcolonialarchive is being set up in the pursuit of theuntainted pre-colonial origin in a graveoutcry against epistemic violence, and it is

crisscrossed by the fever and the sickness ofthe archive, which is something to do withthe establishment of state power and author-ity the feverish desire, a kind of sicknessunto death for the archive (Steedman 2006).

Despite the fact that Im Kwon Taeksfilmmaking career far precedes the emer-gence of the Korean wave in 2000s (hestarted making films in the 1960s), the globalrecognition of his films should be perceivedas an effect. After all

Chihwaseon

is the firstKorean film that garnered a major directorsaward in the Cannes International FilmFestival (2000).

Some of Im Kwontaeks films, such as

Chihwaseon

, are taken as an illustration ofthe minor modalities of Korean classexpression, non-official voice and regionalcontention as well as global period piecessummarizing aspects of Korean film historyfor an international market (Wilson 2007).

The two films will be seen with aninsight gleaned from postcolonial historiog-raphy, as subaltern historiography thatsubscribes firstly to a relative separation ofthe history of power from any universalisthistories of capital and secondly to acritique of the nation-form and to an interro-gation of the relationship between powerand knowledge (hence of the archive itselfand hence of history as form of knowledge)(Chakrabarty 2000: 15). Taking a cue froman interrogation of the archive and historyas a form of knowledge, I would also like topresent this mode of filmmaking as a kindof alternative archival practice that redeemsthe ruined and empty shelves of the postco-lonial archive by recreating and re-engagingthe precarious and nearly suppressed past.

Almost lifelike in

The Puppetmaster

Following the credit title,

The Puppetmaster

employs the following inter-title: the treatyof Shimonoseki signed by the ManchuGovernment in 1895 ceded Taiwan andPescadores to Japan. Subsequently Japancontrolled Taiwan for 50 years until the endof the world war. With an exclamation ofhere comes the baby! one sees a baby TienLu. Upon his arrival, the grandfather utters

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a sentence let grandpa hold you. This isfollowed by an off-screen narrator (soonrevealed to be the old Lee Tien Lu), whodelivers the following lines: To speak ofmans fortunes, my father was married intomy mothers house losing his own familyname. As the film introduces the narratorsvoice, it suppresses other sound sourcesexcept the puppet theater music. The narra-tor relates further; he is advised by afortune-teller that he should call his motheraunt and his father uncle. Failure to do so,the fortune-teller warns, would bring direconsequences. According to the registrationsystem set up during the Japanese occupa-tion era, Tien Lus birth has to be reportedwithin a month. Due to the condition of hisfathers marriage, Tien Lu should adopt hismaternal family name. Accordingly he isnamed as Lee Tien Lu instead of Ko Tienlu.

5

This is a practice called Zhuei-Xu (manmarried to his wifes family) which isrepeated in the film as Li Tien Lu latermarries into his wifes family.

The beginning sequence ends as LeeTienlu remarks: So thats how I was born.Then the outdoor puppet show follows.Hence, in the beginning, one observes thesequence concerning the birth andthe naming of a child who will soon assumethe role of the films protagonist. What isuncanny about the sequence is that it is noneother than Tien Lu, who makes his realappearance later in the film as an old man,who makes a statement like This is howI was born. As it is impossible to watch andeven to recollect ones own birth prepara-tions, it appears as a contrived reconstruc-tion driven by a quest for origin.

In Fantasy and the Origins of Sexuality,Jean Laplanche and Jean Bertrand Pontaliscite Freud who defines these scenes fromearliest infancy, these true scenes, asUrzenen (original or primal scenes)(Laplanche and Pontalis 1989). The primalscenes are constructed in the sequence of

ThePuppetmaster

such that a preceding scene ismarked by the inter-title that spells out thestatus of Taiwan as a Japanese colony. Thescene staging the puppet troupe perfor-mance follows it. The non-diegetic sound

from the puppet theater wraps the credit titleand the inter-title scene but recedes into thebackground as Tienlu starts his narration.The sound returns to the performance scenelater. The films narrative voice is carriedfrom the beginning to the end by Tienluhimself. The aural sphere of the film isgoverned by the old Tienlus voiceover andthe loud conversation of his family and thepuppet stage. Lee Tien Lu is a narrator of thefilm but he simultaneously hears the noisemade by his grandfather and his acquaintan-ces. His voiceover is provoked by his mater-nal grandfathers saying let grandpa holdyou. The overlaid aural sphere of the music,the noise and the voiceover claims its pres-ence along with the narrative and visuals ofthe film. Lee Tienlu mentions that thefortune-teller predicted his tough fortune,which has brought about his misinterpella-tion. The family registration rule set upduring the Japanese occupation, whichrequires the birth report within a month, alsoplayed a major role. The films handling ofthe situation only suggests, without directlyforegrounding, the antagonism between theTaiwanese traditional foretelling and theallegedly modern system of registrationimposed by the Japanese. The consistentaural presence of the puppet stage perfor-mance on the sound track tends to subdue anevocation of this antithetic binary betweenthe pre-modern and the modern andbetween the Chinese/Taiwanese and theJapanese. It is fair to say that a set of allusionsand reticence is a discursive modality of thefilm. Precisely because of the seemingly reti-cent and non-clamoring representation ofcolonial rule and its impact, one arrives at apoint of quizzical wondering why the filmforcefully introduces the aforementionedofficial declaration of the treaty ofShimonoseki in the opening sequence. Incontrast with the coming of the colonial rule,the following sequence opens with the cele-bratory announcement of a birth of Tien Lu.

