Chilsu and Mansu vs. Masculine Functionality

There are two aspects of Chilsu and Mansu that I'd like to focus on in this week's blog post: one being the portrayal of male crises in the film, and the other being Chilsu's belief of Americanization as the link to masculine functionality.

 

 

One facet of Chilsu and Mansu that didn't strike me until well into the film was of how dysfunctional the two male protagonists were being portrayed as. I thought that Chilsu and Mansu was very different from Kwang-su's A Single Spark in the sense that even though the male protagonists of both films were part of a lower economic class of uneducated laborers, Jeon Tae-il from A Single Spark was portrayed in a light that was filled with confidence, assertion, and self-actualization while Chilsu and Mansu both seemed to be lost in a spiral of helplessness and identity crises. And I realized that it is not the male's economic and occupational stability that really drives the idea of masculine functionality, but it is the male's capability of self-actualization and ability to understand his own intentions. In "Male Crisis in the Early Films of Park Kwang-Su" by Kim, he states that Chilsu and Mansu's "inability to explain their intentions behind their actions later results in Man-su's death and Chil-su's arrest" (138), further suggesting the need for self-awareness and self-understanding for legitimate functionality. 

Another aspect of the film that I was really interested in was the film’s ostensible obsession with American culture. The majority of the film's soundtrack contained English songs and English was spoken numerous times in the film. Chilsu seems to be most obviously obsessed with American culture, as he not only dresses in Western garb with his trendy jean on jean "Canadian tuxedo" and his t-shirt with the American flag on it, but he also has pictures of Western beaches hanging in his room. He also lies about his plans to go to Miami, which he thinks will impress Jina. But as we see time and time again, Chilsu's attempts at Americanization do not improve his state in any way, and they do not masculinize him as he is stuck in a hole of identity crisis. So is this perhaps a critique against South Korea's gradual adoption of Western culture? Is the director saying that it's useless to try to dress like Americans or talk like Americans because it will not get you to where you think it will get you?  In Kim's article, he talks about the scene that juxtaposes Chilsu's dysfunctional masculinity with his American fantasy on screen - Rocky. Kim explains that "through the activation of the spectatorial desire of a character in the movie, it... reminds Chilsu and Mansu's viewers of Chilsu's reality where his potency and masculinity have been constantly undermined. By specularizing Rocky, Chilsu's emasculation is exposed" (137). And even though Chilsu may be wearing the same type of attire as Rocky, and though he may try to speak the same language as Rocky, his adoption of these American facets that he sees on screen are futile in his journey in becoming a functional man.