tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7805792966316850332.post8989424961469635785..comments2024-03-18T23:04:03.412+01:00Comments on Modern Korean Cinema: Top 10 Korean Films of 2019conranphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13799505413464310212noreply@blogger.comBlogger92125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7805792966316850332.post-13772845898308785912020-04-23T14:58:05.796+02:002020-04-23T14:58:05.796+02:00Thanks for this post! I didn't watch these mov...Thanks for this post! I didn't watch these movies but after reading your blog definitely I will try to watch these movies.Aileen Rodriguezhttps://crossflix.com/noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7805792966316850332.post-6826185418450721852020-02-24T09:05:47.755+01:002020-02-24T09:05:47.755+01:00No-one said macho movies were wrong, not pierce or...No-one said macho movies were wrong, not pierce or thersists or william. They were talking about companies making too many macho movies and too few female-centric movies. I'm female too and I gotta admit I loooove a good macho movie with lots of action and manly eye candy. I really enjoyed Ashfall! Thersites and william were a bit harsh about it haha. Ameldahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04647589503389165726noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7805792966316850332.post-69713432707752020642020-02-24T07:32:12.428+01:002020-02-24T07:32:12.428+01:00Really? I didn't read every single comment her...Really? I didn't read every single comment here, but i thought thersites was right about william's arguments, including all that stuff about pierce being homophobic & spreading fake news about the death of the Korean film industry. Weird cuz I thought pierce sounded like he was just wondering about the possibility of Korean film producers maybe trying to please the trolls. And he doesn't say anything about the money side of the industry as a whole.<br /><br />I got no problem with William saying that Pierce doesn't provide any proof for saying whatever, like films are being made for Korean antifeminist keyboard trolls or something. But then william says that films are definitely NOT being made for antifem keyboard trolls. And it is pierce's duty to prove what he says is wrong. But W says logically he cannot prove that what he says is right. Huh??? So W says P is spreading fake news even though it's obvious that P is just giving his opinion? But it is ok for W to say something that can never be proved right, and can only be proved wrong?!?Ameldahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04647589503389165726noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7805792966316850332.post-73688349943142929472020-02-21T14:27:52.911+01:002020-02-21T14:27:52.911+01:00Wow, this William Schwartz guy really destroyed ev...Wow, this William Schwartz guy really destroyed every arguments to shreads. I'm quite impressed and can't say I don't agree with him... I'm not an expert but when Conran said the industry was struggling I was surprised as I've only been receiving news of its growth and the increased financial investments it was receiving.<br /><br />Also, surprised by his comments on the keyboard warriors, it smacked of virtue signaling that left a bad taste in my mouth.<br /><br />Btw, what is wrong with 'masculine' movies? They shouldn't be directly equated to sexist anti feminist movies, though they can certainly overlap at times. It's a style, feminine movies and certainly dramas, are made all the time (I binge watch these all the time- I'm a woman by the way).<br />I mean this from an artistic and social perspective rather than a revenue perspective of whether it can still generate stable profits.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7805792966316850332.post-56523656214068353942020-02-19T17:27:43.277+01:002020-02-19T17:27:43.277+01:00"I never described Korean film today as utter..."I never described Korean film today as utterly untouched by anti-feminist influence. I described their relative influence as nonexistent."<br /><br />Ok I'll rephrase that. It would be nice if you could offer some support for your claim that there is no anti-feminist influence on Korean film today. But of course you can't. In your own words, you "can't prove that the Korean film industry haven't been influenced" by anti-feminist keyboard warriors.thersiteshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03279635855183206530noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7805792966316850332.post-59022145263760495672020-02-19T04:14:08.790+01:002020-02-19T04:14:08.790+01:00From a logical perspective you can prove it, becau...From a logical perspective you can prove it, because unlike Bigfoot trolls actually exist. But from a practical perspective, it would indeed be impossible for any one person. thersiteshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03279635855183206530noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7805792966316850332.post-49452869858883988242020-02-19T04:10:24.341+01:002020-02-19T04:10:24.341+01:00I didn't know he was receiving death threats e...I didn't know he was receiving death threats either. That's terrible. thersiteshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03279635855183206530noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7805792966316850332.post-89093141093259469042020-02-19T02:09:21.445+01:002020-02-19T02:09:21.445+01:00I