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.One uni-fying factor is the use of a multiple-address strategy.To help attractan enormous audience, the record-breaker films benefit from being ableto address different audiences within the nation.This is a feature of thefilms themselves, aided, rather than created , by subsequent distribu-tion and marketing strategies.An awareness that, at a pre-productionlevel, producers must identify and cater for target audiences hasbecome a central feature of the Korean film industry since the plannedfilm production mode emerged in the 1990s.But with record-breakerfilms, an enormous cross-section of the domestic market is targeted bythe same film.The King and the Clown is instructive for understandingthe pre-production rationale of the film and how it ultimately suc-ceeded in reaching a wide range of audiences.Jeong Jin-Wan, head ofproduction company Eagle Pictures, suggests the success of the filmwas down to its capacity to be read in multiple ways, just like a Rorschach test.Thus for the teens and early-mid twenties the film ismainly considered as a melodrama revolving around the figure ofGong Gil (Lee Jun-Gi), for the late twenties to thirties and forties itbecomes a film about Jang Sang s (Kam Woo-Seong) challenge to theKing s power, and for the over fifties it is an archetypal dynastic perioddrama.11The record-breakers, however, still unite these different strandswithin an overarching narrative that has a particular focus on articulat-ing Korean identity.This does not, however, mean that all the films takethe same approach.Here the politics of The Host and The King and theClown take a different tack from that of Silmido and Taegukgi (KangJe-Gyu, 2004).The Host, for instance, re-inscribes the politics of the1980s student movement into what otherwise appears as a cross 06 EA Cinema_088-102 25/1/08 09:14 Page 93Contemporary South Korean Cinema 93between traditional family melodrama and Jurassic Park-style monstermovie.But this aspect of The Host also helps explain why Kim Ki-Duk s protests provoked such wide public controversy, as it highlightsthe way in which even a progressive, leftist film-maker like Bong isultimately enveloped in an industrial structure in which oligopolisticpractices have increasingly precluded access to smaller films withoutsuch financial backing.As those critical of Kim s comments pointedout, his protests (as an auteur director and well-known participant atEuropean festivals) have a self-serving element.But Kim s posturingalso allows him to exploit his symbolic status as a representative of thegreat number of Korean film-makers who are not benefiting from therewards of domestic box office success.Kim, however, is simply one of many Koreans (whether film-goersor industry workers) critical of the structure and practices of theKorean film industry.Indeed, it is the industrial aspects of Korean cin-ema that makes the most fascinating comparison with Euro-Americancinemas.The exceptionally concentrated nature of the Korean filmindustry, with so much power held by a few local distributor-exhibitors,actually allows oligopolistic activities that far exceed those available tothe Hollywood studios in other territories.In Korea the control of the big three local majors at the levels of distribution-exhibition hasrecently become so extreme that they have the ability to wide releaserecord-breaker films on such an astonishing proportion of cinemascreens as to mark them as a national event.In terms of film production, between 2001 and 2004, the average filmbudget rose from $2.8 million up to $4.5 million.12 The number of filmsproduced also increased from 65 in 2001 to 82 in 2004.This attentionto production data, however, overlooks other profound changes in theindustry.In 2000, annual audience attendance was 64.6 million, with anattendance of 22.7 million attendances for Korean films.By 2004 thishad grown more than twofold to 135 [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
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.One uni-fying factor is the use of a multiple-address strategy.To help attractan enormous audience, the record-breaker films benefit from being ableto address different audiences within the nation.This is a feature of thefilms themselves, aided, rather than created , by subsequent distribu-tion and marketing strategies.An awareness that, at a pre-productionlevel, producers must identify and cater for target audiences hasbecome a central feature of the Korean film industry since the plannedfilm production mode emerged in the 1990s.But with record-breakerfilms, an enormous cross-section of the domestic market is targeted bythe same film.The King and the Clown is instructive for understandingthe pre-production rationale of the film and how it ultimately suc-ceeded in reaching a wide range of audiences.Jeong Jin-Wan, head ofproduction company Eagle Pictures, suggests the success of the filmwas down to its capacity to be read in multiple ways, just like a Rorschach test.Thus for the teens and early-mid twenties the film ismainly considered as a melodrama revolving around the figure ofGong Gil (Lee Jun-Gi), for the late twenties to thirties and forties itbecomes a film about Jang Sang s (Kam Woo-Seong) challenge to theKing s power, and for the over fifties it is an archetypal dynastic perioddrama.11The record-breakers, however, still unite these different strandswithin an overarching narrative that has a particular focus on articulat-ing Korean identity.This does not, however, mean that all the films takethe same approach.Here the politics of The Host and The King and theClown take a different tack from that of Silmido and Taegukgi (KangJe-Gyu, 2004).The Host, for instance, re-inscribes the politics of the1980s student movement into what otherwise appears as a cross 06 EA Cinema_088-102 25/1/08 09:14 Page 93Contemporary South Korean Cinema 93between traditional family melodrama and Jurassic Park-style monstermovie.But this aspect of The Host also helps explain why Kim Ki-Duk s protests provoked such wide public controversy, as it highlightsthe way in which even a progressive, leftist film-maker like Bong isultimately enveloped in an industrial structure in which oligopolisticpractices have increasingly precluded access to smaller films withoutsuch financial backing.As those critical of Kim s comments pointedout, his protests (as an auteur director and well-known participant atEuropean festivals) have a self-serving element.But Kim s posturingalso allows him to exploit his symbolic status as a representative of thegreat number of Korean film-makers who are not benefiting from therewards of domestic box office success.Kim, however, is simply one of many Koreans (whether film-goersor industry workers) critical of the structure and practices of theKorean film industry.Indeed, it is the industrial aspects of Korean cin-ema that makes the most fascinating comparison with Euro-Americancinemas.The exceptionally concentrated nature of the Korean filmindustry, with so much power held by a few local distributor-exhibitors,actually allows oligopolistic activities that far exceed those available tothe Hollywood studios in other territories.In Korea the control of the big three local majors at the levels of distribution-exhibition hasrecently become so extreme that they have the ability to wide releaserecord-breaker films on such an astonishing proportion of cinemascreens as to mark them as a national event.In terms of film production, between 2001 and 2004, the average filmbudget rose from $2.8 million up to $4.5 million.12 The number of filmsproduced also increased from 65 in 2001 to 82 in 2004.This attentionto production data, however, overlooks other profound changes in theindustry.In 2000, annual audience attendance was 64.6 million, with anattendance of 22.7 million attendances for Korean films.By 2004 thishad grown more than twofold to 135 [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]