Tradition vs Modernity

The Korean comedy film YMCA Baseball Team, directed by Kim Hyun-seok, has many instances and scenes that portray modernity in a positive light.  One thing to note firsthand is that the modernization that is featured in this film starkly contrasts to the film screened the past weeks.  The past two films had a strong Japanese presence pertaining to the notion of modernity but in this film, the American presence stood out more not to mention baseball being a western sport.  While the Japanese presence remained as an antagonist throughout the film, the American influence was more subtle than I expected.  Their overall contribution to modernization could be almost described as analogous to the clockmaker’s theory where they just keep a backseat position throughout film despite being the main cause of the baseball team.  There is a more welcoming atmosphere to change despite the resistance of modernizing under the pretense of Japanese presence at the time.  The question arises whether modernization is analogous to westernization in this context and what the impact of that is.      

The second thing to note is how the genre of comedy plays out to present the conflict between modernization and maintaining traditional values.  Yi Ho-chang, the protagonist of the film, is the son of a scholar and his pursuit of baseball puts him in a parallax position where he is not “primitive” or completely “modernized”.  In an early scene where Yi Ho-chang discovers baseball, humour is promoted through Yi Ho-chang’s awkward introduction to the sport where an American gentleman kindly instructs him to not kick but to throw the ball.  Yi Ho-chang is portrayed as more primitive or bestial in contrast to the American gentleman in this particular humorous scene so one could ponder whether it is something completely safe to simply laugh off.  One could also say that the genre helps promote a better image of modernity to the audience in a more lighthearted manner that was not seen in the past two films. 

Lenin Amaya