THE RESURGENCE OF RELIGION IN SOUTH KOREAN CINEMA: TOWARDS A TRANS-RELIGION OF THE FUTURE?

Abstract

The two highly successful South Korean Along with the Gods films, described as “reincarnation films” and with unparalleled budgets, stigmatize the resurgence of religiosity on local screens both big and small, and this, at a historic moment of expansion of the country on all levels. The films do not only restore the syncretic power of certain neo-Confucianist values by reaffirming, in particular, the central patriarchal authority and the link between the Beyond and the human world in two inevitably immutable worlds; these values, transreligious from the beginning, evolve, here, into a new version that seeks to integrate the current political neo-pan-Asianism centered on a Korea reconciled with its past and contemporary “materialist” sensibilities. This supra-religion of the future is not like religions focused on original “historical” foundations. It comprises simulacra that absorb the expectations of the current public (positivized life and human reincarnation, for example) and has little concern for fidelity to binding and precise origins-to the point of not (yet) having a name. Nor is it a mere postmodern customization of old beliefs as in Superman or The Matrix, but a polymorphous and sprawling mutant logic that constantly seeks to incorporate in its web more believers and more spectators. © 2019 De Boeck. All rights reserved.