이 연구는 1990~1920년대 초까지의 영화 수용 및 객관성에 대한 분석을 통해 이질적이고 외래적 시각문화가 전근대적 사회에 어떻게 배치되는가를 살피고 있다. 초기 영화의 수용은 서구에서 도시적 근대성을 상업화한 매체로서 영화의 발전과정과 비교하면 많은 변이를 뵌다. 구두문화가 지배적이었던 상황에서 완제품으로 수입된 초기 영화들은 시각적 오인과 충격을 초래하면서 전통적 문화관습과 아비투스로 영화를 오독, 해석, 수용하는 관객성을 구성하였다. 초기 영화의 수용과 경험을 매개한 전통적 문화관습은 굿판의 이행적 공간성(liminality)과 놀이, 전통연희의 유흥성과 해학성, 이질적인 시각적 이미지를 봉합한 변사와 프로그램의 이점성, 그리고 식민지 극장과 관객을 감시한 임검경찰, 종족적 집합공간으로서의 극장에 대한 집합적 기대이다. 그리고 이렇게 매개된 관객성과 영화수용이 중국, 일본, 남미, 그리고 서구의 그것과 어떻게 다른지를 논의하고 있다.
The aim of this research is to reconstitute the process of acculturation and appropriation of modern visual culture in Korea from the late 19th century to the early 1920s. Film was a key agent that drove visualization of the pre-modern colonial society which had no experience of cinematic cultural forms, such as photographs, lantern slides, including even illustrations of magazines and newspapers. It means that, for Koreans, the exposure to early cinema itself was a kind of experience of an epistemological break. In this respect, a study about the spectatorship of early cinema can allow us to understand how Koreans experienced the transition from oral culture to visual culture during the period of the Japanese occupation.
Studies on the reception and spectatorship of early cinema in non-western countries such as China, Japan, Latin America and Russia have showed that indigenous cultural conventions and cinematic habitus were mobilized in experiencing and consuming films. In summary, Korean people's receptions and experiences of the cinema during the time was culturally constituted, improvised and rearranged under colonial conditions. In particular, there are several distinctive characteristics of early cinema spectatorship in Korea. First, most of early cinema imported from the West presented and described urban mass cultural forms and astonishing aspects of the modern technology. It led the Korean masses to produce responses of astonishments, confusion, misunderstanding, misinterpretation as well as enthusiasm, as those in other pre-modern and non-industrialized countries did for their peoples. Second, the long-standing habitus and cultural conventions, which had been (un) consciously constituted through enjoying Sadang-Pae's and shaman's performances, penetrated into Koreans' cinematic experiences. For example, Korean people called a film a 'playing photograph,' and a narrator 'Gut-genngi', shama until the mid-1930s. Third, cinema in Korea was a part of exhibition program as a mix of vaudeville shows including dance and song of Kisaeng, acrobat, magic, and comic chats. And a narrator called byunsa, 辯士 had played a critical role that translated the alien screen images into understandable things for spectators who did not have enough knowledge, information and experiences about the referents of film images. Generally speaking, the narrator's oral explanation was full of improvisations, that is, his own creative version of the original films. Hence, I argue that conventional culture (un)consciously played a role in suturing the fissures between filmic signifiers and audiences' readings. Lastly, I suggest that Korean masses conceived a theatre as a legally permitted public place where gathering was possible, even though the gathering was held under the severe surveillance made by the imperial authority of military policemen.
Early cinema era in other countries, which could be defined y its distinct narrative styles and modes of exhibition, generally belongs to the period between 1897 and 1906 of 1907. However, in the case of Korea, it had lasted until the early 1920s, since its styles of narrative as well as varied formats of exhibition programming had found favor with a wide range of Koreans. In this regard, I would argue that the longevity of the styles and genres of the Korean early cinema reveals an aspect of particularity of colonial modernity in Korea.