Taylor-Jones, K.E. orcid.org/0000-0002-4335-3119 (2018) Shopping, sex, and lies: Mimong/Sweet Dreams (1936) and the disruptive process of colonial girlhood. Journal of Japanese and Korean Cinema, 10 (2). pp. 98-114. ISSN 1756-4905
Abstract
In the early Korean film we follow the melodramatic life of an unfaithful housewife. Sweet Dreams situates itself at the heart of the Korean colonial experience with urban Seoul as the backdrop to a narrative of deceit, adultery and consumerism. This article will explore how Sweet Dreams functions both as a warning about the perils of modern womanhood and, simultaneous to this, a vision of consumerist pleasure and delight. This article examines how the actions of lead character Ae-soon constitute a process by which the adult women is rendered girl via her positioning at the locus of female visual pleasure. I use the term girl as a process rather than a static category since, as will be explored, the attributes of girlhood with relation to Sweet Dreams are both expansive and fluid. In this way girlhood can be appropriated for transgressive purposes, not only in terms of a visualization of a desiring femininity, but also as a marker of colonial dissent. I argue that Sweet Dreams uses the interplay between the categories of woman and girl to disrupt the colonial drive towards a productive body in favour of the delights of consumption.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2018 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. This is an author produced version of a paper subsequently published in Journal of Japanese and Korean Cinema. Uploaded in accordance with the publisher's self-archiving policy. |
Keywords: | Gender; colonial; cinema; girlhood Korea; Japan; modernity |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Sheffield |
Academic Units: | The University of Sheffield > Faculty of Social Sciences (Sheffield) > School of East Asian Studies (Sheffield) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Sheffield |
Date Deposited: | 20 Dec 2018 12:18 |
Last Modified: | 05 Mar 2020 01:38 |
Published Version: | https://doi.org/10.1080/17564905.2018.1518362 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Taylor & Francis |
Refereed: | Yes |
Identification Number: | 10.1080/17564905.2018.1518362 |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:140028 |