January 22, 2008
Redefining the Korean Family
Sex, Trauma, and the Feminine in The Coachman and A Good Lawyer's Wife
For many, the geographical and ideological split, along the 38th parallel, represents a nation divided. The latitude is symbolic of past and present day politics: a country constantly in a state of war with itself. This North-South division is, and has always been, a main focal point throughout much of South Korea's literature and film cultures, as the South Korean people struggle to answer questions of national identity in the post-war, post-colonial culture. In recent filmic and literary history, we have seen stories that envision the division, in terms of class division, sexuality, economic agency, and even imagined history and memory. Such conflicts largely take place within the smallest unit of the country – the domestic sphere – where problems of the nation are easily translated into family strife. Adding further tension is the fact that the family remains the essential building block of traditional, Confucian culture – an aspect casually at odds with modern, progressive values. In times of change, national trauma is, thereby, constructed as a masculine crisis: a reluctant patriarchal power structure, comfortable with the status quo, and unwilling to affirm the growing status of women in Korean society. The patriarch's on-going resistance to female emancipation allows cinema and literature, to re-imagine social and cultural cohesion in a country struggling to find its post-colonial identity.
In this paper I will be discussing the role of women as it relates to the family structure and the attempt to redefine it in both The Coachman (Mabu, Kang Tae-jin, 1961) and A Good Lawyer's Wife (Baramnan Kajok, Im Sang-su, 2003). I will be using my own interpretations of these films, as well as Kelly Y. Jeong's paper "Projections of Masculinities: Nation Re-Building and Postwar Korean Cinema" and Soo-won Lee's "The Cheong Space: A Zone of Non-Exchange in Korean Human Relationships". I chose these films because they offer two differing points in history in which Korea was forced to redefine what their national identity was, and in doing so redefined the institution of the family. The Coachman is a film with a conservative view of post-war history and as such contains the restructuring and continuation of the Confucian patriarchy in a new form of family that is actually based on female economic agency. In this film, female characters are relegated entirely with the traditional binds that be – the family: the Mother, the Whore/Corrupt Daughter, and the Filial Daughter. Through these roles the women serve as agents to help the male figure (and through him the nation) realize and take action towards (or resolve) his crisis, but their own crises are marginalized in an attempt to normalize South Korea's history as a site of masculine anxiety and disorder. A Good Lawyer's Wife, on the other hand, offers a look at the modern upper-middle class family and its dissolution. In this film the institution of family is attacked and questioned in Korea's new post-industrial society, with the woman characters finding liberation through sexual freedom, and the trauma is familial, rather than historic or socio-economic.
In Andrew Higson's "The Concept of National Cinema" he writes "Cinema never simply reflects or expresses an already fully-formed and homogeneous national culture and identity, as if it were the undeniable property of all national subjects; certainly, it privileges only a limited range of subject positions which thereby become naturalized or reproduced as the only legitimate positions of the national subject" (Higson, 63). In this way, national cinema is a constantly evolving matrix of meaning and identity. This is especially obvious in Korea, when post-war cinema became an opportunity to explore memory, tradition, and attempt to invent a definitive ideas and ideals of Korean-ness. Interestingly, it chose to define tradition and history as specifically patriarchal in nature, even though Confucian ideals of patriarchy are not innately Korean – in fact, Korea was, at one point in time, intensely matriarchal. This re-imagining of history as a site of masculine power naturalizes a male-dominated society and creates the masculine figure as the legitimate site where national identity is explored. The family becomes the structure under masculine power is normalized as the national subject and women are forced to either submit or be cast out, rejected as being something Other than Korean if they attempt to exert their own individual agency.
In The Coachman, the story begins with a broken family, whose mother has passed away. Like many post-war art works, the family is lower working class and as such is to be seen as more connected to the Korean identity, as those who were in power or had money were often seen as (and often were) colonial collaborators. The absence of the Mother in The Coachman is a space that must be filled in order for the masculine crises to be resolved. Soowon, the widowed maid, becomes the Mother in the family, and ends up filling this space as an emotional and economic agent that allows the family and the patriarchy to be restored. It is Soowon's economic agency that allows Choonsam to continue with his job, and Soo-up to continue with his studies (which would eventually lead to upward social mobility). She is allowed to be financially independent and affluent because she uses this wealth to invest back into the family, supporting the patriarchal foundation at the same time as creating a new family structure in which the patriarch is no longer the primary financial provider. In Soo-won Lee's essay "The Cheong Space: A Zone of Non-Exchange in Korean Human relationships", he compares and contrasts Eastern collectivist values with Western individualist ones. In Korean society, the social concept of cheong is upheld by many, and as such, human relations are defined as non-exchange relationships where the individual sheds the sense of self and attempts to further the interests of others. In other words, the value exists in solidarity with the group rather than what you receive from the relationship. Western relationships, on the other hand, are based off of social exchange where the individuals enter into relationships for personal gain, which inevitably lead to conflict. Her financial investment allows for a new structure under which the eldest son can use education to better his standing within society, rather than the traditional system of taking over his father's place in the family business (which is failing under the pressure of modernization). It also represents a situation where cheong is fully realized, and non-exchange relationships prosper.
