Macho Man

It seems that through out both films, the characters are trying to prove their masculinity.


Take for example Yong-ho's acting audition where he is enraged at the director using his wounds to sell the movie. Since actors are clearly used to sell a movie, we know the reason Yong-ho is mad is not the one he claims. Instead he is mad at being the object looked upon. In allowing people to see him wounded, or in Cho's words, in allowing "a mark of his impaired masculinity, to be spectacularized on the screen." Then Yong-ho tries to regain his masculinity by robbing a bank thus trying to become an outlaw hero, a very manly image.

There are other areas where there is gender role reversal, and the man are in a position usually occupied by the female. Ch'or-ho constantly suffering from family crisis or his rotten tooth, Yong-ho being the object of gaze, and even Myong-suk's fiancee losing his leg.

It seems that the character's delay into regaining their masculinity brings about trouble. Mi-ri, for example, cannot see Yong-ho until he has obtained a job. Ch'or-ho's trouble also seem to end once his impairment, his tooth, is fixed.

What I'm trying to say is that masculinity seems necessary for things to go right and the characters fantasize in obtaining this by imitating Western/Hollywood stereotypes.
I think Cho summarizes it best in the following:

" The Yong-ho plot is therefore , the representation of the fantasy of a South Korean man who dreams of regaining his lost masculinity by identifying himself with a male figure modeled on Hollywood iconography. [...] The colonized male who is feminized and disempowered by the colonizer fantasizes his empowerement through mimicry of the image of the colonizer, believing that he can recuperate his masculinity through irritation."

It seems this is necessary in cinema and perhaps society too. Alot of people seem to look at Hollywood for an adequate standard. In one of Luis Urrea's books, Across the Wire, Urrea speaks of orphan children living in "dompes" or landfills in Tijuana, Mexico. To help these kids Urrea and friends got a company to donate shoes. Unfortunately none of these shoes matched so Von, one of Urrea's friends, devised a plan to get the boys to wear the shoes. Since mismatched shoes seemed to hurt the boys' masculinity, they told the boys that mismatched shoes was a trend in Hollywood and that all the actors were wearing them. Urrea and friends also started wearing mismatched shoes.

In this situation, the male ego is impaired (the kids have no shoes), and the problem seems to be fixed when they start imitating what they believe is the Hollywood standard.