The notion of the displacement is,however, recurrently played out. Tien Lusfamily name is displaced from Ko to Leeand the his parents should be called as uncleand aunt. Furthermore, there is the political

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displacement of Taiwan as a Japanesecolony. It might usually be the case that thiskind of superimposition of the personal andthe political displacement in the introduc-tory sequence tends to function as a vehicleprovoking traumatic effects in otherinstances. The temporal interplay betweenthe birth of a future puppet master to be aNational Living Treasure and the begin-ning of the colonial modern is likely tosuggest irony. The film, however, does notrush to highlight the suggestive innuendos.The series of displacements played out areinterestingly evocative of a dream-work. Atfirst glance, it is very tempting to read thebeginning of the film, in particular, as adream-work as it touches upon the originsof subjectivity surrounded by the auralsphere and the modulation of the lighting,from the key light to the low-key ambientlight. Or the Chinese title of the film itselfcan be almost grasped as an allusion to TheButterfly Dream by Zhuang Zi.

Interestingly enough,

The Puppetmaster

seems almost entangled in the aboveframework of a dream-work. The almost isan adverbial force that moves the filmforward.

The Puppetmaster

is a text that isnear to what it could be or should be.Slightly away from the problematic of theprimal scenes, historical trauma anddream-work, the mode of thought at workin the film is very close to the name of thenew puppet troupe that Lee Tienlu himselfcreated as his own. It is called as AlmostLife- like (Yi Wan Ran). It is named by astoryteller and literati, Fu, upon the requestof Lee Tien Lu. Fu provides the explanationas following: Puppets in performance arelike people. So puppet plays are also likelife.

If elaborated, almost life-like is notmerely a contradictory move but a move-ment/stasis that is a contradiction itself.Life-like refers to a configuration of a non-animate medium that somehow approxi-mates (or, to use a classical idiom,captures) one or more qualities of theanimate. The -like suffix distances therepresentation from the life it represents, itmarks the negation of the affirmation it

achieves. Almost life-like suggests anapproach toward the successful imitation oflife that it does not achieve. But since life-like is already a distancing, almost isanother one, which complicates bothelements of this compound. Almost life-like is at once a gesture toward an approachthat is actually a permanent non-arrival.Read together, the two elements of thecompound stop the mind like a semanticimpossibility. Read sequentially, almostlife-like suggests not a semantic impossibil-ity, but a gradation within life-like thatconstitutes a new range of gradients towardthe life-like that are at least counter-intuitive and completely unexpected. Fromthis perspective, even the life-like revealstwo new gradients: the life-like in bothaffirming and denying the life it capturesannounces itself as a recognition of life thatalso recognizes its actual exclusion from thatcategory. In other words, the appreciation ofthe life-like recognizes the quality of life itmimics while recognizing the artifice of therepresentation. The next level would be thecomplete replica, which would move fromrecognition to misrecognition. Thus, theperfection would not be knowledge but theopposite. Conversely, the apparentapproach that almost life-like suggests is,in fact, a step toward an infinite regress, butthat regression is also already suspended.Furthermore, this regression has nothing todo with the regression of the simulacrum,since the simulacrum is a successful replica.That all of this can emerge from a reflectionon Hou Hsiao-Hsiens

The Puppetmaster

isquite fitting since the art of puppetry is anart of deliberately unsuccessful imitation oflife. It is an art of reticence, or resignation inthe face of life it gestures toward, a gesturethat points both at the life it will never reachand the qualities of the materials that inher-ently cannot reach it.

In conceptualizing postcolonial histori-ography and politics, the template likealmost life-like is telling in the context ofthe Japanese colonial discourse, criticallyappraised as not quite/not white, yetalike. It is indicative of the Japanese non-white racial constitution but a similar

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employment of the strategy of positionalsuperiority (Ching 2001: 51132).

The difference between being Englishand being Anglicized and Japanese

doka

and

kominka

is crucial. Arguing against acommonly held insistence on a linear andconsistent trajectory of Japanese colonialpolicy that saw

kominka

(imperialization,the production and reproduction of loyalimperial subjects) as an extension of

doka

(assimilation to create equality throughassimilation), Leo Ching argues incoherenceand discontinuity in colonial ideology notonly to counter-reiterate the officialdiscourse of a consistent and continuouscolonial policy of equality and benevolencebut more significantly to note an emergenceof the identity struggle under

kominka

. Thecrucial contradiction in

kominka

lies in theshift from living as Japanese to being animperial subject to being an imperial subjectwilling to die for the empire (Ching 2001:89132).

Returning to the template of almost life-like and also the film itself, the Almost life-like troupe is disintegrated during theperiod as the Japanese war efforts increasedin the late 1930s. The repertoire of the past isnow replaced by the war propaganda.

6

There is a sequence where one witnesses anactual rehearsal and staging of the propa-ganda puppet theater. Preceding it, a mili-tary funeral ceremony is held for a soldier,Shimazaki, who is killed in the New GuineanMountains serving as a radio operator. Hereturns to his aboriginal Taiwan as remains.The Japanese officer reads the funeral notespraising Shimazakis fight for the ImperialEmpire and world peace. His death is evenequated with the falling of cherry blossoms.He has truly become Japanese (

k

[omacr ]

kumin

) inhis death. Following the actual ceremony,the film shows the Japanese officer deliver-ing the lines to the puppet troupe inrehearsal. It contains the expression such asto die for the Emperor. Foregrounding theslogan of Defeat America and England, thepuppet theater reconstructs and re-enactsthe way in which the remains of Shimazakiwere used when the Japanese war effortintensified in the late 1930s. The art of

puppetry in Tien Lus The Almost Life-like,is an art of deliberately unsuccessful imita-tion of life, but during war times it is usedsolely as propaganda. Thee sequence illus-trates three stages: an actual funeral; therehearsal (led by the Japanese officer);and the performance. The nuanced tones ofsubtlety and reticence that the puppetryused to achieve are removed in propaganda.It is not Homi Bhabhas notion of mimicry inwhich the affective register should play apart. However, the film declines to articulatethis semiotic violence with epistemicviolence. The film progresses to shows howLee Tien Lu has become a part of

kominka

machinery by joining a reformed puppettroupe and further accepting an offer fromthe chief police officer to play for the newpropaganda troupe. Just after the war,however, Lee Tien Lu is back on his oldBingang Street playing his repertoire.Although suffering from malaria, heperforms all day long to please his old fanswho would pay his performance fees bydismantling a sabotaged military airplaneand selling the junk aluminum. And then, inan abrupt final statement: Taiwan wasfinally liberated from Japan.

