Transculturation in Korean Action Films

            Crazy Boy is a Korean cinema released in 1985; the genre of the movie could be considered as an action film. The movie is about a young guy who is a manager of a girl band and never runs away from evil. The crazy boy is depicted in the movie as if he is naïve and innocent. He believes himself as a guardian angel for the girl band “Thriller”. His urge to go on fight with any evil in the movie is very clear and apparent. The audience would easily feel an impression of this movie’s resemblance with Hong Kong action films. In Kim Soyoung’s “Genre as Contact Zone: Hong Kong Action and Korean Hwalkuk”, she defines transculturation as “a phenomenon of the contact zones where subordinated or marginal groups select and invest from materials transmitted to them by a dominant or metropolitan culture (Kim 101). Since South Koreans are restricted from directly going to the Continent, Hong Kong was a place to emulate and of trendsetter for the Korean cinematic culture. It is due to Hong Kong’s economic wealth in the 1960s and 70s. Many Korean action films that resemble with the Hong Kong Action films were mostly released in the 1970s (Kim 99). Plus, transculturation is not only for Korean action films’ resemblances with Hong Kong action movies, but also Korean cinemas in the 1960s and 70s were still largely influenced from the post-colonial Japanese breeze and American culture that dominated after the Korean War. Crazy Boy no longer has the influence of the Japanese colonial authority, but it still has the influence both from Hong Kong and American from my perspective. The Crazy boy seems similar to Jackie Chan of his early days in Hong Kong actions films which action scenes are quite comical. Plus, even his look is similar to Jackie Chan. The prominence of Hong Kong films transmitted to South Korea; not only South Korea imported the Hong Kong action films, but they produced similar actions films that were originally called hwalkuk. Hwalkuk had been in Korea for a while from the Japanese colonial period; however, those films are mostly about young boy who fights against with the colonial authority due to the girl he loves is abused by the colonial force. Even though the dominant male character is still present in Crazy boy and he rescues girls from danger, this movie is quite different from the original hawlkuk. Hence, it is easily noticeable that transculturation was significant in terms of the movie production in South Korea after the colonial period when the dominant cultural materials from the United States and Hong Kong were transmitted to South Korean culture.