really don't think you're in any positio...I really don't think you're in any position to accuse others of having trouble following an argument when you've done everything in your power to try and drag this conversation away from actually discussing Korean film.William Schwartzhttp://www.hancinema.netnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7805792966316850332.post-207421917275121612020-02-19T02:06:24.621+01:002020-02-19T02:06:24.621+01:00I did not realize that Conran was receiving death ...I did not realize that Conran was receiving death threats for threatening to expose the death grip misogynist keyboard warriors have on the South Korean film industry. This certainly explains why he doesn't post on this blog very much anymore.William Schwartzhttp://www.hancinema.netnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7805792966316850332.post-91527500446533902142020-02-19T02:03:51.249+01:002020-02-19T02:03:51.249+01:00You might want to try to read my posts again. I ne...You might want to try to read my posts again. I never described Korean film today as utterly untouched by anti-feminist influence. I described their relative influence as nonexistent.William Schwartzhttp://www.hancinema.netnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7805792966316850332.post-92145781199732823332020-02-19T01:58:43.145+01:002020-02-19T01:58:43.145+01:00From a logical perspective I can't prove that ...From a logical perspective I can't prove that the Korean film industry haven't been influenced by anything. It doesn't have to be misogynist keyboard warriors. We could just as well be talking about Russian bots, drag queens, immigrant wives, construction workers or, yes, even Bigfoot. You have framed this entire discussion in a way that is outrageously beneficial to Conran's point regardless of how ridiculous that point is.William Schwartzhttp://www.hancinema.netnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7805792966316850332.post-66067448465382012662020-02-19T01:40:25.575+01:002020-02-19T01:40:25.575+01:00Yes the actress who criticised the government duri...Yes the actress who criticised the government during the mad cow disease crisis probably kept very quiet while receiving online death threats etc for fear of being mocked. But if she'd had any theories about the cyberbullies being more than ordinary netizens, she would still have been right. thersiteshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03279635855183206530noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7805792966316850332.post-64127880449558351652020-02-19T01:37:46.153+01:002020-02-19T01:37:46.153+01:00Glad you agree. It would be nice if you could offe...Glad you agree. It would be nice if you could offer some support for your assertion that Korean film today is utterly untouched by anti-feminist influence, too.thersiteshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03279635855183206530noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7805792966316850332.post-63368011785317750662020-02-19T01:36:46.461+01:002020-02-19T01:36:46.461+01:00"It is obviously preposterous to expect me to..."It is obviously preposterous to expect me to demonstrate that literally every single person involved in the Korean film industry has never observed the existence of misogynist trolls"<br /><br />You are misrepresenting my argument again. I didn't say you had to prove that every person in the Korean film industry has "never observed etc". I said you had to prove that they have never been INFLUENCED etc". And yes it is preposterous to expect you to demonstrate it. That your claim is virtually impossible to support makes it even more problematic than Conran's. It's not just that you refuse to support it - you don't even have the ability to support it. Of course you may have no scruples about making unsupportable and hence unsupported claims. But that'd mean that your 'calling out' Conran for making 'any ridiculous statement he wants' is a case of the pot calling the kettle black. How you can actually 'call him out' and not realise how hypocritical it sounds is beyond me. thersiteshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03279635855183206530noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7805792966316850332.post-42496557344392730012020-02-19T01:24:13.390+01:002020-02-19T01:24:13.390+01:00I apologise for misjudging you too. I was aware yo...I apologise for misjudging you too. I was aware you had trouble following an argument, but clearly you have much more trouble than I'd expected. <br /><br />I didn't defend the men accused in #metoo. I quoted some far-from-obscure, non-political reasons given by young male anti-feminists, and explicitly said that such reasons were not well-founded. In short, rather than expressing sympathy for anti-feminists, whether they are on the left or right, all I was saying was that not all anti-feminists are political conservatives, contrary to what you claim. thersiteshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03279635855183206530noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7805792966316850332.post-69993159175222736432020-02-19T00:09:51.055+01:002020-02-19T00:09:51.055+01:00If no one had carried out a proper investigation, ...If no one had