바로가기메뉴

본문 바로가기 주메뉴 바로가기

logo

ISSN : 0023-3900

Article Contents

Prev Next
e-Submission

Vol.59 No.3
Citation Share

Transnational Film Remaking and Destabilized Meanings: Reading Kim Jee-woon’s The Good, the Bad, the Weird

Korea Journal / Korea Journal, (P)0023-3900; (E)2733-9343
2019, v.59 no.3, pp.53-78
https://doi.org/10.25024/kj.2019.59.3.53

(2019). Transnational Film Remaking and Destabilized Meanings: Reading Kim Jee-woon’s The Good, the Bad, the Weird. Korea Journal, 59(3), 53-78, https://doi.org/10.25024/kj.2019.59.3.53
  • Downloaded
  • Viewed
PDF Download

Abstract

Transnational remakes are created in a complex web of intertextual relations surrounded by diverse discursive influences. These specific production conditions often complicate the process of interpreting such films and reaching any definitive meanings. Kim Jee-woon’s The Good, the Bad, the Weird (2008) is a Korean transnational remake film that challenges signification as such. Simultaneously styling itself after Sergio Leone’s The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly (1966) and Lee Man-hee’s Break Up the Chain (1971), the film asks us to reconsider widely accepted notions of genre and film remakes. Probing this hybrid film’s entangled layers of meaning, I argue that for a transnational remake such as this, different intertextual influences along with extratextual discourses constantly disturb the production of any cathartic meaning. These factors constantly affect the textual elements to be decontextualized and recontextualized in the course of interpretation, and the production of meaning itself is constantly destabilized and decentered.

keywords
Kim Jee-woon, Lee Man-hee, Sergio Leone, transnational remakes, Manchurian Western, Spaghetti Western, intertextuality, McGuffin

Reference

1.

An, Jinsoo. 2010. “The Ambivalence of the Nationalist Struggle in Deterritorialized Space: The Case of South Korea’s Manchurian Action Film.” The China Review 10.2: 37–61.

2.

Barthes, Roland. 1977. Image, Music, Text. Translated by Stephen Heath. New York:Hill and Wang.

3.

Berg, Chuck. 2000. “Fade-Out in the West: The Western’s Last Stand?” In Film Genre 2000: New Critical Essays, edited by Wheeler W. Dixon, 211–225. Albany: State University of New York Press.

4.

Braudy, Leo. 1998. “Afterword: Rethinking Remakes.” In Play It Again, Sam, edited by Andrew Horton and Stuart Y. McDougal, 327–334. Berkeley: University of California Press.

5.

Cho, Michelle. 2015. “Genre, Translation, and Transnational Cinema: Kim Jeewoon’s The Good, the Bad, the Weird.” Cinema Journal 54.3: 44–68.

6.

Choe, Youngjeen. 2008. “Aeksyeon geim-ui deoche geolin oeseuteon: <Seogyang-ui mubeopja>rul uhoehan <Joeunnom, nappeunnom, isanghannom> ilkki” (A Western Trapped in an Action Game: A Critical Note on The Good, the Bad, the Weird with a Detour to The Good, the Bad and the Ugly). An-gwa bak:Yeongmi munhak yeongu (In/Outside: English Studies in Korea) 25: 170–189.

7.

Chung, Hye Seung and David Scott Diffrient. 2015. Movie Migrations: Transnational Genre Flows and South Korean Cinema. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press.

8.

Desser, David. 1983. “Toward a Structural Analysis of the Postwar Samurai Film.”Quarterly Review of Film & Video 8.1: 25–41.

9.

Dolar, Mladen. 1992. “Hitchcock’s Objects.” In Everything You Always Wanted to Know about Lacan but Were Afraid to Ask Hitchcock, edited by Slavoj Žižek, 31–46. London: Verso.

10.

Druxman, Michael B. 1975. Make It Again, Sam: A Survey of Movie Remakes. New York: A. S. Barnes and Co.

11.

