The State, Gangsters, and Violence

“Friend” (Chingoo) is a Korean gangster film from 2001. It tells the story of four friends who despite their background and various career paths manages to stay in touch. The film became one of Korea’s biggest box office successes and paved the way for a newfound popularity for the gangster film genre. Korean film has since been dominated by gangster films but this popularity did not come about before the end of censorship.

In a time where gangster films had been banned in Korea, Japanese and Hong Kong cinema thrived on stories about crime, brotherhood, and dignity. In Hollywood the most recognized director from this time period was John Woo who directed famous Hong Kong gangster films like “A Better Tomorrow” (before going to Hollywood to direct the awful film “Paycheck” with Ben Affleck….). But, while these directors made international success, Korean directors were behind the curve because of censorship.

What interests me in this sense is why would the Park Chung-Hee regime, after the Yushin constitution set out to censor gangster films? In this discussion there are many aspects to talk about but I will focus on the idea of violence and violence as a relationship between the state (and institutions) and its subordinates. Slavoj Zizek argues that the only ones who are truly afraid of violence are the ones sitting on top of the state and/ or institutions. This notion comes from a deeper analysis of fascist sentiments in Italy before and after Mussolini took over power in Italy, but also that of deeper analysis of Marxist and socialist arguments about violence.

Before the takeover by Mussolini, several prominent fascists spoke widely on the idea of violence. They encouraged the people to use violence against the state and also to further violence in any circumstance the state infringed on their livelihood, however, after the takeover the same fascist argued that violence was not something the public should have access to as long as the state was legitimate (which it of course was as they were now in power). Violence is what the state needs to coerce and control its citizens and when in power and the citizens cannot have access to violence as it will undermine the role of the state.

What does all this have to do with Friend and censorship of gangster films? What I want to establish here is that there is a strong link between gangs and the state, hereunder, the Korean state of Park Chung-Hee and the following governments. Gangster films such as Friend have a weird relationship between the leaders of the gangs and the key players such as Dong-su and Joon-Suk. Like the police officers/ interrogators of Peppermint Candy these two are the ones that are expressing the overt violence of the gang: bribery, fighting, extortion and murder. Nonetheless, in the background we always have this invisible covert violence that controls the actions of Dong-su and Joon-suk. We can’t see it on screen, but we can feel it through the reactions of the two characters when they are faced with the decision of not obeying their patrons. The same can also be deduced from the case of the state. The state is always in the background covertly coercing its subordinates.

I believe that the censorship of gangster films come not from a fear of the overt violence that we are exposed to on screen, which was how films were censored in the US under the Hays laws, but as a fear of the mafia serving as an allegory for the state. Films such as Friend and other gangster films expose how the state can be seen as a criminal organization just like the mafia and so these gangster films serve to reveal the state’s dealings in both overt and covert violence and are therefore undermining the state’s legitimacy.