Cold War Cosmopolitanism: Period Style in 1950s Korean Cinema

Christina Klein

Open Access Published by University of California Press 2020

Cold War Cosmopolitanism

Period Style in 1950s Korean Cinema

Christina Klein

https://doi.org/10.1515/9780520968981

Overview
Contents

About this book

South Korea in the 1950s was home to a burgeoning film culture, one of the many “Golden Age cinemas” that flourished in Asia during the postwar years. Cold War Cosmopolitanism offers a transnational cultural history of South Korean film style in this period, focusing on the works of Han Hyung-mo, director of the era’s most glamorous and popular women’s pictures, including the blockbuster Madame Freedom (1956). Christina Klein provides a unique approach to the study of film style, illuminating how Han’s films took shape within a “free world” network of aesthetic and material ties created by the legacies of Japanese colonialism, the construction of US military bases, the waging of the cultural Cold War by the CIA, the forging of regional political alliances, and the import of popular cultures from around the world. Klein combines nuanced readings of Han’s sophisticated style with careful attention to key issues of modernity—such as feminism, cosmopolitanism, and consumerism—in the first monograph devoted to this major Korean director.

A free open access ebook is available upon publication. Learn more at www.luminosoa.org.

Author / Editor information

Klein Christina :

Christina Klein is Associate Professor of English and American Studies at Boston College.

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	vii
Illustrations Publicly Available Download PDF	ix
Video Clips Publicly Available Download PDF	xi
Acknowledgments Publicly Available Download PDF	xiii
Introduction Open Access Download PDF	1
Part I. Period
1. Postcolonial, Postwar, Cold War Open Access Download PDF	13
2. Cold War Cosmopolitan Feminism Open Access Download PDF	32
3. Public Culture Open Access Download PDF	53
Part II. Style
4. The Après Girl Character and Plot Open Access Download PDF	85
5. Film Culture, Sound Culture Setting, Cinematography, and Sound Open Access Download PDF	108
6. Consumer Culture and the Black Market Mise-en-Scène Open Access Download PDF	144
7. A Commitment to Showmanship Spectacle Open Access Download PDF	179
Conclusion Open Access Download PDF	224
Notes Open Access Download PDF	231
Filmography Open Access Download PDF	271
Bibliography Open Access Download PDF	273
Index Open Access Download PDF	289

Language: English
Publisher: University of California Press
Pages
- Main content: 320

eBook

Published: January 21, 2020
ISBN: 9780520968981