Let’s start by discussing the quite formidable entry on Spring, Summer at to taste.
Basically, I’m pretty sure I disagree with the author, Richard Camilleri, but he is much more eloquent than I could hope to be. Kudos, Richard, Kudos!
Anyway, he writes:
Some have argued that Ki-duk engages in “reverse Orientalism,” a self-exoticisation, essentialising national identity in a utopian pre-modern, pre-colonial imaginary as if such a space were retrievable, and uninflected by recent history (Faure). Likewise, one could designate these critics as re-orientalising, reducing through bifurcated Western categories (and as if the West isn’t far more complicated and always colonised/ing itself). Yet, it is exactly this multi-layered terrain upon which these categories converge that Ki-duk explores. Questions of orientalism, or reverse-orientalism also seem to ignore the very tangible, valued, and ubiquitous place of tradition in Korean culture; a tradition which isn’t static, but is both a ghost and a body within the present.
Richard is arguing that Orientalism is flawed because it assumes a “Western” view of the East and this relationship is always more complex as the West cannot itself be seen as static and monolithic. My view is that Kim Ki-duk is creating a national self-image that is problematic not because it is filtered through a Western gaze but because it fantasises an authentic, utopian, pre-modern, pre-colonial imaginary. The problem is not the representation of tradition in Korean culture, but rather that traditions of religion as represented in Spring, Summer are idealized and static. I guess the debate between me and Richard and Life Out of Balance is that I see the representation of rituals (the religious/Buddhist aesthetic) as static and repressive while the others see the rituals as fluid.
The problem that both of them face is the film’s cyclical structure. Richard writes:
Whilst Ki-duk seems to promote Buddhist thought and the view of samsara, he complicates things too. In the final scenes the new initiate is seen tormenting a turtle; a reflection of his master who when young tormented the snake, fish and frog. This torment prefigured his attachment to dukkha in the sexual relationship he has with his to-be wife, who he ends up murdering. “Lust awakens the desire to possess, which ends in the intent to murder.” Kim-duk seems to suggest that the logic of samsara is a hopeless one; that any positive movement (Nibbana) means nothing in a recurring universe in which murder and violence are eternal.
Ki-duk does not only paint an ideal pastoral image invaded by contemporaneity, but questions that pastoral image also as a possible triumphal illusion. The resolution to the film is continuation of a cycle of violence in which neither tradition nor modernity can be disentangled and figured as the cause.
A recurring universe in which murder and violence are eternal. A cycle of violence. This is a film obsessed with seasons, and constant, permanent cycles. It is obsessed with making universal statements and in the end Buddhist/Christian redemption prevails. The murder of the wife is not part of the cycle but Buddhism has an answer for that too. The film does show flaws in the Buddhist cycle but tries to ignore them. For example, the monks are not supposed to give in to lust but surely a lack of sex is unsustainable. Isolated from society, how is the cycle to continue? But the film isn’t about Buddhists who are fading from contemporary life or Buddhists who adapt to modern society in order to survive. They can always depend on women from “out there” to be adultering, baby-disposing whores so that the question of sustainability doesn’t have to be asked. There is certainly a criticism of Kim’s invented Buddhism evident in the film, but Kim is more interested in his super-narrative about the circle of life to give these fissures the time of day.
WHAT IS DANIEL FRAMPTON GOING ON ABOUT?
Daniel Frampton talks about film phenomenology. If Phenomenology is the philosophy of experience – the study of consciousness and the phenomena of direct experience – then film phenomenology has to deal with a film body. The film body has its own perceptive and intentional life. If this sounds like another way of bringing author’s intention into discussion, it’s not. The spectator doesn’t experience the filmmaking. There is a double experience: the filmgoer’s experience of the film and the film’s ‘experience’ of its characters and objects. He writes:
What is important about seeing film as a body is the way that it allows for social meaning – allows for a historical, situated film: a body that intends in relation to the world and other films. This other-body is thus ethically invested.
How do I consider Spring, Summer in light of all this? The film-body situates itself in a pastoral landscape, away from modern Korea, with little acknowledgement that it exists. The film’s gaze focuses on the natural beauty of water, trees, animals. What is the film doing here? It is idealizing an idea of a natural cycle. It is giving identity to Korea through images of nature and religious ritual. What does this say about the film’s subjectivity? That it perceives of Korea in essentialist terms, unwilling to engage with the vagaries of modernity and cross-cultural exchanges. What does this say about Kim Ki-duk? That he’s a simplistic hack who makes pretty images. What does this say about me? I’m a disillusioned Buddhist.
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