Representation of Celebrities in Adolescent Films and Its Relationship with Film Magazines : Examining Articles about Shin Seong-il and Um Aing-ran from Silver Screen, the Film Magazine of 1960s

Abstract

Adolescent films from the beginning of the 1960s highlight important context about the first Golden Age of Korean films. Adolescent films created a stateless space that did not resemble the reality of Korea at the time. They were extremely popular among the young audience due to their narratives of rebellion against the older generation. Shin Seong-il and Um Aing-ran, who were so popular as a couple that they were labelled as the symbols of adolescent films, co-starred in various films and created distinct personas. They existed within the screen as the alter egos of the young audience and portrayed the desires of the youth at the time. Therefore, they were often objectified or admired. This paper aims to examine the symbols in adolescent films that Shin Seong-il and Um Aing-ran co-starred in. It will use this analysis to draw conclusions on how the personas they created within the films corresponded to the reality outside of the screen. Silver Screen, a popular film magazine at the time, had the characteristics of a specialized magazine because it viewed 21 celebrities as actors and did not focus on gossip. However, the articles from Silver Screen display a tendency to subtly intertwine fabricated information about the celebrity couple from their movie’s narrative with the actual information from their reality as real people. For example, it is sometimes imagined that Shin Seong-il and Um Aing-ran’s marriage is the realization of the fruition of their love that was delayed or not possible in their adolescent films. Their marriage in reality became the visualization of a scene that the public did not get to witness in the fabricated world of the movies. In other words, their marriage acted as a narrative conclusion for the public. To sum up, this paper will analyze the representation of celebrities in movies with film magazine articles from that era. Based on this analysis, it aims to explore how the desires of the public can intertwine with the representation of celebrities.