A historical film, and a public role

The notes take up the Korean film Silmido in a late discussion of the public-sphere role of popular cinema. A film that deals with historical and period problems, they write, is all the more likely to play such a role. Film, they say, no longer merely reproduces a fact of the past. It reconstructs memory selectively, and it should not only reveal but also look properly at historical meaning, so as to raise a social and historical value in the present. Audiences, they add, also expect popular film to do this work, and cinema needs to move in that direction.

But in performing a role as a public sphere, they write, there are clearly points that must be watched.

Silmido’s reach, and the criticisms the notes keep

In the case of Silmido, they write, the film succeeded in drawing the audience’s attention and in forming a public sphere on a large scale, yet many critical views were raised about its historical depth. It contributed to making a hidden fact widely known, but it has been criticized for showing a binary, typical framing while the identity of the state remains unclear.

It has also been seen, they say, as emphasizing nationalism too much, and as highlighting only a masculine character, and therefore as having performed a negative function as well. Because a work can be shaped in many ways according to the maker’s point of view, and because audiences’ interpretations also branch in many directions, it is almost impossible, they write, to produce a text wholly free of such problems.

More than one gaze, and a stop

What matters, they say, is that popular film make the effort to produce a range of texts, so that it can function as a public forum in which affirming and critical views coexist in a healthy way. For the public-sphere role of mass media to be performed well in the future, they write, more than one kind of gaze — not leaning to a single side — needs to be carried more seriously and responsibly. Through that, cinema can keep time with a large audience, and on that basis perform a more meaningful social function.

That, they write, would be mass media truly performing a role as a public sphere. They close with a possibility they quote: that, through film, “hegemony might be secured not by ideological force but by cultural leadership.” The film industry, they add, is just now more absorbed than usual in making films about the past, and the results ahead should be watched all the more carefully. The internet and other mass media have also changed the outlook of audiences, they write, and have raised the need for a new reading of the “public sphere.” Film has become a dominant popular culture; talking about a film is no longer only an academic or professional matter; a film can, through the audience’s readings and responses, draw out press coverage and social debate. For that role to work well, they say, a balanced reception has to be on guard against one-sided readings and against a collective fever. The notes leave the subject there, before a later outline of terms. The same Korean report, in a longer form, sits on CampusDown.

Sources

1. Student notes on the film Silmido as a public sphere, limited to the late discussion the notes keep.

Last updated 15 November 2026