A One-Off Foregrounding in Korean Film: Pornography, Erotica, Technology, Desire

• Main Author: Taeyun, Yu
• Format: text
• Published: Archīum Ateneo 2024
• Subjects: carnivalesque; Gojitmal; feminism; jouissance; reflexivity; sadomasochism; sex-positive feminism; voyeurism; taboo
• Online Access: https://archium.ateneo.edu/kk/vol1/iss40/21; https://archium.ateneo.edu/context/kk/article/2031/viewcontent/KK_2040_2C_202023_2021_20Forum_20Kritika_20on_20Genders_20and_20Sexualities_20in_20Asian_20Cinema_20__20Yu.pdf
• Institution: Ateneo De Manila University

Although sex as a condition of possibility is heavily commodified in the romanticized selling points of advertisements and popular-culture products, the physical experiences most commonly associated with the act—pleasure and pain, commonly known as sadomasochism— remain proscribed in “respectable” modern society. The necessity of confronting both has nevertheless been argued, starting with Sigmund Freud’s groundbreaking studies. This accounts for artists and intellectuals inspecting sexuality at its core (“hard” core, so to speak), notwithstanding the risk of social and legal sanctions. Using Jang Sun-woo’s Gojitmal (1999) as key material for analysis, this study will attempt to shed some light on the social meaning of sadomasochism by viewing it as an expression of power relations. For this objective, the perspectives of Foucauldian thinkers as well as feminist theorists that allow the radical reconfiguration of auteur structuralism and psychoanalysis will be employed to delineate the dynamics between power and the self.