Dominated by either protective and fatherly figures or ruthless gangsters, the Korean action movie is not an easy place to find superheroes. So when a scattered but consistent flow of movies with characters wielding powers beyond those of a human are released, the portrayal of men deviating from this standard depiction of masculinity is noteworthy. This study is an attempt to understand those characters’ transformation from bare life[1]
to superheroes in the Korean movies The Righteous Thief (2009), Haunters (2011), Psychokinesis (2018), and The Witch: Part 1, The Subversion (2018) in the context of globalization, where technological and economic advancement in areas such as biotechnology, informatics, and genetics create inequality and division among male subjectivities. Our paper argues that the superheroes, and in some cases their arch-enemies, the supervillains, that appear in these films are cases of ‘discursive practices’[2]
where the masculine subject is contested and constructed around the inexplicable power to re-draw the lines of what men should be like in terms of their work and sexuality. This represents the position in which the male subject is situated, where his struggle at being socially and economically marginalized occurs through both traditional discourses of independent and powerful masculinity and how he positions himself in relation to technology.
The men in these films are outside the system of globalized technological advancement. They lack the agency to become powerful men who control technology. Their superpowers provide them with the agency to undergo the transformation from their worthless lives to become men of power and status; that is, they are afforded the opportunity to become masters of technology. The result of this transformation varies depending on the film, but ultimately none of them are successful in their attempts to become powerful and productive. On the contrary, they become part of technology: mere elements of technological development that increasingly requires men and their masculinity to be its source, as both raw material and resource. This, we claim, is due to the fact that by being given the agency to transform, they do not ever obtain real agency: agency cannot exist if it is provided by an outside force.
[1] Agamben, Giorgio, Nudities, translated by David Kishik and Stefan Pedatella, Stanford, Calif. : Stanford University Press, 2011.
[2] Barad, Karen. 'Posthumanist performativity: Toward an understanding of how matter comes to matter.' Signs: Journal of women in culture and society 28.3, 2003