Separation Anxiety

As I watched the film version of Ch'unhyang, I was worried that either Ch'unhyang or Mong-ryong would die in the name of love at the end of the movie. I noticed the numerous outstanding reviews on the DVD box and thought that one of the two characters must die in order to get such great reviews. I don't know how the true story ends but this made the film slightly more realistic for me simply because it did not deploy a technique that I think is used far too often in contemporary romantic films. On the other hand, I think the film is still only a film and should not be viewed as a true representation of the themes in the text itself. With this being said, I think it is important to separate the film's supposed "universal themes" mentioned in Kie-Chang's article and the actual textual themes.

I once did a paper on romantic films, and discussed how the most popular ones usually contain some forbidden love theme. Ch'unhyang is not any different. We have to ask though what makes forbidden love or other themes universal. Is it because many people across cultures can relate to it. Possibly, but there are an abundant amount of themes that people can relate to. I would argue that these themes are created, reinforced, and made universal through technological media and popular culture. For example, I have seen DVDs with chapters entitled "Forbidden Love". This allows viewers to consume certain scenes not only out of the entire film's context but certainly out of any former textual context. So the love story in Ch'unhyang the film may seem universal, but the themes in the actual text are most likely not. Was the text intended for a mass audience like that of a film? Probably not. So this really goes for all supposed universal themes. The actual themes themselves are not universal because they depend on the era, specific situation, and author/audience.