The Puppetmaster

is a film of a puppetmasters birth, his apprenticeship and matu-rity during the occupation era. It ends withthe liberation of Taiwan. During the period,the Japanese colonial discourse disseminatedthe ideology of equality and fraternity underassimilation (

doka

) and imperialization(

kominka

) which is, in fact, another way ofsaying to the colonized not to live as Japa-nese, but to die as Japanese. In this kind ofpolitical pressure, Lee Tien Lus understand-ing of a relation of life and art as almost lifelike provides an immanent way of epistemicsustenance in place of epistemic violence inwhich the above identification politics almostfails at the point when it almost succeeds.When there is a relative absence of essentialnotion identity and no origin to return to, itoffers a space for a subjectivity to be a stepaway from subjection to assimilation (

doka

)and imperialization (

kominka

) and an inchaway from a penumbral mode of existence.

7

After liberation, people wanted Lee Tien Lu

o

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back on the stage for them. What is playedout is the politics of min-jian wherecommoners survive, so that no radical breakcould be brought about by the violence of

modernizing

state and civil society (Chen2003b: 887889). Although this is argued inthe context of state-modernization, thisnotion is, to some extent, informative tounderstand the peoples welcoming insis-tence of Lee Tien Lus return to the stage forthem. This space of min-jian can be oftentimes criticized as a non-political space or anon-progressive space if not reactionary. It isa space of everydayness, shadowing theHistory indeed (Harootunian 2004). On theother hand, it is critically noted that this filmovershadows the political awareness of theFebruary 28 incident by leaning on a highlymediated representation of history (Cine-maspace 1998). However, I read Chris Berrysphrase in this vein of min-jin. He argues thatWhat makes the Taiwan trilogy powerful forme is its ability to articulate a vision thataccommodates both

bengshengren

memoriesand cultural affiliation that

waishengren

(outside the province people) do leantowards and

bengshengren

could also claim(Berry 2006: 156).

Again, this negotiated space of min jianwill be hard to imagine in Korea. Manycultural elites in Korea had continued theirpractice after liberation but it was urged notby people but by a new government.

This kind of sustenance mode is notonly ontologically driven but also histori-cally grounded considering Taiwans seriesof encounters with foreign invaders Dutch,Japanese and Chinese. In this historicalunfolding, a line of thought like almost life-like might enable people to move on with-out holding on to the essentialized notion ofidentity that calls for a hyper-nationalisticnarrative in a call for decolonization.

Contradictory to a common subscrip-tion to

The Puppetmaster

a film about apuppet master who has become a puppetduring Japanese occupation,

8

the filmconstructs a template of postcolonial histo-riography that is grounded on a template ofthought of almost life-like which trans-verses a group of puppet, puppeteer and

audience. The puppet theater appears in thefilm as vignettes, center stage, ambienceand transition, and as a main character likeLee Tien Lu. Before Lee Tien Lu passedaway in 1998, the Hand Puppet HistoricalMuseum was set up in 1996. In 1978, LeeTien Lu retired from the: Yi Wan Ran(Almost life-like) puppet theater and dedi-cated himself to teaching.

In comparison with the shock anddisorientation of the young Lu Xun over thenew medium of film,

9

Lee Tien Lus almostlife-like mode of operation suggests a wayof a postcolonial mode of survival andsustenance in lieu of shock and trauma. It isalso made possible by an employment of anolder art form such as the glove PuppetTheater.

Chihwaseon

as a foreboding tale of pre-cinema and pre-colonial era

The background to the film,

Chihwaseon

(2002) is set at a time not very distant fromthe point when film culture first emerged inJoseon. In the last subtitle of

Chihwaseon

wediscover that Jang Seung-ub died in 1897.On October 10 of that same year, it isbelieved that motion pictures were firstintroduced in Joseon. On October 19 1897,the

London Times

published the following:

Motion pictures have finally been intro-duced into Joseon, a country locatedin the Far East. At the beginning ofOctober 1897, motion pictures werescreened for the public in Jingogae,Bukcheon, in a shabby barrack thatwas borrowed from its Chinese ownerfor three days. The works screenedincluded short films and actuality filmsproduced by Frances Pathe Pictures.(Kim and Chung 2001: 20)

10

In the film, a Japanese reporter from the

Hansung Daily

, named Kaiura, tells JangSeung-ub that night is falling on the Joseondynasty, and that Jangs paintings are the lastflicker of life that is left in this dying country.The usage of Jangs paintings, which aredefined as bringing comfort to the people ofJoseon during a period of great turbulence as Jang says The people have nothing to

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console them, if I can bring them comfortby painting fantasies, I will have been faith-ful to my calling is not very different fromthe effect motion pictures, which wouldarrive in Joseon in the not-so-distant future,would have on the country. The prehistory ofKorean films is described through Jangsfantasy paintings as a vivified version of real-ity. In addition, Jang, showing a black stoneto his student, emphasizes that paintersshould paint living stones, not dead ones.Even a humble stone must be alive in apainters eye. If a stone is alive, its dynamic.If its static, its dead.

Jangs approach to painting is akin tothe role of a motion (moving, action hwal-dong) picture, which also places a greatimportance on the concept of motion.

11

InSeptember 14, 1901,

Hwangsung Shinmun

(the newspaper) ran an article entitled asThe activity of photography surpassing theone of people. The writer introduced amoving picture as the photographedphotos which are put into arrangement tomove. He further explained that a movingpictures was composed of pictures, cine-matograph (two compose a hwalhwa amoving picture), arranged photos andmotion. The photographed pictures becomea whole body and it is the electricity thatmobilizes it. In the article, it was alsoreported that the audience marveled at earlycinema and exclaimed at the peculiarities.

