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영어

Manchurian action films of the 1960s project powerful images of militant anti-colonial struggle by muscular Korean men. The nationalist ideology is the foundation of the genre, making apparent the sacredness of the individual’s devotion and sacrifice for the nationalist struggle. The family is typically allegorized to figure the nation. And, combined with melodramatic economy of social justice and retribution, such familial representation ignites the engine of the narrative progression, justifying and intensifying the militant struggle against the brutal colonial power of Japan. But the allegorization and vengeance motif could not resolve the very dilemma of colonialism on some symbolic level. The great number and intensity of sacrifices represented at the close of the films leave the survivors in a state of shock, grief and despair in which the nationalist rhetoric can only register a vacant echo. Men in this film cycle are active and muscular agents of resistance struggle, but their significance can be represented only through the ultimate sacrifice. As such, the anti-colonial struggle in Manchuria can be pictured only in provisional terms in the 1960s. Circumscribed by cultural anxiety over Japanese cultural infiltration, the film cycle seems to assert through new terms and images that the nationalist struggle is still a continuing project of the period. Set in these volatile social circumstances, particularly over the South Korean government’s efforts to normalize relations with Japan, this popular and romantic rendition of the colonial past seems to prefigure the need to keep the anti-colonial struggle alive. In other words, Manchurian action films seem to take sides with the strong anti-colonial sentiment of the masses who took to the streets to protest the government’s foreign policy. Yet, the nihilism and despair that are all-too apparent in these films suggest the great pains and loss that arise with cultural construction of the nation. The nationalist rhetoric is flimsily applied as bandage to these irrecoverable wounds, trauma and loss.