Unlike Soowon, who uses her wealth to further insert herself into a patriarchal family structure, Okhee is attempting to use material wealth to escape the family structure and achieve upward mobility only for herself. Her attempts at economic agency is based off of the concept of social exchange, and it is in this sense, the emancipation from the family, as well as Okhee's deceptive means of achieving it, that leads to her inevitable failure and a severe beating at the hands of the man she was trying to seduce. Okhee's leaving of the traditional Confucian values for selfish capitalistic gain is marked by her appearance in Western dress as an attempt to disguise her class background. Early in the film, in response to Okhee's complaint about her "shabby" dress, her friend Mija tells her "There is nothing you can't fix for a larger gain, right?" This fix Mija is referring to happens to be an ambition Okhee is strive for: to reject the essence of the close-knit, lower class family unit that constitutes Korean-ness, and accept a middle class western lifestyle of excess and overt feminine sexuality. The scene in which Mija teaches Okhee how to act Western (and therefore modern) is a perfect example of this. Through the act of being taught how to walk and dress to please and entice wealthy men, we see Okhee consciously attempting to reject her old identity and create a new false identity as a modern woman. This modernity is associated with a social exchange relationship, which we see can only end in tragedy. By contrast, Soowon helps the family to continue with their traditional makeup, all the while playing the role of the dutiful Mother and housekeeper, a role marked visually by her constant attire of traditional Korean dress.
It is not that the film denigrates the financial agency of these women; rather it promotes it as long as it is serving the need of the family and is the wish of the patriarch. Okhee is eventually able to restore her filial relations with her father. She makes a conscious decision (after being beaten for her betrayal) to return to the patriarch and follow his wishes of finding financial agency through her work at the factory. Through this action she is redeemed and welcomed back into the family unit. She reenters the cheong space and its non-exchange relationships. She becomes useful to the patriarch while remaining loyal, something that the other Filial Daughter character in the film cannot.
Okhee is the strongest example of traditional filial loyalty within the film, but she is deaf mute who cannot exert or insert herself within the world and therefore she lacks the agency that the female characters need in this re-structuring of the family. Kelly Y. Jeong proposes that her suicide is a "final act of desperation but also of defiance and refusal of the status quo that oppressed her in life" (Jeong, 176). I disagree; in my interpretation her suicide is a final act of service to the family. It is the ultimate expression of filial piety. She cannot function in the changing times and in order for the family to evolve, she must be disposed. Her suffering may be important, but it is merely a projection of the patriarch's inability (in this case his economic impotence) to provide for his family. With her gone, her memory is vanished within a trace, and her diagetic space (that of the caregiver within the home and kitchen) is replaced with the new Mother, Soowon. Her absence is the catalyst that allows all the events to fall into place that bring the new family to fruition. In these ways the family becomes not only the site of national identity, but also an institution of safety where it can protect its members from trauma.
All of the aforementioned concepts are broken during the course of A Good Lawyer's Wife.
Hojung, the titular wife of A Good Lawyer's Wife, begins the film as a seemingly modern example of a Confucian woman. She had given up her career as a dancer to take care of her adopted son Sooin and support her husband Youngjak and his career. She enjoys much more freedom than any of the women found in The Coachman, due to the globalization of post-industrial Korea and the imported ideas of Western feminism. In fact, the very Western visual markers that marked Okhee in The Coachman as a traitor, are turned over its head in A Good Lawyer's Wife. Korean identity is presented as global and Westernized. Traditional culture is associated with the lower class, and shown as outdated and in need of dire reform. Here history is acknowledged, but hidden. Hojung is marked as modern and desirable because of abundant materialism. They are part of the new wealthy upper class (the nouveau riche), who have survived the trauma of the IMF Crisis. She is a devoted mother to her newly-adopted son Sooin and remains a dutiful daughter-in-law. She is a helping hand to many, including Sooin, who is adjusting to a new environment, and her father, who is battling liver cancer. (It is important to note, however, that although Hojung may be an agent of help, but she never is subjugated to them.) Over time, however, it becomes clear that Hojung wants something more in life. She becomes sexually frustrated over her sex life or, to be more specific, a lack thereof. Her husband, Youngjak, who spends most of his time either at work or with his mistress, fails to satisfy her in bed.
