Papers by Christina Klein
Journal of Korean Studies, 2017
South Korean films first became visible on the world stage in the late 1950s when they began to b... more South Korean films first became visible on the world stage in the late 1950s when they began to be exhibited and win prizes at international film festivals. Yi Pyŏngil's The Wedding Day (1956) and Han Hyŏngmo's Because I Love You (1958) were among Korea's earliest award-winning films. These two films exemplify a postcolonial and postwar discourse I am calling "Cold War cosmopolitanism." The cultivation of this cosmopolitan ethos among cultural producers was a major objective for Americans waging the cultural Cold War in Asia, and the Asia Foundation was Washington's primary instrument for doing so. This article traces the history of the Asia Foundation from its inception in the National Security Council in the late 1940s through its activities in Korea in the 1950s and early 1960s. It pays particular attention to the foundation's support for Korean participation in the Asian Film Festival. It offers a close textual and historical reading of Yi's and Han's films as a means of exploring how Korean cultural producers, acting as Cold War entrepreneurs, took advantage of the Asia Foundation's resources in ways that furthered their own aesthetic, economic, and political interests.
xiii Acknowled gments I would not have dared undertake this project but for my fortuitous encount... more xiii Acknowled gments I would not have dared undertake this project but for my fortuitous encounter in 2009-2011 with three remarkable people: Heonik Kwan, who invited me to join his Academy of Korean Studies-funded research project "Beyond the Korean War" (AKS-2010-DZZ-3104), which provided crucial financial support and introduced me to a lively community of Koreanists; Han Sang Kim, then a Harvard-Yenching fellow and former Korean Film Archive researcher, who offered encouragement and aid at the earliest stages; and Eun Kyung DuBois, a Boston College undergraduate and aspiring translator, who translated hundreds of pages of oral histories and other Korean-language material. It has been my pleasure to enter into the community of Korean studies scholars and to benefit from their intellectual generosity and friendship. Many people have shared information about primary sources, guided me through the scholarship, and commented on early versions of these chapters, including Jinsoo An,
Cold War Cosmopolitanism, 2020
Acknowled gments I would not have dared undertake this project but for my fortuitous encounter in... more Acknowled gments I would not have dared undertake this project but for my fortuitous encounter in 2009-2011 with three remarkable people: Heonik Kwan, who invited me to join his Academy of Korean Studies-funded research project "Beyond the Korean War" (AKS-2010-DZZ-3104), which provided crucial financial support and introduced me to a lively community of Koreanists; Han Sang Kim, then a Harvard-Yenching fellow and former Korean Film Archive researcher, who offered encouragement and aid at the earliest stages; and Eun Kyung DuBois, a Boston College undergraduate and aspiring translator, who translated hundreds of pages of oral histories and other Korean-language material. It has been my pleasure to enter into the community of Korean studies scholars and to benefit from their intellectual generosity and friendship. Many people have shared information about primary sources, guided me through the scholarship, and commented on early versions of these chapters, including Jinsoo An,
Transnational Cinemas, 2012
This article explores the unintended cinematic consequences of America's military presence in Sou... more This article explores the unintended cinematic consequences of America's military presence in South Korea. It traces the history and programming of Armed Forces Korea Network-TV (AFKN-TV), the US military television network, and shows how the network functioned as a major channel for the flow of Hollywood and other commercial genre films into Korea during the 1970s and 1980s. AFKN had a large 'shadow audience' of young Koreans during these years for whom it offered an alternative media culture to that of the repressive Park and Chun regimes. This article argues that AFKN may have helped shape the development decades later of the genre-centred New Korean Cinema by providing its viewers-among them future directors Bong Joon-ho and Kim Jee-woon-with lessons in the language and logic of genre film-making. introdUCtion The transnational has in recent years become one of the most productive ideas in cinema scholarship, with an abundance of articles, books and even a journal devoted to exploring film in ways that seek to transcend the limitations of the national cinema model. Within Asian cinema studies, this has often entailed reading films in relation to transnational populations (e.g. diaspora),
Comparative American Studies An International Journal, 2004
This article investigates how globalization is affecting film industries in the USA and Asia. It ... more This article investigates how globalization is affecting film industries in the USA and Asia. It argues that these industries are becoming more closely integrated with one another both materially and aesthetically, and that this in turn is leading to the denationalization of individual films and film industries on both sides of the Pacific. The article explores how globalization is experienced differently by different film industries-and by different sectors within individual industries-and how it entails both losses and opportunities for Asian film makers. Taking the contemporary Hollywood and East Asian martial arts film as an exemplary cultural style of globalization, it also looks at how integration involves both cultural homogenization and the production of difference. Specific topics discussed include the growth of Hollywood's Asian markets, Jackie Chan and the flow of Hong Kong talent into Hollywood, Hollywood remakes of South Korean movies, the resurgence of Asian film industries, Hollywood's local-language film production and Zhang Yimou's Hero.
Cinema Journal, 2004
This article proposes that Ang Lee's Chinese-language martial arts film, Crouching Tiger, Hidden ... more This article proposes that Ang Lee's Chinese-language martial arts film, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, be seen as a work of diasporic cinema. The essay explores how the film's material production and its aesthetic form have been shaped by Lee's ties to his Chinese homeland, to other members of the Chinese diaspora, and to the Hollywood films of his American hostland.
The Western Historical Quarterly, 1994
Books by Christina Klein
University of California Press, 2020
South Korea in the 1950s was home to a burgeoning film culture, one of the many “Golden Age cinem... more 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.
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Papers by Christina Klein
Books by Christina Klein