What was stressed out in this article onthe early cinematic culture is the following;the moment the local audience understooda working of a moving picture, theywondered when it could be ever possible forKoreans to master its technology. Uponhearing this, the writer pointed out that hewished that he could watch real people inaction rather than a moving picture inaction. Characters are active in a movingpicture but people are not in a real life.When the fate of Dai Han (Dai Han Empireexisted during 18971910, a former name ofKorea) nation was uncertain under thethreat of foreign powers, people were totallyinert. The activity of people in a movingpicture (hwain-picture people) seemedmore vital than the one of real people

(saengmin). Hence, what he desires to see isnot the development of a motion picture butthe activity of people.

This short article is illuminating tounderstand a politically charged field ofsignification that is laid out for a movingpicture of that time. What was admired andemulated in a moving picture was the abil-ity to move, advance and to endow peoplewith full vitality (hwal). Vitality (Hwal) isthe same word that is also used for amoving picture (hwaldong sajn).

In contrast with the vitality of a movingpicture and animated people in it, Koreaand its people of the period were perceivedas lacking such energy. The writer wished totranspose the vitality of a moving picturefrom the actor to the agent of history byobserving Korea in helpless exposure to bigpowers such as Japan, Russia, Germany,America and Britain and by recognizing theabsence of vital power (hwal ki) in people.Just to deliver a sense of tumultuous politi-cal milieu of the time, I introduce a scenewhich depicts an American missionaryHorace Allens arrival in Korea in 1884.

Fusan, Koreas southern metropolis,was wholly Japanese when Horace Allensaw it first, in 1884. Chemulpo, the chiefKorean seaport, had just one fine building Japans consulate. And in nearby Seoul, thecapital, the sight to see was the legation ofthe Empire of the Rising Sun.

As one looks back, these facts appearas signs of the coming conquest of Chosen.But few can read the future, and few in 1884saw Korea as Japans first mainland prov-ince. Why should Japan have been theconqueror? Might it not have been China?The dragon empires had settlers in Chosen,just as did the Japanese; and Manchus had asuzerain claim that that England recog-nized. Yes and fifteen hundred soldiers inSeoul to support their stand, ten times theJapanese legation guard. Granted Japaneseweakness, there still was Tsarist Russia,hovering over Korea at the north. And,finally, there was a possibility that Koreacould stand alone. The country passed forindependent in 1884. It had a king andcourt; it had what some have called an

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army; and, as it relinquished its hermit king-dom past, it was entering into relations withthe great states of the world (Harrington1944: 3).

In this description, there is no spotting ofJoseon (Chosen) people, only of the Japaneseinfluence but it shows a political ambience ofbesiegement. In the midst of this,

Chihwaseon

criticizes the existing Joseon painting style,which basically consisted of imitatingChinese ones, and uses the painter JangSeung-ub to describe the immediate prehis-tory of film culture. If we were to compareJoseon film of the immediate future to Jangspaintings, we could perhaps argue that thefilm makes it possible for us to ask whatJoseon films are, and furthermore, whatfuture Korean films should be. For instance,in the film, the Enlightenment (progressive)party member Kim Byung-moon encouragesJang Seung-ub to paint pictures that breathewith your own spirit. In order to create hisown unique paintings, Jang must overcomethe limitations of Chinese paintings. Heshould also stop trying to satisfy the tastes ofthe Joseon Yangban, who themselves havebeen influenced by Chinese paintings.However, Jang does not have manyresources that he can call upon to createworks that are inherently different from hispredecessors. His sole possession is anextraordinary talent that he can only expresswhen drunk, a talent thus readily conceiv-able as a divine gift. Jang does not belong tothe noble class and thus had no access toeducation, but overcomes those feudal limi-tations through the force of his own creativewill. He represents a singular individualwho emerged in the period of incipientmodern (kaehwaki). As an outcast, Jang iswell-situated to observe the new world thatis to arise after the collapse of the old one.Jang incorporates these notions in his workand is able to represent the emergent worldthrough his paintings. Nevertheless, theproblem lies in the fact that this emergentworld is, for all intents and purposes, alsodevoid of any hope. The EnlightenmentParty (kaehwapa), which was waging abattle with the status quo, was dependenton Japanese support for its survival.

Meanwhile, China and Russia were involvedin a competition for dominance in East Asia.The Joseon dynasty started to collapse, andthe sovereignty of the nation fell into thehands of foreign powers. While Jang strivedto create a new painting style during thisperiod in which the old was fading away, thenew was yet to be born. People, especiallythose who were included in the middle stra-tum, catching a ray of hope emanating fromJangs paintings, gradually lost their enthusi-asm in Chinese paintings. The reformistprogressives depicted in the film, such asKim Byung-moon (An Seong-ki) and LeeEung-heon, a Chinese translator, can beregarded as Jang Seung-ubs interpreter.Their role is to explain Jangs paintings to theviewers in a manner that they can under-stand, and to act as the connection betweenJang and the Yangban class. This was aperiod of rapid change throughout theworld, and tastes in art were also changing.Jangs paintings are proof positive of theseshifts and

Chihwaseon

throws it into a relief.The hope lurking in the Joseon arts,however, was in no way connected to anypolitical hope for the country. The peasantry-led Donghak revolution (18921895) hadfailed. The attempt to pursue an indepen-dent opening policy had not succeeded. Asthe result, the sovereignty of the state waslost to imperial Japan. These are the crucialpoints that

Chihwaseon

attempts to convey tothe viewers. I would like to focus on the para-dox and irony that emerge during thecreative process of the something new,Joseon painting, as well as on the implica-tions of such production, and strive to corre-late these matters to problems related toKorean film history.

