무당 표상의 변전(變轉)과 검열 간 관계를 통해 본 1970년대 한국영화

Abstract

This paper presents another aspect in the film history of South Korea during the 1970s by focusing on the representations of shamans in South Korean films during the decade. Shamans were actively reproduced in South Korean films from the 1960s to the 1980s. In the films produced in the 1960s, shamans were a symbol of barbarism and superstition and were depicted as negative beings that hindered modernization. Toward the end of the 1970s, shamans were reproduced as part of the traditional culture confronting foreign Western culture and a being to connote the suffering of the ruled. In the early 1980s, daughters of shamans often appeared to have hypersexuality in erotic films. This embodiment happened especially in folksy films and lasted until the early 1990s. This study argues that the dichotomy of extreme representations, in which shamans were the symbol of the suppressed on one hand and that of hypersexuality on the other hand, took place in the 1970s and tried to understand more profoundly South Korean films in the 1970s characterized by recession and indecency. A focus was placed on films that were not included in old discussions to figure out the process and context of dichotomy in the representations of shamans. The films that most mentioned reproduced shamans in the 1970s include Munyeodo (Choi Ha-won, 1972), Iodo (Kim Gi-yeong, 1977), Chobun (Lee Du-yong, 1977), The Ascension of Han-ne (Ha Gil-jong, 1977), Eulhwa (Byeon Jang-ho, 1979), and Singung (Im Gwon-taek, 1979). These films have been evaluated as literary films based on literary works and also auteurism films that clearly show the director’s individuality. In addition to these films that have been actually canonized, there are many more films in which the representation of a shaman is the center of the narrative. They include Baebaeng-i (Kim Gi, 1973), Aglyeong (Kim In-su, 1974), Bagsumudang (Im Won-sik, 1974), and Wonmu (Park Yun-gyo, 1976). These films were released between 1972 when Munyeodo, which was the inflection point in the representation of a shaman, was made and 1977 when the reproduction of a shaman was active in literary films. In these films, shamans were reproduced in ways that were more conscious of the public’s viewpoint and put the entertainment dimension first before ideological, ethical, and artistic criteria. These films also had to pass censorship based on the government’s ideological, ethical, and artistic criteria. The censorship process for these films witnessed an encounter between entertainment to address the hobbies and expectations of the public and the criteria of films that the government sought after. This process included clashes, dislocations, competitions, compromises, conspiracies, displacement, and setting a direction, which represent an aspect of the 1970s. This study paid particular attention to the censorship criteria in relation to shamanism in the 1970s revealed in the censorship practice, the discourses comprised of the criteria, resulting changes to the representations of shamans, and the drive and energy that was not to be captured or controlled by the framework.