한중 여성 청소년의 성장 서사와 관계적 생존 - ｢벌새｣와 ｢열여섯의 봄(過春天)｣을 중심으로 = Growth Narratives of Korean and Chinese Adolescent Girls and Relational Survival — A Focus on House of Hummingbird and The Crossing

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

The Korean film House of Hummingbird(2019) and the Chinese film The Crossing (过春天)(2019) both center on the coming-of-age experiences of adolescent girls. They also share notable narrative similarities: the presence of female helpers and endings that reveal changes in the mother-daughter relationship. Accordingly, this study examines the two films together in order to explore the characteristics and significance of coming-of-age narratives about adolescent girls in East Asia.
First, the study discusses the realities faced by the adolescent girls in the two films by dividing them into internal and external aspects of the family. In House of Hummingbird, the violence of patriarchy and the hierarchized nature of society are depicted as the background to the protagonist’s growth, while in The Crossing, distant family relationships and a capitalist social order are portrayed in the same role. These settings function as the driving force that leads the protagonists to seek alternative spaces of care outside the home through forms of familialization. In this process, the female helpers who form close relationships with the protagonists are portrayed either as ethical mentors who offer new values or as dangerous figures who exploit adolescents under the guise of alternative caregiving.
After these relationships with outside helpers come to an end, the protagonists return home and restore their relationships with their mothers. This suggests that the female helper functions as a transitional mediator in the reconfiguration of the mother-daughter relationship, and that the ending, in which the mother and daughter come to understand each other, can be interpreted as showing that the growth of adolescent girls in East Asia is achieved not through independence, but through a mode of “relational survival” grounded in mutual understanding within relationships. This mode of relational survival is a realistically possible strategy for growth within limited choices, but at the same time, it also reflects the conservatism of a narrative that shifts structural social problems into the sphere of private relationships.