This thesis examines the relationship between Korean film and modernity by conducting a survey of the representation of cars, trains, and the city throughout (South) Korean film history. There have been several remarkable changes in these representations over time: the train, first the awe-inspiring symbol of Korean technological advancement in the 1890s, becomes the brutal symbol of Japanese oppression just a few decades later. The city in Korean film is politically and socially charged for most of the 20th century, a place where innocent people are morally corrupted or physically assaulted. But by the 21st century, trains and cars are now toys for action characters to manipulate, and the city is now a neutral backdrop for pure entertainment in blockbuster films such as Train to Busan (Yeon Sang-ho, 2016), Ashfall (Lee Hae-jun and Kim Byung-seo, 2019), and Peninsula (Yeon Sang-ho, 2020). There are several reasons for this, one of which I propose as the inherently procapitalist and pro-modernity nature of the blockbuster film.

In this study, I analyze how recent South Korean cinema has responded to the forces of globalization by appropriating these influences both on and off screen. In particular, by situating Korean blockbuster within its local, regional and global contexts, I highlight the ways in which the identity politics of Korean blockbuster complicate our understanding of globalization and national cinema. The second chapter focuses on the globalization of recent South Korean cinema, with critical attention given to hybridity as an industrial strategy and as shaped by intra-regional co-productions. The third chapter analyzes four Korean films to represent the characteristics of Korean blockbuster and Korean national issues. Through the two primary chapters, I argue that Korean blockbuster is a hybrid form between national cinema and Hollywood blockbusters. It is a local answer to the accelerating forces of globalization at home, evident in the growing direct competition with Hollywood blockbusters. In fact, despite the growing reliance on the big-budget blockbusters, the recent rise in the domestic market share of local films against Hollywood movies owes much to the high-profile success of many of Korean blockbusters. The significance of the case of Korean Cinema is multifaceted in our comprehensive understanding of globalization and hybridity. It illustrates that globalization as hybridization takes place at multiple levels and in multiple directions beyond the conventional global-local paradigm. In noting intra-regional exchanges as integral to the construction of today’s hybridities, my study has contended that regionalization and localization strongly contribute to the globalization process. More important, by locating hybridity outside of Western hegemony in the intraregional cultural dynamic, it also resists the Eurocentric approach that tends to view hybridity as only produced through local appropriation of the global/Hollywood model. This is often implied even in the recognition of hybridity as a resistance against hegemonic power. / text

Thesis (doctoral) - Universität, Zürich, 2008/09. / Includes bibliographical references and register.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Oregon, 2005. / Typescript. Includes vita and abstract. Includes filmography (leaves 435-448) and bibliographical references (leaves 454-471). Also available for download via the World Wide Web; free to University of Oregon users.

Martin Scorsese expressed dissatisfaction stating that superhero movies lacks uniqueness and emotional and psychological depth. In his opinion, these movies depict spectacle rather than character. Scorsese is not alone in his view - this has been a general opinion among film critics for decades. Justin Wyatt examines the recipe for commercial success in his book High concept: Movies and marketing in Hollywood from 1994. Film theorist Kristin Thompson however, denounces the idea that High Concept or post-classicism changes structures in narrative. This thesis examines visual style and intertextuality in three films released in 2019: Avengers: Endgame, Hellboy and Joker. Are there similarities and/or differences in relation to Wyatt’s theories? All three movies use style and intertextuality to tell their stories and they all have excess scenes to please the audience visually. However, they still use classic Hollywood narrative with three acts and cause-and-effect storylines.

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Films, séries télévisées ou jeux vidéo, les fictions audiovisuelles populaires encouragent et alimentent la consommation de produits culturels variés, apparentés instinctivement à un univers fictif, une marque, un genre ou une organisation spécifique. L’analyse de ce réflexe au moment de la réception permet de mettre au jour les mécanismes établissant les liens entre les œuvres, au moyen du concept central de marqueur, élément en apparence anodin dans la fiction mais fondant une allusion compréhensible sous certaines conditions. L’étude des stratégies de réduction du risque mises en place par les organisations produisant les fictions audiovisuelles montre que les marqueurs jouent un rôle essentiel dans la conception, la production et la mise sur le marché de ces produits culturels, sans en garantir systématiquement le succès, difficilement mesurable. Ces stratégies autorisent, voire encouragent un usage et une appropriation ludique des marqueurs qui conditionnent l’exploration des univers fictifs (parfois génériques) de la culture populaire par ses publics, et sa réutilisation par ses créateurs. / Be they video games, movies or TV shows, popular audiovisual fictions encourage the consumption of diverse cultural works, instinctively linked to a specific fictitious universe, brand, genre or organisation. Analyzing this audience’s reflex leads to the inner working of how cultural products are linked together, thanks to an apparently innocuous element which indeed supports an allusion. This marker, as we will call it, can be understood as such only under certain conditions. When it is, it can play a central role in the risk-reduction strategies implemented by entertainment industries during the design, production and marketing of mainstream fictions, with no guarantees of of a success that can hardly be summed up by box-office numbers. These strategies, in turn, promote a playful use of markers in fictions, allowing the audience’s exploration of popular culture universes, and their recycled use as allusions by creative teams in the TV show, film and video game industries.