• 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.