The Après Girl: Character and Plot
Christina Klein
Chapter from the book: Klein, C. 2020. Cold War Cosmopolitanism: Period Style in 1950s Korean Cinema.
Part of
Chapter from the book: Klein, C. 2020. Cold War Cosmopolitanism: Period Style in 1950s Korean Cinema.
The chapter begins the focus on Han Hyung-mo’s film style. It offers an analysis of the plot and characterization in his most famous film, Madame Freedom (1956), in comparison to the novel by Jeong Bi-seok on which it was based. Focusing on the “après girl” protagonist, it shows how the film stages a debate between the Confucian ideal of woman as wife and mother within a patriarchal family, and the liberal ideal of the woman as individual subject. The chapter introduces the idea of visceral cosmopolitanism, and traces the figure of the après girl through Han’s oeuvre and through the larger body of postwar women’s pictures, many of which eschew traditional depictions of female suffering and han.
Klein, C. 2020. The Après Girl: Character and Plot. In: Klein, C, Cold War Cosmopolitanism. California: University of California Press. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1525/luminos.85.e
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Published on Jan. 21, 2020