Elley, Derek. 2008. “Review: ‘The Good, the Bad, the Weird.’” Variety (May 24). https://variety.com/2008/film/markets-festivals/the-good-the-bad-theweird-1200522089/.

12.

Festival de Cannes. “Press Conference: The Good, the Bad, the Weird.” Last modified February 13, 2018. https://www.festival-cannes.com/en/69-editions/retrospective/2008/actualites/articles/press-conference-the-good-the-badtheweird.

13.

Frayling, Christopher. 2012. Sergio Leone: Something to Do with Death. Minneapolis:University of Minnesota Press.

14.

Greenberg, Harvey R. 1998. “Raiders of the Lost Text: Remaking as Contested Homage in Always.” In Play It Again, Sam, edited by Andrew Horton and Stuart Y. McDougal, 115–130. Berkeley: University of California Press.

15.

Heinze, Rüdiger and Lucia Krämer. 2015. “Introduction: Remakes and Remaking—Preliminary Reflections.” In Remakes and Remaking: Concepts–Media–Practices, edited by Rüdiger Heinze and Lucia Krämer, 7–19. Bielefeld:Transcript Verleg.

16.

Hunt, Leon. 2011. “The Good, the Bad, and the Culturally Inauthentic: The Strange Case of the ‘Asian Western.’” Asian Cinema 22.1: 99–109.

17.

Iampolski, Mikhail. 1998. The Memory of Tiresias: Intertextuality and Film. Translated by Harsha Ram. Berkeley: University of California Press.

18.

Kitses, Jim. 1998. “Introduction: Post-modernism and The Western.” In The Western Reader, edited by Jim Kitses and Gregg Rickman, 15–31. New York: Limelight.

19.

Leitch, Thomas. 2001. “Twice-Told Tales: Disavowal and the Rhetoric of the Remake.” In Dead Ringers: The Remake in Theory and Practice, edited by Jennifer Forrest and Leonard R. Koos, 37–62. Albany: State University of New York Press.

20.

Lim, Bliss Cua. 2009. Translating Time: Cinema, the Fantastic, and Temporal Critique. Durham: Duke University Press.

21.

Miller, Cynthia J. and A. Bowdoin Van Riper, eds. 2014. International Westerns: Re-Locating the Frontier. New York: Scarecrow Press.

22.

Oh, Seung-uk. 2003. Hanguk aekshyeon yeonghwa (Korean Action Cinema). Seoul:Sallim.

23.

Park, Yu-hee. 2008. “Manju weseuteon yeongu” (A Study of the Manchuria-Western Genre). Daejungseosa yeongu (Journal of Popular Narrative) 14.2: 7–46.

24.

Rapold, Nicholas. “Kim’s ‘The Good, the Bad, the Weird’ Disappoints.” Village Voice, April 20, 2010. https://www.villagevoice.com/2010/04/20/kims-the-good-thebad-and-the-weird-disappoints/.

25.

Silver, Charles. “Akira Kurosawa’s ‘Yojimbo.’” Inside/Out: A MoMA/MoMA PS1 (blog), September 10, 2013. https://www.moma.org/explore/inside_out/2013/09/10/akira-kurosawas-yojimbo/.

26.

Stam, Robert. 2005. “Introduction: The Theory and Practice of Adaptation.” In Literature and Film: A Guide to the Theory and Practice of Film Adaptation, edited by Robert Stam and Alessandra Raengo, 1–52. Malden: Blackwell Publishing.

27.

Truffaut, François, and Helen G. Scott. 1985. Hitchcock/Truffaut: The Definitive Study of Alfred Hitchcock by François Truffaut. New York: Touchstone.

28.

Verevis, Constantine. 2006. Film Remakes. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

29.

Wills, David. 1998. “The French Remark: Breathless and Cinematic Citationality.” In Play It Again, Sam, edited by Andrew Horton and Stuart Y. McDougal, 147–161. Berkeley: University of California Press.

30.

Yoon, Hwy-Tak. 2005. “China’s Northeast Project and Korean History.” Korea Journal 45.1: 142–171.

Korea Journal

e-Submission OA Policy