Who are social critics: The effects of directors’ status and reputation on the choice of social problem films in the Korean film industry

Abstract

The South Korean film industry is known for its prevalence of social problem films (SPFs), a genre that focuses on societal issues and injustices as its main themes. This study examines which structural characteristics of directors make them play the role of social critics by choosing SPFs, contributing to its prevalence in Korea. Specifically, we focus on the stability difference between status and reputation and examine how the status and reputation of directors differently affected their decisions to choose SPFs. Through in-depth interviews and empirical analysis of Korean films from 1994 to 2017, we found support for our hypotheses that both a director's status and artistic reputation had positive impacts on the choice of SPFs, but through different mechanisms: meeting role expectations and reaffirming their reputation, respectively. We further observed that due to the temporal instability of artistic reputation, it interacted differently with the field-level taken-for-grantedness of SPFs and with the individual-level director's genre-specific past experiences in SPFs. However, we did not find any significant interactions between these factors and status, highlighting the stability of status.