So far, researches on Kim Ki Young’s film has dealt with only a few films including sequels to <the Housemaid>. Based on this, Kim Ki Young’s film has been estimated as “magical black aesthetics that dissected the instinct of human”. However, selecting and evaluating only a few several films may cause a problem of overestimated or distorted evaluation.
With this reason, this study chose all films made by Kim Ki-Young in order to study the awareness of the time and film works of him in a precise and objective way. Those are <Yangsan Province>, <The Housemaid>, <The Sea Knows>, <Goryeojang>, <Woman>, <Len's Sonata>, <Woman of Fire>, <Insect Woman>, <Transgression>, <Promises>, <Iodo>, <Soil>, <A Woman After a Killer Butterfly>, <Woman of Water>, <Neu-mi>, <Woman of Fire 82>, <Free Maiden>, <Hunting for idiots>, <Carnivorous animals>, and <Angel, Become an Evil Woman>. These selected Kim Ki-young’s films for this research are separated as disparate and coessential fields according to the possession of symbolic capital. Characters are in confrontation with each other while they try to satisfy their desire; conflicts and collisions occur from the confrontation. This works as an important matter that makes a difference from other movies in the same period. This means that the narrative of his films work focusing on symbolic capital related with power, desires, sacrifices, and escapes.
Chapter Ⅱ deals with Burdieu’s theory as the research method and separates the theory into the field of social spaces and symbolic capital. The field as the social spaces means the group of individuals who shared the common habitus; the differences of habitus classify the disparate field and the homogeneous field. Also, symbolic capital is naturally formed when retaining economic, cultural and social capital. This brings symbolic power and symbolic violence through a tacit agreement. If the tacit agreement does not last, it causes opposition with conflict and collision.
Chapter Ⅲ deals with confrontations, conflicts and collisions derived from the process that individuals in the disparate fields satisfy their desire in a hierarchical relationship. In this study, these conflicts are classified as sacrifices and escapes. First of all, characters who are the rulers of <The sea knows> and <Goryeojang> choose others as “the substitute victims” to meet their desires. These rulers uses force towards the subject people for voluntary obedience. If the subject people refuse to obey or show attempts to overthrow, the way of ruling becomes violence rather than power. The violence of the ruler towards the subject people is wielded as mental and physical violence. The violence, the change of the way of ruling, causes oppositions, conflicts, and collisions and come to a close with the death of the ruler.
In <Yangsan province> and <Soil>, characters of the subject people refuse voluntary obedience in the hierarchical relationship. Thus, they deny the existing power relationship and try subversion. However, if the subject people refuse the voluntary obedience, they are defined as abnormal being; the subject people are experienced with repeated violence and are forced to give up on their desire. Consequentially, the subject people fail to subvert the hierarchical relationship because they have to give up on their desire by force rather than their willingness.
The characters of the <Woman of Water> and <Hunting for idiots> have desire to get away from the isolation and the feeling of loneliness by forming the relationship with the other fields. However, in the process of characters’ attempts or denials of integration, their desires end up with failures since they prefer a dependant tendency without reference to the will of individuals or they do not agree with this officially.
The characters of <The housemaid> express the madness to destroy others including themselves to meet their desire to be out from the feeling of isolation and loneliness from the formation of hierarchical relationship. At this time, characters try to integrate with objects by aiming for destructibility, but if the sympathizer refuses this, problems are caused. With this point of view, this study classifies films into <The Housemaid>, <Woman of fire> and <Insect Woman>, <Carnivorous animals>. Despite the differences, all the films are end up with death according to the common feature of destructibility.
Chapter Ⅳ deals with sacrifices and escapes as conflicts and collisions occurred from the oppositions. Characters in <Woman> and <Neu-mi> have conflicts and collisions in the process of trying to own a woman through obsession. The difference of sex leads to the desire for men to own women by obsessing and restraining them and this causes the confrontation between men and women. The obsession and restriction of the man towards the woman causes mental diseases and obsessive compulsive disorder and drives themselves into sacrifice crisis and they end up to death.
Characters in <Len’s Sonata>, <Transgression>, <A Woman After a Killer Butterfly> refuse the field they belong to in order to get rid of deficiency and give rise to confrontation in the process of pursuing another field which has new habitus. Furthermore, they become to be deported from the field they belong to and end up with sacrifice after having the crisis of survival.
Characters in <Iodo> and <Angel, Become an Evil Woman> have the desire to attain the power that they are lack of by getting away from the isolation and the feeling of loneliness. Thus, characters try to harmonize to meet their own desire, this is appeared as sadism that governs and harass others. Nevertheless, they are unable to gain the power they are lack of and unable to escape from the feeling of isolation and loneliness. Thus, the sadism orientation of the characters is concluded only in failures.
Characters in <Promises> and <Free Maiden> also have the desire to escape from the feeling of isolation and loneliness by acquiring their own power that they are deficient of. However, the integration with others as an option to meet their desire is shown as masochism rather than sadism. That is, they try to be dependent and subordinated to the others. This is because victims and assaulter are not divided clearly by the mental and physical violence and their goals are the same. Nevertheless, they have confrontation when they have different goals and this brings conflicts and collisions. As a result, this is led to a failure since they unable each other’s desire and want.
Chapter Ⅴ examines the awareness of the time and film works that Kim Ki-young tried to deliver through his movies with periodic situations of Korean movies in 1960-70’s based on the analysis in chapter Ⅲ and Ⅳ. The period of 1960-70’s when Kim Ki-young produced a various movies is the time of the heyday and depression of Korean movies. The movies that Ki Ki-young produced in this time have distinctive features from other movies in the same period.
First, Kim Ki-young constantly tried to deal with the matter of social problems in a direct and extreme ways rather than disregarding the reality. Since the social problems dealt in Kim Ki-young’s film are unable to be solved by the effort of an individual, he tried not to resolve the issue in a poor way. Thus, Kim Ki-young’s film unfolds the events in a dramatic way and it ends as tragedy.
Second, Kim Ki-young tried to focus on the subject people or the relative weak people in the process of treating conflict and collisions from the characters’ confrontation. The important thing is that the result of the conflict and collision from the confrontation between the rulers and the subject people caused by symbolic capital does not show a perfect victory by none of the sides. This means that Ki Ki-Young only offered the opportunity for the audience to recognize the fundamental factor of social problems by themselves rather than suggesting unrealistic solutions or hope.
Third, the social problems that Kim Ki-Young tried to deal with in his film is related with the symbolic capital and the matter whether one owns the symbolic capital or not causes desire of individuals. In this process of satisfying desires of individuals, conflicts and collision are caused from the confrontation with troubles with others. However, if the process of satisfying one’s own desire is done in a abnormal way, it always ends as a tragedy.
As mentioned above, the awareness of the time and film works found in Kim Ki-Young’s films enables to explain the reason why his movie is distinctive from the other movies at that time and these mean that his point of view is being carried out. His films are differentiated from other movies that he constantly treated various social problems caused by the gloomy reality after the war and the control and the oppression by the government. That is, Kim Ki-Young used the film media in order to deliver diverse problems of the impoverishment after the war, the anxiety of extreme high growth, the formation of the irrational hierarchical relationship from the cornered capital phenomenon.
By examining all of Kim Ki Young’s films in a general and overall way, an accurate and objective evaluation regarding the awareness of the time and film works could be done in this study. Furthermore, this study has the meaning of trying to overcome the limitations that other studies about Kim Ki Young’s movies have treated only a few particular movies.