How is it possible that a sixteenth-century kisaeng
with no ascertainable historical identity and a literary legacy of a dozen-odd
attributed poems continues to capture the imagination of Koreans in the new
millennium? Hwang Chini (tr. 1506-44) has long been a cultural icon in Korea,
continues to be celebrated north and south of the DMZ, and continues to mirror
ever-changing attitudes in Korea toward class, gender, and subjectivity. Word
and image have been strongly linked in modern Korea, and the Korean literary
tradition, both oral and written, continues to inspire Korean cinema. In the
case of Hwang Chini, word and image are so closely intertwined that the film
and television adaptations tend to focus on the Hwang Chini “story” while two of the most recent literary
adaptations—two stories from 1972 by Ch’oe Inho—have a distinctly
visual, almost cinematic style. The papers in this panel explore how this
convergence of the narrative and the visual in the person of Hwang Chini illustrates
for readers and viewers today problematic issues of gender, class, and social
order in a recently modernized society.
Hyangsoon Yi, University of Georgia
Hwang Chini is often compared to Ch’unhyang in terms of her popularity
as a subject for film and television drama. Beginning with Cho Kungha’s
1957 film Hwang Chini, and including the following adaptations, several directors
have attempted to capture her legendary life on the silver screen: Yun Pongch’un’s
Hwang Chini ui ilsaeng (The Life of Hwang Chini, 1961); Chong Chinu’s
Hwang Chini ui ch’ot sarang (Hwang Chini’s First Love, 1969); Pae
Ch’angho’s Hwang Chini (1986); and Chang Yunhyon’s Hwang Chini
(2007). The life and art of this famous sixteenth-century kisaeng have also
been featured in television dramas produced in 1982 and 2006 by the Munhwa
Broadcasting Corporation (MBC) and the Korean Broadcasting System (KBS),
respectively.
In these cinematic and televisual works we can see that the directors constructed
Hwang Chini’s life story imaginatively out of the scant historical information
available on her. More fictitious than factual, these works have either reinforced
or undermined the cherished lore of Hwang Chini as a femme fatale in Korean
popular culture. Exploited or challenged, the Hwang Chini mystique has thus
served as a useful backdrop against which a filmmaker can project his or
her own idea of a female cultural icon in modern Korean society.
Focusing on the works of Pae and Chang, my paper examines the ways in which
the duality of the Hwang Chini figure--a historical personage and a multi-layered
film persona—is unraveled in recent Korean cinema. Based on Ch’oe
Inho’s screenplay and Hong Sokchung’s novel, respectively, Pae’s
and Chang’s films pose complex critical issues involving the interaction
among historical, literary, and cinematic representations.
The Hwang Chini films of Pae and Chang are particularly noteworthy for their
visual language. Their common emphasis on a distinct visual style sets them
apart from the previous Hwang Chini films, in which the primary emphasis
is on a well-made story. In light of this trend, I investigate the strengths
and limitations of the salient visual forms that Pae and Chang adopted to
create for the contemporary spectator a cinematic portrait of a kisaeng artist
from pre-modern Korea. Their visual styles are primarily a means of conveying
their heroine’s attitudes toward life, art, and society. But at the same time,
they reveal each filmmaker’s vision of Korean cinema at large as well
as his own film world.
Hana Lee, Yonsei University
In Korea, we can see three dominant female tropes that continually undergo
new interpretations: Ch’unhyang, Chang Huibin, and Hwang Chini. Each represents
an alternative view of idealized femininity in Korean society. Ch’unhyang
epitomizes chastity within the constraints of conservative feudalism and
therefore remains nearly constant. Huibin is caught within the dynamics of
court intrigue and swings widely from that of a temptress to that of a scapegoat.
Chini is the most complex since she straddles the class divide between the
elite yangban and the courtesan kisaeng. She is an erudite intellectual fully
versed in calligraphy, prose, poetry, song, and dance. Additionally, she pursues
a love life of her own in spite of the constraints of the neo-Confucian patriarchal
order of Choson society, which imposed rigid controls over female behavior.
