Analyze the following 4 passages around the idea of the Japanese empire’s policy of assimilating Koreans into its war mobilization efforts during the Asia-Pacific War, i.e., “becoming Japanese” as some scholars have called the process. First, analyze them separately and then connect your analysis of all 4 passages together at the end. Please refer to the notion of Gramscian hegemony (from Hall), Sturken and Cartwright’s definition of “ideology,” and Althusser’s notion of “interpellation.”
1) ‘You were always the smartest among us. But your upbringing still has you in thrall. You were raised in the habits and ways of Western people. You became a Westerner yourself in that Christian school. But we are in a different era now. …We mothers must fix our gaze on the road ahead and relinquish our insignificant minor emotions.’ Hyebong the mother replied: ‘I do not agree. I do not believe the road ahead of me, ahead of all of us, is so clear.’
2) ’When we go to a picture theater and watch the newsreel scenes of the Imperial Army marching to the sound of great cheers and the audience erupts in clapping, he turns to me and asks why I am quiet. ‘Why aren’t you cheering? Aren’t you happy for them?’ He scolds me endlessly….’
3) ‘He’s not my host, he’s the big-nosed Yankee! He’s crying because he’s the Yankee and all of his territories are falling—Hong Kong, Malay, he’s lost them all! He cannot touch us Japanese….’
4) No, they gloried in their nimble boys who reached for the Garuda cards so swiftly no one could stop them. An atmosphere of warmth and pleasure suffused them. Kyongja took up the Garuda pack and began to read from the cards again while Hyebong, Unyong and the boys gathered round. Outside the chill wind blew. But none of them felt the cold.
Keeping in mind Sturken and Cartwright’s notion of “iconic images” and their definition of “ideology,” analyze the following three images/characters. What are the ideologies that each of the character (or the statue or its image) represents, is interpellated into, and/or resists/subverts?
How does each “woman” achieve the feminine iconicity and how do they deconstruct this iconicity at the same time for # 1) and # 3)?
How does the character, Yŏngsik, accomplish the masculinist nationalist iconicity and how might we deconstruct it for # 2)?
1) Aesun as an iconic femme fatale (Sweet Dream)
2) Yŏngsik as a masculinist nationalist icon of resistance to the US neocolonial domination (Hell Flower)
3) The Statue of Liberty as an iconic image of the United States as a benevolent empire (the photo of POW’s in Kŏje Island)
Cite at least 1 example for each and analyze them in detail. (3 min ~ 4 max examples)
For 1) and 2), your examples could be a still scene or a short scene.