Jang Seung-ub, who is described as awanderer in

Chihwaseon

, in many waysoverlaps with the general portrait of thedirector Im Kwontaek, a fact that many crit-ics and the director himself have pointedout. Im Kwontaek has been activelyengaged in the film industry during thetwo most recent periods of Korean filmhistory: the Chungmooro era and theKorean style blockbuster era. Im survivedthe Japanese colonial era, the Korean War,

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and the era of the military dictatorships.More importantly, Im has used the wisdomthat he learned from his survival, to raisethe Korean film to the international level.Let us look at how Im Kwontaek has beenreceived.

Im Kwon-Taek has represented astark, pathos-drenched and a sublimeimage of himself in

Sopyonje

. Im ishimself that distinctly Korean artist(auteur) caught up as he is in the imper-atives and blindness (cynical reason) ofthe export driven transnational marketthat South Korea itself has energizedsince the Korean war halted, in ablocked cold war dialectic, on thePacific rim (Wilson 2001: 312)

Critics have been able to discover a fewadditional fragments of Ims cinema portraitfrom

Chihwaseon

, which was released after

Sopyonje

.

12

Im has helped consolidate thisimage through statements such as thefollowing, I always wanted to make a filmabout Kim Hong-do, Jeong Seon, or ChusaKim Jeong-hee. However, Jang Seung-ubattracted me because he and I share certainsimilarities that I felt I could more easilyproject. What I mean is that Jangs achieve-ments during his lifetime in many waysmirror those I have been able to achieve inmy own (

Cine 21

2002: 12).Unlike the image of the strict, tragic, and

noble father found in

Sopyonje

, we find in

Chihwaseon

s Jang Seung-ub a character thathas either refused to be a father or failed todo so. In search of the new world, he drinksas he paints. At some moment in Joseon andKorean film history, Na Woon-kyu, as thecrazy man character in

Arirang

(1926), andJang Seung-ub as

Chihwaseon

(drunkenPainting Master) collide. It is the momentwhen colonial Joseon and South Koreanfilms mesh like a Mbius strip. However,this moment is quite paradoxical. Theybecome the fathers of Korean cinema bytaking hostage the very history that hasprevented them from becoming fathers andfrom overcoming this irony. This is dramati-cally achieved, by displacing damagedwomens bodies with moments of salvationand sublime. For example, in the film

Arirang

, Yeong-jin saves his sister frombeing raped, while in

Sopyonje

, the fatherdeliberately blinds his daughter as anattempt to imbue her with a profound senseof the national sentiment known as

han

, as ifour nations history required the blood andbodies of our sisters and daughters.However, the moment when their blood andbodies begin to incorporate with theirfathers and brothers is the one in which theystop being women and become a metaphorfor the father and the nation.

Flashbacks and a good ear (singer)

Chihwaseon

opens with a scene in whichJang Seung-ub (Choi Minsik) is painting asYang ban (aristocrats) look on. The cameramaintains a distance as it frames theconversation between Jang and theYangban, as well as its eventual cata-strophic end. The Yang ban praise Jangspainting, It emanates divine strength, as ifghosts were dancing around it. He seems topaint by the rules, yet he doesnt. Hefollows and breaks them at the same time.To this Jang answers, One stroke is worthten thousand. Ten thousand strokes in one.How can a bumpkin dauber claim to ques-tion the rules of arts?

At this point, one Yangban criticizesJang for having wasted his life thinking he istalented, and reminds him that he is apainter from the lowest of classes. Thecamera then follows Jang as he leaves themarket street, and the following introduc-tory title appears on screen: The periodaround 1882 was one in which Koreanswere rebelling against foreign invasions andthe presence of a corrupted government.Along with the opening credits, we learnthat the country was in rapid decline duringthis period, and that these were the days ofthe artist Jang Seung-ub. A Japanesereporter from the

Hansung Daily

, Kaiura,comes to ask Jang for a painting, and beginsasking him how he had been able to startpainting from such a low station in life. Thisscene, in which Jang receives respect from aJapanese reporter as he produces a paintingin this low-class residential area, is in fact a

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subtle and ironic jab at the social hierarchythat existed between those who belonged tothe Japanese empire and those from thelower classes of Joseon. Jang scornfullyanswers Kaiura, Genius shows, even in ababy! The sound design employed in thisscene demonstrates a well-designed orches-tration that is composed of real sounds andexaggerated effects intertwined with thelyrics of beggars songs. The film then goesinto a flashback sequence that governs mostof the film. In the flashback, Jang Seung-ub,the boy, is being beaten by the leader of abeggars gang for having painted a pictureof him hitting a woman who took care ofJang. Most of the scenes in Chihwaseon comein the form of flashback sequences. It issignificant that this film unfolds in the formof conversations between Jang and Kaiura.Interestingly, Kaiuras role is similar to agood ear singer (kui myongchang) whofunctions as a well cultivated listener inPansori. A good ear singer, as the name tellsitself, is treated as valuable as a singer/alistener although he or she only listens witha good ear.

The structure of the first half of the film,which shows Jang painting amid the gazes ofyangban and goes back to Jangs childhoodusing flashbacks brought on by the ques-tions of Kaiura, serves to establish Jangsposition as a painter and his status as amember of the lower class. The gazes andquestions of the Yangban class and Kaiuraserve to establish Jangs position as a painter.In fact, in many ways, the Yangban and theJapanese own Jang and his paintings. Para-doxically, it is his desire to resist these Yang-ban gazes and run away from this group,who are both his economic and culturalsponsors, that becomes the dynamic energyof both Jang and of Chihwaseon itself. Inter-estingly, those standing on the boundary ofthis dynamic are the reformist intellectuals.

Kim Byung-moon and other reformistsbegin to search for Korean-style paintingsthat are different from those favored by theestablished Yangban class. At one point,Kim criticizes the famous Winter Pine Treedrawn by Chusa for being an expressionof art steeped deeply in Chinese culture.

Eventually, the Enlightenment Party is ableto seize power for three days with the helpof the Japanese. In the film, the arguablyindigenous modernity of Jang Seung-ub andthe Enlightenment Party are negotiated.

