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Kim Ki-duk: the Maker of Repulsive Aesthetic in Cinema

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Kim Ki-duk is a familiar name to the people who are concerned about the contemporary South Korean film industry. Though he is not popular among the general audience, winning prizes in prestigious festivals like Cannes or Venus Film Festival, unarguably, secures a special place for him in the Film industry of South Korea, as well as makes him favorite of critics. He made his audience to be introduced with a unique kind of aesthetic.

Why am I saying that Kim's cinemas have a unique aesthetic? Let's explore the reason. Kim Ki-duk is infamous for the violent scenes he creates in his cinemas, and showing human and animal sufferings in his films is regular that huge amount of audience disfavor. He visualizes suicide on the silver screen; he visualizes the death of people and animals as well. Once, this filmmaker said in an interview that he experienced how strong boys beat the weak boys in boyhood.1

Maybe that violence never left its shadow from his brain, which inspires him to show violence in his films. Perhaps, his catharsis takes place, doing so.

The protagonists of Kim's movies are violent. Depiction of rape attempt in Crocodile, Hyun-shik's physical assault on Hee-jin in The Isle and Hee-jin's torture on fish in the same film, Kang-do's cruelty on the clients in Pieta or abused homemaker Sun-hwa in Three Iron– these are enough instances to prove this claim.

But interestingly, despite having all these horrible violence, his films are appreciated in the serous film discussions, and as artistic creation, they are considered meaningful. Here, mentioning Lilie Chouliaraki's quotation is relevant. This professor in Media and Communication said, "aestheticization of suffering [that] manages simultaneously to preserve an aura of objectivity and impartiality."2

Yes, this is the objectivity of human life; this is the impartiality regarding human nature. With this objectivity and impartiality, Kim Ki-duk creates a new kind of aesthetics, and we can name it the aesthetics of repulsiveness.

Another thing to notice, the characters of the films of Kim are not only violent but also void of ethics. In a broad sense, "ethics refers to well-founded standards of right and wrong that prescribe what humans ought to do, usually in terms of rights, obligations, benefits to society, fairness, or specific virtues. Ethics, for example, refers to those standards that impose reasonable obligations to refrain from rape, stealing, murder, assault, slander, and fraud."3

But in his films, the protagonists don't follow any standard about what humans ought to do or not.

"British Board of Film Classification" deferred releasing Kim's The Isle in the UK due to its formidable animal torture scene. But Kim tried to defend himself in an interview regarding this matter by saying – "Yes, I did worry about that fact. But the way I see it, the food that we eat today is no different. In America, you eat beef, pork, and kill all these animals. And the people who eat these animals are not concerned with their slaughter. Animals are part of this cycle of consumption. It looks crueler onscreen, but I don't see the difference. And yes, there's a cultural difference, and maybe Americans will have a problem with it - but if they can just be more sensitive to what is acceptable in different countries, I'd hope they wouldn't have too many issues with what's shown onscreen."4

References:

  1. Hummel, Volker (2002). "Interview with Kim Ki-Duk". Senses of Cinema. Melbourne: Australia.
  2. Chouliaraki, Lilie (2006). The aestheticization of suffering on television. (PDF). Visual Communication. 5 (3): 261–285. (PDF) from the original on 28 June 2007. Retrieved 2007-06-08.
  3. Velasquez, Manuel, Andre, Claire, Shanks, Thomas, S.J., and Meyer, Michael J. (Fall, 1987). "A definition of ethics in terms of standards such as rights and fairness." Ethics IIE V1 N1. Santa Clara University: Silicon Valley.
  4. McKeague, Andy (2005-05-11)."An Interview with Kim Ki-Duk and Suh Jung on The Isle". Monsters and Critics. Archived from the original on 2007-11-28. Retrieved 2007-11-26.