earticle

영어

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the poetic techniques in Cathal Black’s Korea, a film in which he reconstructs the trajectory of the postliberation Irish family in the 1950s. In focusing on poetic aspects of repetition, defamiliarization, and irony in relation to the filmic techniques of symbol, montage, and voiceover, I will demonstrate how Black’s poetic reconstruction of the era goes against the grain of the forward movement of the narrative. First, Black adopts the repetition of symbolic objects like eels and electricity to represent the state of an era in which hope and despair coexist. Second, Black’s montage technique produces a defamiliarization effect. Juxtaposing disparate images and sounds, Black delivers a sense of shock and confusion, a key to understanding the spirit of the age. Finally, the ironic voiceover that unsuceessfully drives the narrative of the film works as a device for the reconstruction of recent Irish history. The narrator who lacks the capacity to overview his circumstance holds ambivalent attitudes toward the past, neither indiscriminately critical nor blindly nostalgic. With the repetition of symbolic objects, the radical montage, and the ironic voiceover, Black shows the anomalous state of postliberation Ireland in the 1950s, in which the trauma and nostalgia of the old generation and the hope and apprehension of the young generation are commingled like an oxymoron.