While, on the one hand, the royal family,Yangban and the governor of the Kobu area,Cho Byung-kap, have financed many of hispaintings, he also exchanges freely withmembers of the Enlightenment faction. Assuch, Jangs political allegiance is obscure.Although he supports the Enlightenmentfaction in his mind, his life and art cannot beactualized without the support of the rulingyangban class. Refusing to stay in one placefor long periods of time, Jang wanders fromplace to place, thus assuring himself that hisdependence on his benefactors will only betemporary. Jang, who plays the role of theobserver of history and who maintains acertain distance from his benefactors, ismotivated to produce a unique style of paint-ing. Kim Byung-moon, who takes on the roleof being a spiritual benefactor to Jang, is reti-cent to praise his paintings. Jangs desire is toproduce his own world through his singularpaintings, not to become a member of theliterati, or to follow Chinese and traditionalpainting techniques. Jangs position as thebeholder of history is changed by a paintinghe made while staying in the house of thegovernor of Kobu that depicts little birdsbeing chased by a brutal hawk. Jang nevermade such a painting of capturing theminjungs suffering at the hands of thetyrannical rulers of the land. It is insertedinto the film to present the political positionof Jang Seung-ub.

The flashback sequences, which beganwith Jangs childhood, end with a Donghakleader Chun Bong-joons execution. Kaiurareinforces Jangs status as a painter asNight is falling on the Joseon dynasty. Yourpainting is the last flicker of life in this dyingcountry. After being humiliated by theDonghak peasant soldiers and exiled fromthe governors house, Jang throws himselfinto the kiln in a manner akin to someoneconducting a cremation ceremony.

The look back on the nineteenth centuryfound in Chihwaseon derives from the desire

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Postcolonial film historiography in Taiwan and South Korea 207

to gain knowledge about the origins ofmodernity. This look is also well aware ofthe global gaze of the people attendinginternational film festivals and of thoseresponsible for the distribution of filmswithin foreign markets. While Kaiura func-tions as the stimulus to the flashbacksequences in the film, his gaze and his ques-tions tend to represent the global gaze andquestion posed by contemporary spectators.Considering the historical blockage andtraumas internalized in Korean films, whichwas mentioned earlier, the cinematic strat-egy incorporating the gaze of foreign viewervia Kaiura seem very effective.13 This can beregarded as a form of self-orientalization.Another possibility is that Chihwaseon, re-visiting the primal scenes of modern,attempts to provide a framework in whichthe present problems under the globaliza-tion era can be reconfigured.

The paradox of postcolonial archival work

As previously mentioned, both films beginwith very explicit opening titles that indi-cate the historical period two characters hadinhabited. In Chihwaseon, it states thatJoseon was threatened by all the imperialforces and Jang Seung-ub had to live thoughsuch an era (18431897).

In the case of The Puppetmaster, it is thetreaty of Shimonoseki in 1895 that informsthe political milieu of Lee Tien-Lus life. Asthe life story of Jang Seung-ub ends at 1897,it is not unjustifiable to say that Chihwaseonvirtually ends at the point at which ThePuppetmaster begins. The two films togetherspan a little over a century from 1843 to1945, which overlaps with the most precari-ous and dynamic trajectory of an arguablypre-colonial incipient modern (openingenlightenment period, Kaehwaki in Korean)and subtended by a polemic colonial moder-nity and its demise. While it is true thatChihwaseon does not directly deal with colo-nial times (The Puppetmaster does), it never-theless foretells and analyses the colonialmodernity to come.

As much as I am trying to look intoan alternating process of reconstructing

reference culture in two films, I also like tosituate my essay into questions of, andsearch for, the inter-Asia mode of referenc-ing and comparison proposed by the Inter-Asia cultural studies journal group over aseries of issues.

Particularly in a discussion of the endur-ing effects of the Cold War on the people ofTaiwan and China and North Korea andSouth Korea, it is demonstrated that howthe personal and the national come tointersect forcefully in the post-Cold Warreconciliation (Chen 2002). The difference indirection when one thinks of this mode ofcomparison is that it is not haunted by theproblematic specter of comparisons (eldemonio de las comparaciones) stemmingfrom a hierarchical relation of the west andthe rest (Anderson 1998). On the other hand,Tejaswini Niranjana forcefully argues a needto rethink the assumption of comparativework and cites an interesting instance ofdoing research in the Caribbean as being ina west that was not the West and teachingnon-western literary texts in the IndianDepartments of English (Niranjana 2000). Itshould be also noted that Inter-Asia dislocu-tive fantasy is a very critical and complexidea to map out the postcolonial geopoliticsat work in contemporary popular culturalproduction and dissemination in East Asia.It is an effort to conceptualize the historicaland political dynamics of the ever-increasingpractice of borrowing, adaptation and trans-lation (for instance, the Japanese mangaversion of Old Boy and the Korean filmversion of it) in the sphere of East AsianPopular culture (Jackson 2005).

The comparative look into cultural textsof Taiwan and South Korea is a geographicmove within the East of whose relevance hasbeen ironically shaped up by Japanese colo-nization and the US neoimperialism-relatedCold War structure. The conceptualizationand historicization of relevance, however, isoften times overshadowed by a morepronounced turbulent relation with neigh-bors such as China and Japan. The dialogueinvolving cultural production of two coun-tries, however, is not invisible thanks tothe popular culture flow. The films of Hou

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208 Kim Soyoung

Hsiao-Hsien and Im Kwon-taek traverse thesocial, historical and national form ofmemory typical of a postcolonial nation-state. These filmmakers are also the archi-vists who create the elaborate sets whichoffer a glimpse of the mise-en-scene of thepast out of the postcolonial ruins. ThePuppet Theater and Jang Seung-ubs paint-ings construct a mise-en-abyme of the earlycinematic culture.