carried out a proper investigation, or if somebody had carried out a proper investigation and failed to find evidence for it, anyone making such claims would have been rightly dismissed as a conspiracy theorist and roundly mocked.William Schwartzhttp://www.hancinema.netnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7805792966316850332.post-91061662470672574332020-02-19T00:05:38.207+01:002020-02-19T00:05:38.207+01:00I agree. Which is why it would have been nice for ...I agree. Which is why it would have been nice for Conran to offer a single shred of support for his assertion that Korean film today is dominated by films designed to appeal to antifeminist keyboard warriors.William Schwartzhttp://www.hancinema.netnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7805792966316850332.post-55091762297124666632020-02-19T00:02:40.972+01:002020-02-19T00:02:40.972+01:00This is why the burden of proof is on him and not ...This is why the burden of proof is on him and not me. It is obviously preposterous to expect me to demonstrate that literally every single person involved in the Korean film industry has never observed the existence of misogynist trolls. It is also equally preposterous for Conran to be able to make any ridiculous statement he wants without fear of contradiction so long as he phrases it in such a way that literally one unknowable thought from any random person would suffice to prove him technically correct. How you can actually specifically phrase the sentiment in such a way and not realize how idiotic it sounds is beyond me.William Schwartzhttp://www.hancinema.netnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7805792966316850332.post-11102380185782583432020-02-18T23:53:14.116+01:002020-02-18T23:53:14.116+01:00I apologize. I misjudged you. This entire time I a...I apologize. I misjudged you. This entire time I assumed that you were defending Conran because you agreed with his political beliefs. It never occurred to me that you were actually sympathetic to the arguments presented by alt-right trolls to try and frame their misogyny as being a commonly held mainstream opinion.William Schwartzhttp://www.hancinema.netnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7805792966316850332.post-13428064195057014132020-02-18T18:37:06.399+01:002020-02-18T18:37:06.399+01:00Perhaps a more relevant example is the one of Kore...Perhaps a more relevant example is the one of Korea's NIS's own keyboard warriors trolling critics of the government, e.g. the actress who criticised the government for importing beef from America during the mad cow disease crisis. Many people would have assumed that the trolls were just nasty keyboard warriors. Even if anyone had suspected otherwise, there was simply no evidence of a systematic government-organised cyberbullying campaign. So if no one had carried out a proper investigation and managed to find evidence for it, are we supposed to just accept that it didn't exist?thersiteshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03279635855183206530noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7805792966316850332.post-50728434659205748562020-02-18T18:03:17.875+01:002020-02-18T18:03:17.875+01:00Lastly, comparing a trend to Bigfoot is also simpl...Lastly, comparing a trend to Bigfoot is also simplistic. Bigfoot is a large hairy mammal that either exists or doesn't (it doesn't). But trends are not always concrete, and certainly not always visible to the untrained or even naked eye. E.g. many of us assume that internet shopping is the main enemy of bricks and mortar shops, but a recent University of Chicago study found that it's superstores and hypermarkets that are undermining bricks and mortar shops as much as, possibly more than, online commerce. Just because the relevant figures are not accessible or evident to the layman, and need to be unearthed by someone in the know, doesn't mean that the trend doesn't exist. thersiteshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03279635855183206530noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7805792966316850332.post-68667582929851764022020-02-18T17:23:53.889+01:002020-02-18T17:23:53.889+01:00Since you live in Korea, I thought you'd be aw...Since you live in Korea, I thought you'd be aware that the feminist/anti-feminist divide does not coincide exactly with the left/right divide. <br /><br />Firstly, developments in the last couple of years with regard to the #metoo movement clearly indicate that misogyny is alive and well among the left-leaning, e.g. several political figures associated with the Moon Jae-in government; important cultural figures like Ko Un and Lee Yoon-taek. According to the Korea Herald, a podcast host by the name of Kim O-joon even accused people of using #metoo to attack the left.