Hojung begins an affair with her high school aged neighbor, Jiwoon, and in doing so, liberates herself from the ho-hum routines of housewife. Unlike many other Korean films, where females are carnally ravished by their impotent, anxiety-laden male perpetrators, here female sexuality is depicted as a form of self-empowerment. Hojung finds release through sex. In the climatic sex scene between the two, she sheds tears of sadness and joy as she orgasms. She is now free, and the expectant love child essentially replaces Sooin, much like Soowon replacing Okhee. It is a complete gender reversal of the traditional Korean cinematic paradigm. These affairs undermine the principles of traditional, non-exchange Korean relationships, and instead, exemplify modern, social exchange relationships. Cheong ceases to exist as these women reclaim the sense of "I", rather than "we". Unlike Okhee's transgression, these affairs are not punished and the trauma that is transplanted onto the women in that family remains within the realm of the masculine.
The Coachman's male characters suffer from economic impotence within the newly emerging post-war class system. Their trauma is directly related to the war and to the re-building of the nation. Yet through the female economic agency and the promise of upward mobility, the trauma is healed. This film is conservative, attributing success to steadfast hard work. In A Good Lawyer's Wife, by contrast, the mobility of the family to an upper class is catapulted by American aid and "guidance" created.
The trauma in A Good Lawyer's Wife is also much more complex. The film does allude to the historical trauma of the war and division, but it is far from the main problem. Youngjak is working on a case involving an uncovered grave of Korean War victims, whose skulls are dug up and become an example of the atrocities that modern Korea would rather forget, but cannot. His aged, alcoholic father is still traumatized by past memories. On his death bed, the father sings North Korean songs, unable to come to grips with the regret of leaving his mother and sisters back in North Korea. Unlike in The Coachman, where humanity and decency are naively portrayed and the family becomes a mythological institution that can right all wrongs, the Hojung's family is the source of the trauma. Their inability to communicate with each other, and the boredom with life that the bourgeois existence affords them, causes their unhappiness. It offers them no protection; rather their unhappiness only increases the more they attempt to hold the family together. The historical trauma does not affect them directly; to Youngjak the case represents a chance to exercise his professional power (perhaps because he lacks emotional power) for good. The father remains insistent that the problem is his and only his, despite the fact that this trauma has directly affected everyone and everything in his life. It has robbed him of his career, his sexual potency as a husband, his ability to be a good father, and his ability to die peacefully. His death, which would have served as a catalyst for destruction in an earlier or more conservative film, actually allows his widow, Byunghan, to find happiness with another man, which in earlier films would go so much against Confucian values and would thereby, only result in tragedy. Here she becomes livelier and kinder, once she rediscovers the elusive orgasm she has been missing for 15 years. Her new husband is not set to become the new patriarch of the family; rather she completely leaves the family and the country. The new patriarch is Youngjak, but it is an empty patriarchy because the family is no longer in existence. Yet everyone seems to be fine in the end of the film, even Youngjak gives a little jig after one last failed attempt and reconciliation. If The Coachman set up the new familial structure for post-war Korea, A Good Lawyer's Wife completely tears it down.
Works Cited
Primary Sources
The Coachman. Dir. Kang Tae-jin. Pref. Kim Seung-ho, Shin Yeong-gyun and others. Hwaseong Co. 1961. DVD. Bitwin.
A Good Lawyer's Wife. Dir. Im Sang-su. Pref. Mun So-ri, Hwang Jeong-min, Yun Yeo-jeong and others. Myung Film Company Ltd., 2003. DVD. Starmax
Jeong, Kelly Y., "Projections of Masculinities: Nation Re-Building and Postwar Korean Cinema," from "Multiple Beginnings: Crisis of Gender, Masculinity, Nationhood, and Many Arrivals of Modernity in Modern Korean Literature and Cinema," Ph.d., diss. 2003, 160-177.
Lee, Soo-won. "The Cheong Space: A Zone of Non-Exchange in Korean Human Relationships" from course pack for Major Social Issues and Problems in Korea
Secondary Sources
Higson, Andrew. "The Concept of National Cinema" Screen 30, no. 4 (Autumn, 1989) reprinted in Film and Nationalism, ed. Alan Williams, 52-57
