While I was
watching the movie, quite a number of questions came up to my mind. So I have
decided to throw some questions mainly related to the songs that were sang in
the movie, and the Cholla or Honam region.
First, why is it ‘Sopyonje’ but not
‘Dongpyonje’? According to Stringer, the style in which the actors sing pansori
is similar to Dongpyonje than Sopyonje (Stringer, 174). But why would the title
be kept as Sopyonje?
According
to Yubong, “In Sopyonje, han should
be able to pierce one’s heart as if it were being cut by a knife…” Also,
Stringer mentioned that Sopyonje is “the western school that prevailed in the
Cholla or Honam region” (Stringer, 174). In that case, is ‘han’ part the reason for it being Sopyonje instead of Dongpyonje? As
mentioned in class few weeks ago, the Cholla province is discriminated from
other provinces, such as Kyongsang Province. I was taught back in Korea that
the Honam region has been underdeveloped for centuries since its physical
location is so far from Hanyang (the capital). So it was difficult for Seonbi
(classical scholars) to travel to the capital to take the state examination, and
thus there were not many high officials produced from the region. If the sorrow
of being the ‘backward province’ of Korea is related to han, then maybe that is one of the reasons for Sopyonje to contain
more han then Dongpyonje. (Then would
regionalism/ local feelings be a result of han
as well?)
Moving on, the two main pansoris
that Yubong and Songhwa sang was interesting to look at in more depth. One of
them was Simcheongjun, which basically is a story where the daughter,
Simcheong, sacrifices herself in order to make his blind father (Simbongsa)
regain his sight. During the movie, I felt that Songhwa was similar to
Simcheong in that she sacrifices her vision to let his father achieve his
obsession toward the perfect sori.
Another
song is Chunhyangjun, and I thought this song was chosen not only because of
its popularity, but also because of the physical setting in which the story
takes (the setting of Chunhyangjun is Namwon, Cholla Province).
Moreover,
I would like to mention the “Chindo Arirang”. This is the song that is
performed by Yubong, Songhwa and Dongho in the middle of the road, where they
suddenly stop walking and start dancing and singing on the road. Arirang* is one
of the representative traditional folk song of Korea, which has different
versions according to the region. Of course in this case, Chindo Arirang comes
from the southern province.
As I was making connections of the
movie and the Cholla region, I came across the fact that many people regarding
the Sopyonje are related to Cholla province. The original author of Sopyonje
(Chung-joon Lee) the director of the film (Kwon-taek Lim), the scriptwriter/
Yubong (Myongkon Kim) and Songhwa (Jeonghe Oh) were all from Cholla region. (Another
interesting fact is that Jeonghe Oh was elected as the Miss Chunhyang in 1992.)
I personally enjoyed the movie, since
I am used to Chunhyangjun and Simcheongjun (my cousin learned pansori for
couple of years). However, the reality in Korea is that many people are not
that interested in the traditional sori of Korea, and since pansori is an
intangible cultural asset, it will face greater challenges unless there are
more people who are willing to become masters of pansori (myongchang).
*Side note: Here are some flash mobs of Arirang
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