Technologies of anamorphic vision: Widescreen cinema and postwar modernity in Japan and South Korea.
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文摘
This dissertation,"Technologies of Anamorphic Vision: Widescreen Cinema and Postwar Modernity in Japan and South Korea," investigates the technological,cultural,and aesthetic practices and experiences involved in Japanese and South Korean widescreen film cultures from the mid-1950s to the mid-1970s. While various widescreen processes were developed by the Hollywood film industry in the 1950s,widescreen film technology was used in Japan and South Korea more persistently and pervasively. Having converted almost all of their postwar films to widescreen cinema with the 1:2.35 aspect ratio in the late 1950s and early 1960s,both Japan and South Korea were major countries of the mass production and mass consumption of widescreen cinema until the mid-1970s. This technological and temporal synchronicity is even more intriguing when we consider that almost no substantial filmic exchanges took place between the two countries until 1998. In my dissertation,I demonstrate the significance of widescreen technology and widescreen aesthetics in examining transnational East Asian cinema as well as the relationship between cinema and technology. It aims to contribute to expanding the scope of the studies of film technology and to offer a fresh approach to the field of transnational East Asian cinema studies. Based on historical research and textual analysis,my work first addresses the social and cultural forces that led Japan and South Korea to firmly establish widescreen film cultures and standardize the widescreen cinematic form. Second,it examines the widescreen aesthetics explored in postwar Japanese and South Korean films. Third,it looks at the mediating role that Hollywood played in shaping the temporal and technological synchronicity in the postwar film cultures of Japan and South Korea. These issues are explored through the threefold meaning of "anamorphic vision." Anamorphic vision first refers to the technological and material aspects of the Japanese and South Korean widescreen system that used anamorphic lenses to form the screen with the l:2.35 aspect ratio. Second,anamorphic vision implies the allegorical dimension of postwar film practices that employed multiple perspectives on postwar representations of wartime or colonial experiences. Finally,it suggests a triptych of Japan,Hollywood,and South Korea in making widescreen film culture transnational. Chapter one and two trace the process of adopting widescreen technologies and establishing the widescreen film culture in Japan and South Korea,focusing on the transitional period from the mid-1950s to the early 1960s. Chapter three and four are dedicated to discussions about widescreen aesthetics and spectatorship. Within this context,the Japanese historical film,Emperor Meiji and the Great Russo-Japanese War 1958) and the South Korean Manchurian action films,The Continent on Fire 1965) and The Man with No Home 1968) are analyzed in depth. In my dissertation,I argue that anamorphic widescreen cinema not only rebuilt the postwar film cultures of Japan and South Korea,but also produced a contentious visual field in which the viewer struggled to see a new vision of a postwar nation,wavering between wonder and skepticism.