• Journal of Korea Entertainment Industry Association
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• v.14 no.5
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• pp.37-48
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• 2020

The film handles some happenings based on the story that a poor family sponges off a rich family. Junho Bong, a film director, has won the Palme d'Or in Cannes Film Festival and received a Academy Award for best picture, best original screen play, best international film and best director. The film has accomplished the cinematic achievements, but it seems that the implications the film aims to show might not be seriously appreciated to the public. The film has an unusual synopsis, which demonstrates that a deprived family is parasitic to a wealthy family. The storyline specifies how great the gap between the rich and the poor in Korea is. Accordingly, this article investigates some implications of the house, family, and society in the film .Consequently, three families (Kitaek's house, Park's luxury house, and maid's hidden basement) explicitly reveal distinctive social hierarchy. The common features found in two families are like this: the lower classes are willing to help one another but have no conscience and morality. The social implications in the film are closely associated with the class system based on the gap between the rich and the poor, the symbols of stone, and tragic ending. From the ending of the film, it is expected that the extreme social imbalance precedes the gap between the wealthy and the poor.

• Cross-Cultural Studies
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• v.20
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• pp.275-294
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• 2010

This article examines Bong Joon-ho's science fiction/horror film, The Host (2006) and interrogates its depiction of a contemporary South Korean family in crisis. The writer considers the film as a resonant cultural artefact and a manifestation of particularly new-millennial anxieties concerned with the continued involvement of the United States in South Korean affairs, fears of an erosion of traditional family values and mistrust of officious, state endorsed bureaucracy. The Host emerges as a profoundly visceral depiction of an ordinary family set against everyone with no one to turn to except each other.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Clothing and Textiles
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• v.44 no.5
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• pp.856-877
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• 2020

This study examines how class differences are expressed through costumes based on the costumes of characters in Bong Joon-Ho's film . Based on Video on Demand (VOD), the main situations in which characters' costumes change in the play were captured and used as analysis data. Colors, textures, and color symbol were analyzed to find the formative properties shown in the characters' costumes. The results are as follows. The home wear of Kim's family were unsuitable for the top and bottom, faded clothes, and the vague boundary between outdoor and indoor clothes appeared. In comparison, Park's family's home wear was featured a modern and elegant design, a clear distinction that suited purpose and situation. Analysis of street wear showed that the Kim's family had a big difference before and after getting a job, and Park's family wore different costumes for the purpose of going out. Social class expressed in the film costumes were shown to have the characteristics of intrinsic class invariance, temporary class changes, differences in class expression by age, and differences in costume choice by class.

• Journal of Korea Entertainment Industry Association
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• v.13 no.7
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• pp.193-203
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• 2019

Family films with insight of the society are now recognized as significant texts to communicate with audience from the beginning of the history of film and to reflect various viewpoints on changes of the times and socio-cultural context. In such aspect, the films of Hirokazu Kore-eda are very significant in that they suggest very sharp view on modern society through family narrative. His family narratives not only presented a profound reflection on the modern society and human relations through themes on death, loss, severance, and alienation, but also formed a public sympathy based on success in the box-office numbers despite his heavy subjects. His such achievement is closely related to the format of spatial representation to record 'time' and 'daily life' as well as the family film as a narrative form to draw the meaning of a family. Therefore, this study analyzes the family narrative and the format of spatial representation in the films of Hirokazu Kore-eda, and could find the film form where life and space closely communicate each other to reach the topic. This study, concentrating on the spatial representation and the roles and meanings of formal factors in family narrative, can find its own value in its expansion out of the previous studies which adopted macro perspectives on the trend of the times.

• Journal of Digital Convergence
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• v.18 no.6
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• pp.435-441
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• 2020

This study attempts to analyze by the gender political point of view of the recent film, 'A Special Lady', focusing on the case of setting up women as the main characters in the 2000s Korean film noir genre. Concretely, this study conducted a narrative analysis focusing on the three elements of genre film, the identity of the characters and their family relationships, and the Oedipal trajectory. The film, 'A Special Lady', has the narrative about the maternal love assigned to female protagonist, and that emphasizes male pure love. And the film shows the flashbacks concerning to motherhood that prove the biological identity of the female protagonist, and signs that weaken the castration fear resulting from male voyeurism. Further, the film depicts the fragmentation of identity and the cracking of family relationships, revealing the confusion of gender identity and the narrative degeneration into family melodrama. Meanwhile, the film fails to complete the feminine Oedipal trajectory by reducing the female character's motherhood to a biological one instead of expanding it into an alternative quality embracing the other. These findings suggest that the korean gangster is closely related to gender politics and is not completely out of gender bias.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.13 no.10
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• pp.151-159
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• 2013

Formalism narrative theory adopts the dualism of Fabula, story material and Sujet, story substance. The recent theories of storytelling convert the dualism into story and storytelling. This essay delves into the mechanism of contemporary storytelling by comparatively analyzing the storytelling of two films, A Korean film, Family Ties and A Hollywood film, Little Miss Sunshine, which are considered to represent contemporary storytelling. While the latter builds its structure through desire usually shown in the classical Hollywood films, the former has the structure which has nothing to do with causality by displaying fragmented stories. And the latter has typical characters, while the former shows totally different reality, using the obscure characters. In conclusion, Little Miss Sunshine has a storytelling which puts audience feeling in tune by controlling it, and Family Ties has one which delivers director's intention.