<br /><br />Secondly, the backlash against #metoo has seen a disturbingly large number of young men turning against feminism. According to a Dec 2018 report at realmeter.net, 76% of men in their twenties are anti-feminist. I’m not convinced that 76% of twenty-something Korean men are also right-wing, especially as the reasons they give for their anti-feminism don't seem to have much to do with politics. Rather, they appear to be personal and economic reasons: e.g. indignation over being tarred with the same brush as earlier, more overtly misogynist generations of men; dismay at men-only compulsory conscription; the belief that the government is giving more education/employment opportunities to women rather than to themselves (which is also related to their having to be stuck in the army for two years). To put it another way, at least some men (and young men at that) believe that they are being oppressed, being lorded over by women. Many online critics of Kim Ji-young expressed similar sentiments - that, contrary to the novel/film's theme, women are in many ways in a much stronger position than men. <br /><br />I’m not saying that such reasons and sentiments are well-founded. And of course many people trolling Kim Ji-young, Mrs and Miss Cop, etc really are alt-right types. But the idea that all Korean anti-feminist keyboard warriors are conservatives is simplistic. Some of them may be motivated by socio-economic circumstances quite distinct from straightforward political conservatism. <br /> thersiteshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03279635855183206530noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7805792966316850332.post-39922354184039128332020-02-18T16:38:36.006+01:002020-02-18T16:38:36.006+01:00"If there is no evidence that South Korean fi..."If there is no evidence that South Korean film is catering to trolls then the default assumption is that they aren't."<br /><br />I didn't say there wasn't any evidence. I said YOU didn't have any evidence. You keep saying that Conran is presenting his opinion as objective truth. You don't seem to realise that a negative claim like your own, i.e. that production companies are NOT AT ALL influenced by anti-feminist keyboard warriors, is much stronger than his. All he needs to do is to show that some film executive somewhere in Korea has, say, decided to make more male-centric films in order to avoid being trolled. You, on the other hand, need to show that absolutely nobody in Korea - not a single person involved in filmmaking in Korea - is in the least affected by misogynist trolls. But I forgot: you say you are under no obligation to provide evidence for this very strong claim that you've made, and indeed you have provided no evidence at all. <br /><br />That things were undeniably looking up for women in Korean cinema in 2019 does not prove that misogynist trolls have no influence whatsoever on the film industry. Unless we are privy to what goes on in the offices and boardrooms of production companies, we won’t know for certain whether trolls influence their policies and decisions. Submitting to an anti-feminist agenda doesn’t even have to involve producing misogynistic or ultra-macho films. One way of doing so could simply be to continue letting male-centric (though innocuous and in many cases excellent) films like Ashfall, Extreme Job, The Battle: Roar to Victory, Along With The Gods, A Taxi Driver, etc dominate the market.<br /><br />Celebs and their production companies ostensibly doing little or nothing about trolls proves nothing either. We don’t know, for example, whether the social media accounts of some celebs are being “curated” or at least vetted by their production companies, and how much any such intervention might have to do with causing as little offence (real or imagined) to netizens as possible. Nor do we know the extent to which trolls might have affected the lives and careers of celebs. People like Jung Yu-mi are A-listers, but even so, unless we’re their close associates, we won’t know for sure that their personal and professional paths have not been constrained in any way by trolling. <br /><br />Finally, note that none of the above is incompatible with the recent pro-woman advances made in the area. As I’ve already mentioned, an industry is not a uniform entity. Enlightened and less enlightened sectors could exist side by side. Even a production company isn’t a uniform entity, since it could very well make a woman-centric film while simultaneously throwing a sop to misogynist trolls, all in the name of selling tickets to as many demographic groups as possible. thersiteshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03279635855183206530noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7805792966316850332.post-7290043728826841822020-02-18T15:07:17.947+01:002020-02-18T15:07:17.947+01:00I'm at a bit of a loss trying to imagine a per...I'm at a bit of a loss trying to imagine a person so angry about Kim Jiyoung Born 1982 that they would make trolly Internet posts about it but not identify their political ideology as conservative. Have you actually seen Kim Jiyoung Born 1982 or are you just making assumptions about it based on Conran's description here where he never actually explains what the movie's about?William Schwartzhttp://www.hancinema.netnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7805792966316850332.post-57784223617129487252020-02-18T14:37:23.453+01:002020-02-18T14:37:23.453+01:00If there is no evidence that South Korean film is ...If there is no evidence that South Korean film is catering to trolls then the default assumption is that they aren't. Stop pretending like you're occupying some kind of reasonable middle ground on the issue. Either the trend exists or it doesn't exist. I am under no more obligation to prove that it doesn't exist than I am to prove that Bigfoot doesn't exist.William Schwartzhttp://www.hancinema.netnoreply@blogger.com