For these reasons, Chini remains the most popular protagonist of these three.
In this paper I analyze five cinematic versions and two television mini-series
(as below) of the Hwang Chini story. In each of these seven manifestations,
Chini becomes a barometer to assess changing social views of female sexuality.
Moreover, each actress who portrayed Chini was the leading sex symbol of her
times and the subject of tremendous scrutiny as a movie star.
As a genre, the historical drama serves as the nexus to best understand how
the film industry seeks to connect with its audience by reinterpreting Chini
anew such that she remains the idealized female who best brings together an
otherwise dispersed audience. Furthermore, the Chini narrative has become the
beneficiary of massive budget outlays for showcasing higher production values
given the ornateness of her life story. In these ways, the continually revisited
Chini narrative reveals the changing aspirations and norms of a transforming
society in the post-Korean War era.
Kevin O'Rourke, Kyung Hee University
A special mystique surrounds Hwang Chini, the celebrated Korean kisaeng-singer-poet
of the 16th century. She stands today as a symbol of art and the free spirit,
a woman who battled the odds to express her individuality. Her shijo poems,
while few in number, break new ground in the shijo genre. They show awareness
of love’s delights and inconstancies and of the poet’s foolishness
in the grip of her emotions. She prepares a memorable homecoming party for
one lover, sends another lover away, mocks a third as she offers the lure
of seduction, and scolds herself for waiting for a fourth who is not coming.
All this is new in shijo poetry.
Chini’s hanshi present a woman of refined sensibility, in control of her
emotions, with a keen sense of beauty, a strong sense of self-worth, a sharp
sense of history, and a mischievous sense of humor. Eight poems may be a
slight scaffolding to hold the tower of greatness, but Hwang Chini can still
fairly claim to rival the best literati poets of her time. This should surely
be word enough of praise.
Bruce Fulton, University of British Columbia
It is commonly agreed that there are virtually no historical records confirming
the existence of a sixteenth-century kisaeng named Hwang Chini. And yet,
from the slenderest historical fabric, a myth has been woven that has engaged
several of modern Korea’s most accomplished fiction writers. Fictional representations
of Hwang Chini range from Yi T’ae-jun’s story/novel, written during
the colonial period, to postwar works by Pak Chonghwa and Chong Hansuk, to novels
by contemporary writers Chon Kyongnin and Hong Sokchung. Ch’oe Inho’s
two eponymous stories, both published in 1972, are distinctive in the way that
the author chooses to give substance to the Hwang Chini myth. The stories are
sensual, indeed erotic in places, with the author’s characteristically
strong visual style in ample evidence. In these two stories Ch’oe gives
the Hwang Chini myth corporeal form and then proceeds to unveil that form to
reveal a woman who is the embodiment of human desire. The female body as a locus
of desire on a mythical scale is certainly not new in Korean literature in these
two stories by Ch’oe; one need only call to mind the representations of
the equally legendary Ch’unhyang, not only the p’ansori libretto
with its racy descriptions but the 2000 Im Kwont’aek film with its equally
titillating images. The difference between these representations of Ch’unhyang
and Ch’oe’s two representations of Hwang Chini, though, is that
Ch’unhyang’s body is inscribed with competing neo-Confucian ideals
of hierarchy and feminine virtue, whereas Hwang Chini’s body is laid bare
as an iconic repository of lust. If we can argue that Ch’unhyang’s
body inhabits the realm of conceptual discourse, then the body of Hwang Chini
exists in an inarticulate, subliminal but decidedly corporeal realm. I argue
in this paper that this representation of Hwang Chini is consistent with the
sensuous writing style that characterizes Ch’oe Inho’s short fiction
and with the blurring of reality and fancy that appears in such signature stories
of his as “Sulkkun” (1970, trans. 2007, “The Boozer”)
and “T’ain ui pang” (1971, tr. 2005, “Another Man’s
Room”).
|