• Journal of Korea Entertainment Industry Association
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• v.13 no.6
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• pp.87-94
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• 2019

South Korean films narrate exquisitely, express emotions implicitly and employ magnificent images, exemplifying unique oriental aesthetics. This paper takes Along with the Gods: The Two Worlds (2017) as an example to analyze the meaning of oriental aesthetics in South Korean films using the Film Narrative Theory. It is a fantasy blockbuster depicting family kinship stories. It structures with the familiar karma and reincarnation of Asian Buddhism with the core of family kinship. Perfectly interpreting the fantasy world of hell with stunning movie effects, it shows the family kinship of families under the main plot line of a horror film.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.14 no.12
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• pp.618-628
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• 2014

A photograph used in a film poster summarizes the story of the film that lasts for around two hours. The image must contain a picture that represents the story and text including the title, with various design elements composed in a harmonious way. However, given that a photograph is the most noticeable element in a film poster, this study aims to examine the function, role, and types of a film poster and analyze poster photographs. Currently, there are companies specialized in photography for film posters, but sometimes recognized photographers are commissioned to take a photograph that will be used for a film poster. Hein-kuhn Oh actively produced such photographs in the early and mid-2000s, and this study deals with 'how the photographs recreate the content of the films' focused on three selected photographs taken by him. Also, There were commonalities found between the tree photographs and Oh's personal portrait photographs, which were then analyzed from the photographic aesthetic point of view. The three selected works are: , , and .

• Journal of Korea Multimedia Society
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• v.18 no.3
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• pp.419-428
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• 2015

Stone is a hybrid genre movie in which two different film genres coexist; one is a gangster movie, the other Baduk movie. This film deals with a relationship between an old gangster boss and a young Baduk player. The coexistence of two different worlds becomes a reason for a unique ambiance of this film, because Stone is dynamic and brutal as much as static and meditative. Firstly, this article aims to analyze the narrative structure and characters of this film comparing with conventions of gangster movie genre, especially 'jopok film' of Korean cinema. Secondly, we examine characters of this film and their relationship. Since the economic crisis under the IMF structure, a great part of korean gangster movie has represented the weakness of the fatherhood and the disorganization of family. However, in Stone, the friendship between two heroes, Namhae and Minsu, turns to a father-son relationship. In this way, Stone transformed conventions of film genre.

• Journal of Popular Narrative
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• v.27 no.2
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• pp.215-262
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• 2021

This thesis focuses on Wandeuki and Elegant Lies - novels written by Kim Ryeo-reong and adapted into the film by Director Lee Han; this thesis analyzes the process of storytelling being transformed as the media is converted. Also, this thesis discusses cultural-political implications of transmedia storytelling where different narrative responses coexist concerning post-IMF family disorganization and "individualization." First of all, this thesis critically reviews existing discourses on the concept of transmedia storytelling and refers to 'transfictionality' the narratological concept of Marie-Laure Ryan in order to look into media conversion storytelling that starts from original novels. The novels Wandeuki and Elegant Lies show two aspects of "individualization" that adopts existential conditions of family disorganization. Wandeuki deviates from patriarchal family romance through self-discovery and exhibits loose family bond, which is something similar to companionship of close individuals. Elegant Lies shows individualization of pain by portraying a teenager who found herself completely isolated, while showing that it is impossible for the people left behind to mourn. On the other hand, director Lee Han's films and show stories in which family members, who are confronting family dissolution, rediscover and restore their families against family dissolution. The film promotes the expansion of family community through multicultural identity, and the film completes condolence of the people left behind by having the remaining families survive as survivors of suicide. The storyworld of the novels puts emphasis on 'self-discovery' of individual adolescents, while the storyworld of the movies puts emphasis on 'rediscovery of family'. Through transformation of storytelling - especially the redesigning of narrative structures called "modification" - transmedia storytelling shows that the relationship between media-converted texts is far from "faithful representation," but rather, shows conflicting themes and perspectives. With a reference point of 'the emergence of character' transmedia storytelling, which is predicated on the original work but aims to free itself from the original work by transforming storytelling through media conversion, opens up polyphonic storyworld by creating heterogeneous voices. In the post IMF-era, where uncertainty mounts over family dissolution and individualization, polyphonic storyworld created by transmedia storytelling provides an opportunity to experience disparate desires over individual freedom/risk and complacency toward community. We can call this the cultural-political implication of transmedia storytelling based on transferring, transcednding, and transforming.