Campus Cinephilia in Neoliberal South Korea: A Different Kind of Fun (East Asian Popular Culture)

Taking a transnational approach to the study of film culture, this book draws on ethnographic fieldwork in a South Korean university film club to explore a cosmopolitan cinephile subculture that thrived in an ironic unevenness between the highly nationalistic mood of commercial film culture and the intense neoliberal milieu of the 2000s. As these time-poor students devoted themselves to the study of film that is unlikely to help them in the job market, they experienced what a student described as a different kind of fun, while they appreciated their voracious consumption of international art films as a very private matter at a time of unprecedented boom in the domestic film industry. This unexpectedly vibrant cosmopolitan subculture of student cinephiles in neoliberal South Korea makes the nations film culture more complex and interesting than a simple nationalistic affair. Josie Jung Yeon Sohn is an independent scholar. She received her PhD in East Asian Languages and Cultures with a graduate minor in Cinema Studies from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and has taught Korean Studies at the Catholic University of Korea and Monash University, Australia Acknowledgements Note to Readers Contents About the Author List of Figures List of Key Informants 1 Introduction Nationalism Neoliberalism and Neoliberal Sensibility Cosmopolitanism and Cinematic Omnivorousness Cinephilia Audience Studies and Cinephilia Fieldwork Chapters 2 A History of Youth Culture: Politics and Generations in Transition A Vignette from the Street Protests of 2008 Student Politics and Nationalism in the 1980s Political and Cultural Transitions in the 1990s Neoliberalism and a New Generational Discourse in the 2000s Cinepol as the 88-Manwŏn Generation 3 A History of Cinepol: Film Cultures in Transition ‘An Age in Which Belonging to a Tongari is a Laughable Thing’ Cinepol’s History as the Members Told Early University Film Clubs Transitions in Film Culture Commercial Cinema and Nationalism 4 Seoul: A Cinephile City Art Cinemas in Seoul Towards Film Diversity A Langlois Affair in Seoul 5 Privately Worldwide: Film as an Everyday Practice Videotapes and Film Spectatorship The Development of Online Culture Viewing Privately, Worldwide 6 The Bordwell Regime: ‘A Different Kind of Fun’ The Reception of Bordwell in Korea The Bordwell Regime in Cinepol A ‘Good Film’: Children of Men (Alfonso Cuarón, 2006) Cinepol as a Speech Community Study as a Technology of Potentiality ‘A Different Kind of Fun’ 7 The Godard Regimen: Film Diet and Affective Cinephilia Art-Film Reception and Postcolonial Criticism Reception of French Cinema in the 2000s Towards Cinematic Omnivory A ‘Balanced Diet’ in Film Affective Cinephilia Affective Tropes: The ‘Flavour’ and ‘Feeling’ of Film The Godard Regimen: A ‘Piercing Nail’ and a ‘Pop in the Ear’ 8 Conclusion Film Index Subject Index