• Journal of Popular Narrative
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• v.25 no.4
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• pp.361-395
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• 2019

This paper take a media archaeological approach to cinema transformed into a narrative medium during its transitional period, 1903-1915. To accomplish this, I will explore the question of as which narrative medium cinema was imagined and also how it was institutionalized as a narrative medium with authorship. I will explain that the imaginary and real ideas and changes on cinema resonated with each other on the foundation of its technological aspects such as indexicality, 23 frames/sec. and montage. It was during the transitional period that cinema was transformed from a medium representing spectacle to a medium of narration. The establishment of the American film copyright law in 1912 was an institutional, real outcome from the contemporary understanding of cinema as a narrative medium. At the same time, various ideas emerged that led to imagining of cinema as a complete narrative medium, incomparable to any other. From a media archaeological perspective, the imaginary ideas of media resonate with their actual course of development. These imaginary ideas are not just imaginary, but rather reflect the contemporary desire for the medium. This paper looks into the transitional period based on this media archaeological point of view. To this end, this paper will briefly introduce the notion of media archaeology as a media theory and then discuss Eric Kluitenberg's concept of 'an archaeology of imaginary media' and its methodologies. Second, it will explore literary and cinematic imagining of cinema as a powerful medium of storytelling, while discussing the ways in which cinema's technological characteristics played a decisive role in these imaginings. Also to show the techno-deterministic role of cinema in the real world, this paper will explore how its technological characteristics were considered as an important element in the processes through which America's first motion picture copyright was institutionalized in 1912 after two historical copyright cases: one is Edison v. Lubin in 1903 and Kalem v. Harper Brothers in 1909. Ultimately, this paper will lead us to an understanding of the history of cinema as a medium and its developments in more multi-layed way, as communication between the real and imaginary, and give us perspectives toward what cinema is.

• Asia Marketing Journal
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• v.12 no.2
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• pp.1-25
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• 2010

Motion pictures are so typical experience goods that consumers tend to look for more credible information. Hence, movie audiences consider movie viewers' reviews more important than the information provided by the film distributor. Recently many portal sites allow consumers to post their reviews and opinions so that other people check the number of consumer reviews and scores before going to the theater. There are a few previous researches studying the electronic word of mouth(eWOM) effect in the movie industry. They found that the volume of eWOM influenced the revenue of the movie significantly but the valence of eWOM did not affect it much (Liu 2006). The goal of our research is also to investigate the eWOM effects in general. But our research is different from the previous studies in several aspects. First, we study the eWOM effect in Korean movie industry. In other words, we would like to check whether we can generalize the results of the previous research across countries. The similar econometric models are applied to Korean movie data that include 746,282 consumer reviews on 439 movies. Our results show that both the valence(RATING) and the volume(LNMSG) of the eWOM influence weekly movie revenues. This result is different from the previous research findings that the volume only influences the revenue. We conjectured that the difference of self construal between Asian and American culture may explain this difference (Kitayama 1991). Asians including Koreans have more interdependent self construal than American, so that they are easily affected by other people's thought and suggestion. Hence, the valence of the eWOM affects Koreans' choice of the movie. Second, we find the critical defect of the previous eWOM models and, hence, attempt to correct it. The previous eWOM model assumes that the volume of eWOM (LNMSG) is an independent variable affecting the movie revenue (LNREV). However, the revenue can influence the volume of the eWOM. We think that treating the volume of eWOM as an independent variable a priori is too restrictive. In order to remedy this problem, we employed a simultaneous equation in which the movie revenue and the volume of the eWOM can affect each other. That is, our eWOM model assumes that the revenue (LNREV) and the volume of eWOM (LNMSG) have endogenous relationship where they influence each other. The results from this simultaneous equation model showed that the movie revenue and the eWOM volume interact each other. The movie revenue influences the eWOM volume for the entire 8 weeks. The reverse effect is more complex. Both the volume and the valence of eWOM affect the revenue in the first week, but only the volume affect the revenue for the rest of the weeks. In the first week, consumers may be curious about the movie and look for various kinds of information they can trust, so that they use the both the quantity and quality of consumer reviews. But from the second week, the quality of the eWOM only affects the movie revenue, implying that the review ratings are more important than the number of reviews. Third, our results show that the ratings by professional critics (CRATING) had negative effect to the weekly movie revenue (LNREV). Professional critics often give low ratings to the blockbuster movies that do not have much cinematic quality. Experienced audiences who watch the movie for fun do not trust the professionals' ratings and, hence, tend to go for the low-rated movies by them. In summary, applied to the Korean movie ratings data and employing a simultaneous model, our results are different from the previous eWOM studies: 1) Koreans (or Asians) care about the others' evaluation quality more than quantity, 2) The volume of eWOM is not the cause but the result of the revenue, 3) Professional reviews can give the negative effect to the movie revenue.

• (The) Research of the performance art and culture
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• no.43
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• pp.47-78
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• 2021

This study was written to examine the acceptance of pansori in movies based on pansori, and to explore changes in modern society's perception and expectations of pansori. A pansori is getting the love of the upper and lower castes in the late Joseon period, but loses the status at the time of the Japanese colonial rule and Korean War. In response, the country designated pansori as an important intangible cultural asset in 1964 to protect the disappearance of pansori. Until the 1980s, however, pansori did not gain popularity by itself. After the 2000s, Pansori tried to breathe in with the contemporary public due to the socio-cultural demand to globalize our culture. And now Pansori is one of the most popular cultures in the world today, as the pop band Feel the Rhythm of KOREA shows. The changing public perception of pansori and its status in modern society can also be seen in the mass media called movies. This study explored the process of this change with six films based on pansori, from "Seopyeonje" directed by Lim Kwon-taek in 1993 to the film "The Singer" in 2020. First, the films "Seopyeonje" and "Hwimori" were produced in the 1990s. Both of these films show the reality of pansori, which has fallen out of public interest due to the crisis of transmission in the early and mid-20th century. And in the midst of that, he captured the scene of a singer struggling fiercely for the artistic completion of Pansori itself. Next, look at the film "Lineage of the Voice" in 2008 and "DURESORI: The Voice of East" in 2012. These two films depict the growth of children who perform art, featuring contemporary children who play pansori and Korean traditional music. Pansori in these films is no longer an old piece of music, nor is it a sublime art that is completed in harsh training. It is only naturally treated as one of the contemporary arts. Finally, "The Sound of a Flower" in 2015 and "The Singer" in 2020. The two films constructed a story from Pansori's history based on the time background of the film during the late Joseon Dynasty, when Pansori was loved the most by the people. This reflects the atmosphere of the times when traditions are used as the subject of cultural content, and shows the changed public perception of pansori and the status of pansori.