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Korea
Organized Panel Session
Chʻunhyangjŏn(1935) and Sweet Dreams(1936) are representative Korean-language talkies produced during the period of transition from silent films to talkies in Korean cinema. To an audience accustomed to silent films and foreign talkies, Korean talkies were a strange creation in and of themselves. To offset such strangeness and secure a stable market, these talkies were strategically made as film adaptations of popular stories or literary texts. Ch’unhyangjŏn adapted the popular sung tale (p’ansori) and Sweet Dreams was inspired by A Doll’s House (1879), though the film only insinuates at its connection to Ibsen’s famous play.
Chʻunhyangjŏn aimed to re-present the original text, while Sweet Dreams rendered the representation of the original text, impossible. Despite such differences, the two movies are similar in that they both seek to strengthen their local flavor, their Chosŏn-ness. They are also similar in that while claiming to be women's narratives, they in truth create women who are submissive to male or male patriarchs.
Korean talkies that targeted the Korean audience not literate enough to enjoy Western talkies with subtitles, suggest new ways of interpreting the modernity of Western movies. The harsh punishment suffered by the modern woman in Sweet Dreams leads us to important insights that help to determine the appropriate place for Korean talkies in Korea’s cinematic history. This study will reveal how the Korean talkie Sweet Dreams denies modern women their rightful place in the modern world, by injuring again, the female body that had finally recovered its wholeness through the acquisition of the female voice.
Woohyung Chon
Chung-Ang University, Republic of Korea