한국디지털영화 <6/45>가 보여주는 한국식 디지털시각문화가능성, ‘크린지 코메디’ = The Possibilities of Korean Digital Visual Culture Demonstrated by the Korean Digital Film<6/45>, “Cringe Comedy”

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

This study examines cringe comedy, which provokes the audience's reflection while being accompanied by the emotion of "laughter." As one trend in Korean digital comedy films that has unfolded since 2010, this genre points to a non-trivial reality embedded within lighthearted laughter, thereby forming a major creative direction in Korean digital cinema. Among various films within the cringe comedy trend, this study focuses on <6/45> (2023). Through a textual analysis of the work, it explores the possibilities of Korean digital visual culture that it presents.
The film <6/45> sets the difficult reality of Korea's North-South division as its backdrop and ironically juxtaposes it with a situation far removed from laughter: the fundamental human desire for money. The "laughter" depicted in this work also encompasses surface-level humor arising from images in which the resolution to the North-South division is achieved by endowing digital technology not to humans, but to animals—specifically wild boars. Therefore, the "laughter" in Korean digital cinema as viewed in this study includes both the superficial aspect of the image and the internal aspect of the ironic situations where realistic images unfold within the reality of division.
Overall, within the film <6/45>, events in which seemingly "light" laughter rapidly evaporates are observed from the perspective of reception aesthetics. These occur through the generation of digital images in the "in-between" space of reality and virtuality, as well as the staging of virtual reality scenarios that plausibly could arise in real-life situations. The heavy realities that ultimately linger within this light laughter evoke accompanying emotions such as awkwardness and shame. This emotional complexity is deemed a new entertainment aesthetics that surpasses postmodernism or integrates it in alternative ways. What is employed here includes methodologies of post-postmodernism born from digital technologies—such as new emotional integrations akin to metamodernism and digimodernism—and the facets of the aesthetics of lightness offered by digital films that compel viewers to laugh despite feelings of embarrassment (or discomfort).