Abstract
In the early 1900, photography, magic lantern and cinema were simultaneously introduced and experienced until the mid-1910s as mysterious and magical symbol of modern science and technology. The technology of vision, cinema in particular demonstrated its commercially expandable potentials through serial films in the mid-1910s, silent cinema in the 1920s and talkies in 1930s. I argue that a metaphor 'like a movie' which was would be spoken out by peoples as a cliche ever since the late 1910s whenever they encountered something uncanny, mysterious, and looking wholly new phenomena informs how cinematic technology worked in colonial society at the turning point to the early 20th century. Mass in colonial society accepted cinema and other visual technologies not only as an advanced science of the times but as texts of modernity that is the reason why cinema had so quickly taken cultural hegemony over the colony. Until the mid-1920s, discourse on cinema focused not on cinema itself, rather more on the theatre matters such as hygiene, facilities for public use, disturbance, quarrels and fights, theft, and etc. Since the mid-1920s and especially in wartime 1930s, discourses about negative influences and effects of cinema on behavior, mind and spirit of masses, bodily health, morality and crime were articulated and delivered by Japanese authorities and agencies like as police, newspapers and magazines, and collaborate Korean intellectuals. Theories and research reports stemming from disciplines of psychology, sociology, and mass-psychology that emphasized vulnerability and susceptibility of the crowd and mass consumers who would be exposed to visual images, spectacles and strong toxic stimulus in everyday lives. Those negative discourse on influences and effects of cinema was intimately associated with fear of the crowd and mass as well as new technology which does not allow clear understanding about how it works in future. The fact that cinema as a technology of vision could be used as an apparatus of ideology and propaganda stirred up doubts and pessimistic perspectives on cinema influence. Discourse on visual technology cinema constructed under colonial governance is doomed to be technology of mass control for empire's own sake.
사진, 환등, 영화는 20세기 전반기의 경이롭고 마술적인 시각 기술, 1910년대 중반 상업적 가능성을 확인시킨 시기를 거쳐, 1920~1930년대 내내 문화적 패권을 향유한 유일한 미디어였다. 처음부터 근대적 오락으로 소비된 시각 미디어들에 대한 담론은 1920년대 초반까지 영화보다는 관객이 집합하는 공간인 극장 통제, 즉 군중 통제에 역점을 두고 구성되었다. 그러다 영화 자체가 현대적 문화와 미학의 표준이 된 1920년대 중반 이후 무성영화시대에는 당대의 지배적 학문 분야들인 심리학, 사회학, 대중 심리학의 개념과 이론을 적용하여 영화가 대중에게 미치는 강력한 도덕, 심리, 정신면의 부정적 영향을 강조하게 된다. 이데올로기 도구이자 동시에 근대 리얼리즘의 재현 매체로서 가능성을 지닌 시각 기술과 그것의 정점에 있는 영화의 영향을 부정적으로 규정해 간 것이다. 이 연구는 이러한 '식민적 미디어 영향 담론'이 처음부터 통치의 문제였으며 상업적 소비대중과 저항적 군중 통제를 위한 담론이었음을 주장하였다. 주목해야 할 사실은 이를 통해 일제의 식민지 통치성이 부단히 세계적, 보편적 사유와 지적흐름을 수용하면서 구성되어 갔지만 식민지 대중의 동의를 얻는 데는 실패한 담론이었다는 점이다.