The almost empty archive of a postcolo-nial state render a making of the set and themise-en-scene of period pieces more perti-nent as they work with less reference mate-rials. Their works offer themselves as morelike a virtual archive on the screen. Filmslike Chihwaseon and The Puppetmaster play arole of repositories as well as a memory siteof the social and the historical in lieu of thearchive whose shelves are hollow.

Acknowledgment

I would like to thank Chua Beng Huatand Chen Kuan Hsing for inviting me toa conference on Hou Hsiao-Hsien inSingapore, 2005. I would also like to thankall the participants in the conference forinspiring presentations. Despite my passion-ate admiration for Taiwanese cinema, it tookme a long to time to finish this essay due tomy hesitation to write on the films of HouHsiao-Hsien, in particular, whose works arefull of nuances and tones. Chua Beng Huatgently insisted that I should write somethingon Hou Hsiao-Hsien in a comparative mode(with South Korean cinema as I originallyplanned). Chen Kuan-Hsing and I had agood talk over Hou Hsiao-Hsien in a hawkerrestaurant in Singapore when both of uswere affiliates at Asia Research Center atNational University of Singapore in 2006.Chen Kuan-Hsings hospitality was veryheart-warming. And my thanks to EarlJackson Jr, whose good ear makes my writ-ing in English a pleasurable dialogic process.

Notes

1. Names in Chinese, Korean and Japanese arewritten in the order of family name followed by

given name. For example, Hou Hsiao-Hsien, ImKwontaek.

2. According to Chen Kuan-Hsing, Taiwan NewCinema consisted of cinematic practices fromthe early 1980s to the present. It is inclusiveof production, circulation, consumption anddiscursive practice. The directors themselves arenot willing to accept the term wholeheartedly; itis being widely used both by critics who firstjoined the term with a larger population as refer-ring to an alternative cinema beginning with InOur Time (1982), co-directed by four of theyounger generation and fading with All ForTomorrow (1988), a political propaganda MTVfilm, co-directed, with Chen Kuo-fu, by HouHsiao-Hsien (Chen 2006: 138).

3. The Japanese established a classification systemin the 1930s that organized and designated arti-facts from the past as national treasurescultural property and ranked artisanal/artistwho were still working as living cultural trea-sures. See Harootunian (2004).

4. See one of the postings on the related blogs:http://blog.naver.com/sunghyocho20?Redirect=Log&logNo=80014118945. It observes thatone of the memorable characters in The Puppet-master is a Japanese chief policeman in the filmwho acts rationally. Also in an article by awell-known philosopher, Kim Jinseok alsoobserves that Hou Hsiao-Hsien avoids a facilebinary of the victim and the victimizer and arendering the victim as a simple hero. Hence,the representation as Japanese characters arerepresented in a benign way, in Kim Jinseok(2001).

5. In A Borrowed Life (Dou-San, 1994), this Zhuei-Xu(man married to his wifes family) is described tosignify an improper patriarchal function that theprotagonist father character (Dou-san a local-ized Japanese term for father) performs (Chen2003a: 180268).

6. Traditional puppet roles are composed of Sheng(Male) Roles Wen Sheng (a worldly malescholar type such as Hsu Hsien), Wu Sheng (amale acrobatic-fighting lead such as Wu Sung),Hsiao Sheng (a Don Juan role such as thatpersonified by Hsimen Ching). Tan (female)Roles-Chimei Tan (an upright, steady character,usually from a wealthy family. Wu Tan (afemale acrobatic lead, such as the white snake orMu Ki-ying). Hsien Tan (a female servant role).In addition to gender roles, there are Ching rolesand Elderly characters.

7. The penumbrae, the possible place of a non-subject which is positioned in the hierarchizedmodes of existence such as substance, shadowand penumbrae. In this schema, subject posi-tions such as the courtesan, the maid, and the

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Postcolonial film historiography in Taiwan and South Korea 209

concubine belong to the penumbrae, the shadowof a shadow (Liu 2001).

8. As instanced in There is always someone pull-ing the string, The publicity of The PuppetmasterDVD Title by ERA International and Winstar TVand Video.

9. Rey Chow explains that it is the relationshipbetween visuality and power, which is so criticalin the postcolonial non-west, that shocked andhorrified Lu Xun (Chow 1995).

10. On June 23 1903, the Hwangsung Shinmunreported, Motion pictures will be screened by theDongdaemun Electric Company from 8:00 p.m. to10:00p.m., except on Sundays. The beautiful natu-ral sceneries of the Taehan Empire as well as thoseof Western countries will be introduced. Theentrance fee is 10 copper jeon (Korean dollawon). This piece of information is from KoreanFilm Producers Association (1998: 25).

11. Even back then, there were people who loved themotion pictures, whom by todays standards wecould label as cinephiles. Readers Contribution I have always wanted to see motion pictures.I recently had the opportunity to see some at theDansungsa Theater. It was only recently thatmotion pictures were introduced in Joseon.I couldnt help but feel refreshed as I watchedthese films (Maeil Shinbo, 31 October 1919); amagazine from that period, Beolkeongon conveyshow these cinephiles felt as they watched thesemotion pictures, describing the festive atmo-sphere that surrounded the screening of the firstfilm at Gwangmudae in Dongdaemun, Seoul:Mr. Henry Collbran, who owns the Seoul ElectricCompany, screened the first ever motion picturesat the Gwangmudae, using rented equipment hehad borrowed from the Mr. Martel who runs ahotel in the Seodaemun area. Whenever I thinkback to that time, I remember feeling like I was inanother world. Attracted by the advertisementslogan, Pictures are moving, Pictures aremoving and the sounds of flutes and drums,I rushed to the theater and paid an entrance feethat cost as much as ten cigarettes. On the curtainwere depicted the American and Joseon flags. Atightrope artist began doing his thing in front ofthe curtain. After the curtain was raised, someJoseon women performed a song and dance.Then all the lights were turned off (Beolkeongon1926: 90; Lee 1992: 21).

