Political Moods: Film Melodrama and the Cold War in the Two Koreas (Volume 4) (Global Korea)

Workman, Travis

ISBN 10: 0520395697 / ISBN 13: 9780520395695

Published by University of California Press, 2023

About this Item

Seller Inventory # mon0003340976

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Political Moods: Film Melodrama and the Cold War in the Two Koreas (Volume 4) (Global Korea)
• Publisher: University of California Press
• Publication Date: 2023
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0520395697
• ISBN 13: 9780520395695
• Binding: paperback
• Condition: Very Good

About this title

Synopsis

A free ebook version of this title is available through Luminos, University of California Press's Open Access publishing program. Visit www.luminosoa.org to learn more.

Melodrama films dominated the North and South Korean industries in the period between liberation from Japanese colonial rule in 1945 and the hardening of dictatorship in the 1970s. The films of each industry are often read as direct reflections of Cold War and Korean War political ideologies and national historical experiences, and therefore as aesthetically and politically opposed to each other. However, Political Moods develops a comparative analysis across the Cold War divide, analyzing how films in both North and South Korea convey political and moral ideas through the sentimentality of the melodramatic mode. Travis Workman reveals that the melancholic moods of film melodrama express the somatic and social conflicts between political ideologies and excesses of affect, meaning, and historical references. These moods dramatize the tension between the language of Cold War politics and the negative affects that connect cinema to what it cannot fully represent. The result is a new way of historicizing the cinema of the two Koreas in relation to colonialism, postcolonialism, war, and nation building.

About the Author

Travis Workman is Associate Professor of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities.