Psychopaths embody the alterity in today's society in extreme form. However, if we think about it rationally, psychopaths and psychopathy are not always related to being strange or antisocial. This is because humanity itself in history have practiced ...
Psychopaths embody the alterity in today's society in extreme form. However, if we think about it rationally, psychopaths and psychopathy are not always related to being strange or antisocial. This is because humanity itself in history have practiced inhumane acts such as 'witch hunting' and 'holocaust of jews' that conform with the definition of a psychopath. Recently, psychopathic serial killer cases have often occurred and people have begun to take interest in psychopaths. However, the problem is that psychopathic characteristics can also be found in common crimes. Psychopathy can be referred to as a pathological symptom of the 2000's in Korean society in which psychopathic characteristics can be seen in serial killings, crimes without reason, torso murder cases among relatives, bullying amongst teenagers and so on. In the 2000's many thriller genres have been produced and the number movies with psychopathic characters have increase as if to reflect the excessive violence phenomenon in Korean society. Getting to know about psychopathy through movies opens up a new dimensional world. This is like peaking through an opening of ‘the real’ which we can't come across in real life. This study tries to find the changing point in which psychopathic characters in thriller genres link with monsters from classic movies and substitute the role of the antagonist. This is because a psychopath has a definition itself and can be met in reality. The role and meaning of psychopathic characters in thriller movies are not only about reenacting a serial killer, an antagonist of society. The expression of suppressed desires and violation are reenacted through the peculiarity of a psychopathic character and create another layer which is different from monsters and common criminals. Alienating, or distancing and identification are what create the double sidedness of thriller genres; however, the doubleness of psychopathic characters transforms and gets recreated in movies, affecting the convention of thriller genres. Korean thriller genre has settled in the late 90s and has reached its peak in the late 2000s. Together with this, the production of psychopath thriller movies have become active. Psychopath movies have gained more interest through the frequency of psychopathic crimes and phenomenons which have spread in Korea's society. Korean psychopathic thriller movies are insufficient for stereotyping compared to Hollywood's psychopath movies which with a long history. Hence, the stereotypical psychopath characters in Hollywood movies will be compared to psychopathic characters in Korean movies and the effects and how the characters have been changed to fit the narrative convention of Korean thriller genre will be looked at. Then we will take a look at the recent changes shown in Korean thriller movies. A notable characteristic of Korean psychopathic thriller movies is the combination of family love and narrative of revenge. This study tries to analyze how thriller movies released in the 2000s partly follow the narrative convention of typical Korean psychopath movies and transform the characters to differentiate with existing thriller movies. This study attempts to analyze psychopath characters in movies such as <The Chaser>, <I Saw the Devil> and <Our Town> which are interpreted as movies that have attempted to vary the narrative convention. In particular, <The Chaser> is a movie which is evaluated to have changed the domain of the Korean thriller genre. Therefore, the psychopathic characteristic of the movie character, the related spatial presentation and the attempt to give a difference to the thriller genre by changing the narrative convention have been analyzed. Moreover, <I Saw the Devil> and <Our Town> which have brought about change to the revenge narrative in common Korean thrillers have been used to analyze the point of change which rises from the psychopath character. <I Saw the Devil> adopts the narrative of vengeance and rather shows the destruction of the narrative of revenge due to the psychopath character. <Our Town> is a movie that attempted to add some melodramatic component to a psychopathic thriller movie but did not succeed in producing what had been intended because the psychopath character clashed with the melodramatic component. This study tried to provide an opportunity for exploring ways of development for psychopath movies by examining the successful and unsuccessful components.