Time in the camptown: aesthetics for ethics in American Alley (2008)

Abstract

ABSTRACT Films about camptown women have been marginalized in the studies of Korean cinema, despite their significance as immediate responses to the Korean War and critiques on the collaboration between the local governments and America’s global military power. From the mid-1950s to the early 1990s, a number of narrative films were set in base towns, a few of which featured camptown women as protagonists. After the 2000s, there was a marked shift towards independent documentary films. Among recent examples in this field, American Alley (Amerikan aelli, Kim Dong-ryeong, 2008) stands out to us because it explores temporal aesthetics in terms of documentary ethics. In this essay, I first discuss how American Alley as a human rights film challenges media sensationalism and voyeurism, examining the previous representations of camptown women. Second, I investigate the contentious dynamics between aesthetics and ethics in documentary filmmaking and suggest engaging in Emmanuel Levinas’ ideas of ethics, time, and image. Finally, by analyzing three temporalities that articulate camptown women’ experiences, I argue for the possibility of temporal aesthetics in addressing camptown violence and abuse and in ensuring an ethical relationship between the filmmaker, the subject, and the viewer.