Critical Zoom-in into the 80s. How Film Recalls Historical Event on the Screen: Collective Memories-Representation-Function, Focusing on Taxi Driver (2017) and 1987: When the Day Comes (2017)
Kyoung-Suk Sung (Kyungpook National University)
This paper focuses on the analysis of two South Korea films about the different historical events that occurred in the 80s in order to investigate how they represent the events and its collective memories as well as how they connect the past and the present in relation to the interrelation between films and audiences from the film sociological perspective. Based on the assumption that films, as cultural and social documents, represent a social reality as well as a cultural appropriation of the past, in this paper, I will analyse two Korean films, Taxi driver (2017) and 1987: When the Day Comes (2017), which depict the 18 May Democratic Uprising in 1980 and the June Democracy Movement in 1987, respectively, under the military regime of President Chun Doo hwan. These two movies address the recent past as well as historical figures and have initiated a public discussion on the topics dealt with in these movies. By incorporating an overview of the historical film genre in South Korea, particular attention will be paid to the relationship between cinematically represented events and physical realities as well as the connection beyond the thirty year interval. The social meaning of these historical films, especially toward present day South Korean society, will also be considered important. I pose these fundamental questions: how do these films represent historical events and how do they relate to contemporary Korean society? What makes them so popular and what impact do they have on society? This analysis is based on sociological theories and the visual language of film. In addition, I will refer to further concepts, such as the cinematic representation of physical reality, genre theories, the social role and effect of cinematography, and the relationship between film and the audience.
Doomed to Oblivion? Contemporary Japanese Cinema from the Perspective of Sports Film
Giacomo Calorio (University of Milan-Bicocca)
Although only partially appearing in Japanese Film Histories published so far, Japanese film production since 2000 has already begun to develop its own history made up of essays, articles, reviews and partial analyses. The set of these discourses is already constructing a “canon” through the selection of certain traits and phenomena rather than others: the result is a shared image that highlights some of its leading expressions whose accentuated visibility ends up eclipsing the multiple expressions of a flourishing film industry like few others. One genre that, as such, is unlikely to become part of this canon is the Sports Film. Although some of its component works appear here and there, sometimes hidden under other labels in discourses around Japanese cinema, the Sports Film is doomed to remain in the shadows due to its elusive nature and its propensity for hybridity. On balance, however, it does boast a good number of works in Japan thanks to an industry that is very rich in terms of variety and works distributed every year. Precisely because of these numbers and the importance of sports and its representations in popular culture (in Japan’s case, let’s just consider the relevance of spokon in manga and anime), if we look closely at the data, Sports Film can perhaps tell us much about the state of an industry, how it works, the relationships it has with other cultural industries, the critical consideration it is given, how external events such as the Olympics and the pandemic affect (or do not affect) the performance of an industry. Perhaps in future Japanese Film Histories much will never be written about Sports Film as such, but this genre may instead tell us more about Japanese Cinema than we expect.
Forgetting Socialist Animation: Ma Liang and His Magic Paintbrush
Paul Kendall (University of Westminster)
Overshadowed by the Japanese animation industry and often overlooked in film histories, Chinese state animation has received some limited attention in recent decades. However, the scope of existing studies has been fairly local, with a focus on how animators created a Chinese “national style” rather than on how their films may have influenced cultural production outside of China. In response, my paper examines the domestically famous puppet animation, Ma Liang and His Magic Paintbrush (1955), arguing that this work’s central character has enjoyed a global reach but in a way that has rendered his socialist origins obscured and largely forgotten.
In the 1955 animation, Ma Liang is a shepherd boy who uses his magic brush to assist the masses in their struggles against class enemies and nature, as two major opponents (along with foreign enemies) of the Maoist state. Ma Liang is a boy of fierce expression, direct language and minimal introspection, whose decisive actions are grounded in the moral certainties of Maoist thought, as well as the exaggerated movements of 1950s puppetry.
Ma Liang subsequently became a popular character at home and abroad, receiving awards at 1950s international film festivals and appearing in various English-language short story and animation remakes. However, the Ma Liang of these remakes possesses a different personality; he is introspective, unconfrontational and paints according to his inner feelings rather than a political cause. His socialist past is also concealed; narrators present the story of Ma Liang as an ancient folktale, with no reference to his 1950s Maoist origins. In this way, I argue, a resolute socialist hero of PRC cultural production has been forgotten and then reimagined to align with long-standing Orientalist conceptualizations of Chinese males as effeminate and unthreatening.