Communication world has not placed a great deal of weight on movie researches. Given the dual-nature of film that has cultural and industrial dimensions at the same time, film industry deserves a research approach from social science perspective in a ...
Communication world has not placed a great deal of weight on movie researches. Given the dual-nature of film that has cultural and industrial dimensions at the same time, film industry deserves a research approach from social science perspective in a broad context embracing history, economy, society and politics.
As a research on movies, the research herein studied how media discourses on film outside the realm of film industry collided and collaborated with circumstances existing off the boundary of media discourse to branch into new discourses, which has taken us to the following conclusions.
Two common key words found in the analysis of media discourse on the recent 10 years of Korean film industry are ‘the U.S.’ and ‘Economy’.
‘The U.S.’ has found its place as the most powerful keyword dominating the in and out of the discourse. Major developments that have happened outside the realm of discourse on Korean film for the past 10 years have started off with the request for bailout fund to the U.S.-dominated IMF and resulted in the negotiation over the Korea-US BIT and the execution of Korea-US FTA.
As the trade deal with the U.S. proceeded, media coverage of Korean film industry reflected inferiority complex of Korea to the U.S. that had run through the course of our modern history.
The second keyword is ‘Economy’ that has played a powerful role both in and out of the discourse on Korean film just as ‘the U.S.’ has. Korean media has underscored the industrial dimension of Korean films in the wake of global market opening, but, failed to ‘stand up to’ the socio-cultural implications of anxiety about cultural subjugation running deep in the background.
Dominance of industrial discourse on Korean film did not result in serious approaches to Korean film industry. Korean media has approached the Korean film industry from industrial perspective completely, but, revealed indifference to the structural conditions, negative implications within and cultural value of the industry contradictorily. Yet, Korean media put forward cultural discourse whenever Korean films were subject to a crisis as an industry.
After all, Korean media recognized only ‘cultural industry’, but not ‘culture’ itself and maintained ‘industrial perspective’, but without critical mind for ‘the industry’.
This research is significant in 3 different aspects. Firstly, this research studied media discourse on Korean film in a social context and focused on the interaction across the boundary of discourse. As such, it was found that the economic woes following the financial crisis in the late ‘90s played the strongest role in and out of the discourse on the film industry.
Secondly, the opposing conflict between industrial and cultural perspectives that appeared to exist in the media discourse on Korean film industry was proven to be non-existent. The two discourses were supposed to strike a balance between each other, but, industrial perspective almost dominated the media discourse and cultural discourse appeared intermittently in the media world when the media found the Korean film was at the verge of crisis as an industry, which shows clearly the obsession of Korean society with economic interests and complete indifference to the public nature and implication of Korean film.
Thirdly, Chosun Daily, Donga Daily representing the conservative camp and Hankyeore and Kyunghang Daily standing on the liberal side showed similar discourses consistently on Korean films, irrespective of their respective philosophy and ideology. All the newspapers targeted by the analysis herein approached the film industry from industrial perspectives, but, failed to apply critical mind to the industry disproportionately in favor of its economic performance.