• Journal of Korea Entertainment Industry Association
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• v.14 no.4
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• pp.187-198
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• 2020

With the cultural background of whiteness I did examine the universal meaning of absolute good, the special of psychosis, and the fantastic of femininity and memory/record. As an example I analyzed the symbolic meaning of white used in Korean films. Unconditional goodness, white as a generality: White color in all the films of good-evil confrontation falls into this category. The most obvious and the simplest configuration are the black-white dichotomy. In Nameless Gangster: Rules of Time(2011), The Merciless(2016), Asura: The City of Madness(2016) and The Bad Guys: Reign of Chaos(2019), white is the absolute good but it is not limited to a fair key figure. Paradoxically, black is not given only to the side of absolute evil. White is used to be a flexible visual device that reflects the socio-political situation without changing the meaning of the general good. Psychosis and pills, white as a peculiarity: The visual function that emphasizes sado-masochism in the absolute good and the universal symbol of white extends to psychotic specificities such as hysteria. In all the films creating horror, white symbolizes the mentally disabled and the pill for healing. Femininity and haunted white: White of absolute good is expressed by the socio-cultural tendency of femininity and the black-white contrast of vision is applied to the gender difference. In general the women's sexuality is emphasized in color red, but white is arranged in the background. In TaeGukGi: Brotherhood Of War(2004), 71: Into The Fire(2010), My Way(2011), The Front Line(2011), Roaring Currents(2014), Northern Limit Line(2015), The Battle: Roar to Victory(2019) and Battle of Jangsari(2019), white given to female figures sticks to the traditional femininity such as motherhood, sacrifice and weakness. The concept of specters is applied to desires, memories/records, history, fantasy, virtual/reality and social media images. The film history capturing to list memories and moments brings up the specters of socio-political genealogy. Most of films aiming for socio-political change are its examples and white constituting Mise-en-scene records to remember a historical event in Peppermint Candy(2000), The Attorney(2013) and A Taxi Driver(2017).