12. Philippe Azoury had the following to say aboutIm in Liberation: it is very easy to perceive Imsown portrait in this fresco directly inspired byJang Seung-ubs life (Liberation, 27 May 2002,quoted from Cine 21).

13. For the obstacles and repression that Koreancinema has been subjected to, please seeWillemen (2002).

References

Anderson, Benedict (1998) The Spectre of Comparisons:Nationalism, South East Asia and the World,London; New York: Verso.

Beolkeongon (1926) December Issue.Berry, Chris (2006) From national cinema to cinema

and the national. In Vitali, Valentina andWillemen, Paul (eds), Theorising NationalCinema, London: BFI, 148157.

Blouin Jr., Francis X and Rosenberg, William (2006)Archive, Documentation, and Institutions ofSocial Memory, Ann Arbor: The University ofMichigan Press.

Cinemaspace (1998) Introduction, http://cine-maspace.berkeley.edu/Papers/CityOfSadness/.

Chakrabarty, Dipesh (2000) Subaltern studies andpostcolonial historiography, Nepantla: Viewsfrom South 1(1): 932.

Chen, Kuan-Hsing (2002) Why is great reconcilia-tion impossible? De-Cold war/decolonization,or modernity and its Tears, Inter-Asia CulturalStudies 3(1): 77100.

Chen, Kuan Hsing (2003a) Why is great reconcilia-tion im/possible?, The Eyes of The Empire(Jaekukui Nun), Seoul: Changbi Publishing.(Korean)

Chen, Kuan Hsing (2003b) Civil society and min-jian on political society and popular democ-racy, Cultural Studies 17(6): 888889.

Chen, Kuan Hsing (2006) Taiwan New Cinema, or aglobal nativism?. In Valentina Vitali and PaulWillemen (eds) Theorising National Cinema,London: British Film Institute.

Ching, Leo (2001) Becoming Japanese, Berkeleyand Los Angeles: University of CaliforniaPress.

Chow, Rey (1995) Primitive Passions: Visuality.Sexuality, Ethnography and Contemporary ChineseCinema, New York: Columbia University Press.

Cine 21, (2002), No. 351, 10 May.Fanon, Frantz (1970) Toward the African Revolution,

Harmondsworth: Penguin.Harrington, Fred (1944) God Mammon and the

Japanese, Madison: The University of WisconsinPress.

Harootunian, Harry (2004) Shadowing history:national narrative and the persistence of every-day, Cultural Studies 18(2): 181200.

Im, Kwontaek (1993) Sopyonje.Im, Kwontaek (2002) Chihwaseon.Jackson Jr., Earl (2005) Borrowing trouble: inter-

Asian adaptations and the dislocutivefantasy, presented at the 2005 Pusan Interna-tional Film Festival conference on GlobalKorean Cinema.

Kim, Jinseok (2001) Foucault , A City of Sadness andThe Puppetmaster, Kino 11.

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Kim, Jong-won and Chung, Jung-heon (2001) The100 Year History of Korean Film, HyunamsaPublishing Company.

Kim, Soyoung (2006) Genre as contact zone. InMeghan Morris et al. (eds) Hong Kong Connections:Transnational Imagination in Action Cinema,Durham: Duke University Press and Hong Kong:Hong Kong University Press, 97110.

Kim, Sungnae (2000) Mourning Korean modernityin the Cheju April third incident, Inter-AsiaCultural Studies 1(3): 461476.

Korean Film Producers Association (1998) The70 Year History of Korean Film Planning, Seoul:Korean Filmmakers Association.

Laplanche, Jean and Pontalis, Jean-Bertrand (1989)Fantasy and the origins of sexuality. In VictorBurgin et al. (eds) Formations of Fantasy, London,New York: Routledge.

Lee, Joong-Keo (1992) Korean film history,Understanding Korean Films, Yeni Publishing.

Liu, Jen-peng (2001) The disposition of hierarchyand the late Qing discourse of gender equal-ity, Inter-Asia Cultural Studies 2(1): 6979.

Na, Woon-kyu (1926) Arirang.Niranjana, Tejaswini (2000) Alternative frames?

Questions for comparative research in the thirdworld, Inter-Asia Cultural Studies 1(1): 97108.

Park, Chan-wook (2003) Old Boy.Rayns, Tony (1989/1990) Not the best possible face,

interview with Hou Hsiao-Hsien, http://cine-maspace.berkeley.edu/Papers/CityOfSadness/int1.html.

Steedman, Carolyn (2006) Something she called afever: Michelet, Derrida, and dust (or, in the

Archives with Michelet and Derrida). In FrancisX Blouin Jr. and William Rosenberg (eds) Archive,Documentation, and Institutions of Social Memory,Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press.

Willemen, Paul (2002) Detouring through Koreancinema, Inter-Asia Cultural Studies 3(2): 167186.

Wilson, Rob (2001) Korean cinema on the road toglobalization: tracking global/local dynamic, orwhy Im Kwon-Taek is not Ang Lee, Inter-AsiaCultural Studies 2(2): 307318.

Wilson, Rob (2007) Killer capitalism on the PacificRim: theorizing major and minor modes of theKorean global, Boundary 2 34(1).

Wu, Nien-Jen (1994) A Borrowed Life (Dou-San).

Authors biography

Kim Soyoung is Professor of Cinema Studies atKorean National University of Arts. She haspublished several books on modernity, cinemaand gender, Trans-Asia screen culture includingSpecters of Modernity: Fantastic Korean Cinema (2000,Korean). Her essays have appeared in journals invarious languages. She is also a filmmaker ofWomens History Trilogy which includes Koryu: South-ern Women/South Korea (an opening film for SeoulWomens Film Festival 2001); available atwww.seoulselection.com.

Contact address: KNUA, School of Film andMultimedia, San 1-5, Seokgwan-dong, Seongbuk-guSeoul 136-716, Korea.

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