서스펜스의 미학 : 히치콕과 봉준호 = The aesthetics of suspense: Hitchcock and Bong Joon-ho

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

Alfred Hitchcock emphasizes the importance of suspense in directing film. For Hitchcock, suspense is an important factor which immerses the audience in the film. The suspense begins when the audience knows something that the characters do not know. The effect of Hitchcock's suspense often appears in the films of Bong Joon-ho, who regards Hitchcock as his role model. For Hitchcock and Bong, suspense is, above all, the audience's reaction, the device that draws the audience's attention, and the device that makes the movie entertaining. The relationship between the audience, film, and director is the principle that creates suspense. Deleuze explains this three-person relationship as a 'mental image'. The ‘mental image’ actively engages the audience into the film and makes them think and judge for themselves.
Unlike Hitchcock, who always pursued suspense as a film genre, Bong twists the genre itself and encourages his audience to reason. Bong’s form of suspense is a metaphor for an absurd world, as well as his method of social engagement. By twisting the genre, Bong allows his audience to be conscious of Korea’s reality and reflect on society. The mental image of Bong’s films may have been influenced by the aesthetics of Hitchcock's suspense, which focused on its 'audience', but Bong’s films lead the audience to a different level of thought. In Bong’s films, Hitchcock’s method of suspense is transformed into new ‘mental images’ which breaks and twists conventional film-making.