The Nationalist Caricature and Historiography

I believe I speak for many when I say that Dachimawa Lee is hands down the most bizarre film that we've viewed this semester. The film, which can be considered the bizarre love child of Austin Powers/Mr. Bean/James Bond and Korean cinema, is without a doubt a giant force. Its use of hyperbolic acting, extravagant characters, jargon-like foreign languages, and a highly improbably narrative make it a recognizable spoof (a caricature, in other words) of the "womanizing spy" genre. The film ends with a "victory" for Dachimawa Lee and the struggling independence movement in Korea after the retrieval of the coveted golden Buddha statue and the defeat of the Japanese and Chinese villains. One can chose to interpret the film at face value as a giant slapstick comedy, or attempt to deconstruct the political statements it may be making about Japanese occupation of Korea in the 1940's. It is clear that in Dachimawa Lee, as well as the other films we have studied this semester, a one-sided depiction of nationalism is constantly at play.

"Nationalist paradigms have so dominated intellectual life in Korea that they have obfuscated, subsumed, or obliterated virtually all other possible modes of historical interpretation."

- Eckert 366 

Whatever the chosen interpretation may be of the films we have studied, it is important to take the implications of such analysis into account. In the epilogue of Colonial Modernity in Korea, Carter J. Eckert recounts the fictional story of one of the infamous Jeju woman divers, and how the misinterpretation of her revolt during occupation ruined her life. "Assigning meaning and value to the old woman's story only insofar as it affirms a ready-made ideological stereotype denies the old woman her humanity by reducing her to a caricature"(365).  Eckert uses the fictional story of this old woman to pinpoint the potential harms of a nationalist-fuelled historiography. He argues that films, poems, novels, and ideas have all been screened through a "myopic nationalist lens" that designates heroes (e.g. Dachimawa Lee), victims, and perpetrators. He states that such analysis create a diachronic depiction of good and evil, and leave little room for a more objective view of history. Eckert therefore calls upon a change in the nationalist paradigm and the writing of history, emphasizing the importance of pluralism and the multi-dimensional quality of human life and societies.

While I agree that history should be written, and often represented, as objectively as possible, such a task seems nearly impossible especially when writing about colonial Korea. How can a more "removed" or non-nationalist view of the country's history be represented, say, in film, without angering many? How can one both avoid blind nationalism and the trope of Korea as the perpetual victim simultaneously? Is it ever possible to look at history from a truly objective perspective, when factors such as the atrocities of war and colonialism are involved?