대안공동체 인문학

      2023.01.06
      Envisioning a Transnational Future in Space Sweepers (2021) - 정혜진
      Envisioning a Transnational Future in Space Sweepers (2021)

      This paper examines the Korean media industry’s recent endeavors to create content for global consumption by presenting the case study of Space Sweepers (Seungriho, Jo Sung-hee, 2021), a Korean science fiction film released worldwide on Netflix. This film exemplifies how the local and the global are converging in the Korean media ecology. I discuss this film’s transnational aspirations by focusing on its references to global science fiction and its computer-generated imagery that envisions a transnational future. I analyze how digital spaces and bodies in Space Sweepers emulate the visual vernacular produced and circulated by global Hollywood and how this film repositions a transnational imaginary within a local context by deploying Korean talent onscreen and offscreen. This analysis considers how national and transnational properties coexist in Space Sweepers by examining the film’s text and production context to identify elements of marked and unmarked transnationality in contemporary Korean media. This film integrates both local and global resources by adopting and appropriating the idioms of Hollywood science fiction cinema while utilizing Korean talent and technological expertise. This Korean science fiction film articulates how local media industries can draw upon global media texts and practices to produce content that envisions a transnational future in alternative forms of postnational communities and posthuman characters that engage with, but differ from, the hegemonic visions of global Hollywood.

      Keywords: science fiction cinema, transnational cinema, visual effects, posthuman, Space Sweepers