Social Sciences & Humanities Open 3 (2021) 100119

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Social Sciences & Humanities Open

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The multifold intertextuality in Lee Chang Dong’s burning

€rn Boman
Bjo
Department of Education, Stockholm University, Frescativ€
agen 54, 106 91, Stockholm, Sweden

A R T I C L E I N F O A B S T R A C T

Keywords: The study focuses on how the South Korean drama/mystery film Burning (2018) intertextually draws from Wil-
South Korea liam Faulkner’s short story ‘Barn burning’ and Haruki Murakami’s short story ‘Barn burning’ and related socio-
Burning historical contexts. Burning does quite impressionistically and freely draw from these two short stories as well as
Haruki Murakami
adding new features, while simultaneously removing much of the core of Faulkner’s work and some of Mur-
Intertextuality
William Faulkner
akami’s counterpart. By means of intertextual borrowing and re-contextualization, it has used the global
discursive field and consequently hybridized and localized elements and themes from American-Western and
Japanese works and discourses to perhaps make them better suited for the South Korean context. Burning has
included and excluded various elements from both short stories but emphasized class and gender issues. These
two major elements reflect upon the structural inequalities in the contemporary South Korean society.

1. Introduction
South Korean films have evoked both academic and public interest
(e.g, Chang, 2010) in part related to instances of intertextuality, trans-
nationality, and hybridization. Further, they provide an accessible way to
a potential understanding of contemporary cultures that travel, merge,
intersect and are being re-contextualized in and across various locations
of the world (Chua, 2012; Fujiki, 2019; Hamer, 2011; Lin & Tong, 2008).
Much scholarly attention has been devoted to South Korean films
(K-film), TV drama (K-drama), literature (K-literature), and pop music
(K-pop), and to Japanese literature (e.g., Orgad, 2017; Starrs, 1994) and
visual and audiovisual popular culture, including the borrowing of
western elements (e.g., Jin & Ryoo, 2014; Jun, 2017; Lie, 2014; Schulze,
2019; Shim, 2006; Yoon, 2017). In a film studies context this process is
typically understood as adaptation (e.g., Denison, 2014; Diffrient, 2009;
Shin, 2019).
For instance, Shin (2019) has examined how Park Chan-wook’s film
The Handmaiden has been adapted from the 1930s (based on British
writer Sarah Waters’s novel Fingersmith), whereas Chang (2010) has paid
attention to how Korean masculinity is interpreted among Western au-
diences of Park Chan-wook’s film Oldboy (2003). Park (2011) has
focused on the labor movement under Park Chung-hee’s regime as it is
constituted in the film Single Spark (1995). Some content analysts have
directly compared gender and socioeconomic disparities in Korean
dramas with corresponding conditions in real life by means of exhaustive
analytical models (Lee & Park, 2015). It seems that content analysis
becomes more pertinent if it draws upon the discursive field (Fairclough,
1992, 2003) rather than merely interpreting popular cultural material as
atomistic and isolated phenomena (Boman, 2020).
However, the multidirectional flows of culture, mediated by manifest
intertextual chains and influences, are yet to be further explored, at least
with regard to the nexus between literature and film in South Korea,
Japan, and the United States, and in relation to deeper social issues than
pop cultural genre hybridity often in the focal point of analyses and
critical discussions on film, TV drama, and music. An instance of such a
multifold intertextuality is Lee Chang Dong’s (b. 1954) drama/mystery
film Burning (2018), which draws upon William Faulkner’s short story
‘Barn burning’ (1993, originally released in 1939) and Murakami Har-
kuki’s short story ‘Barn barning’ (1992, first published in 1983) (Fujiki,
2019; Yamada, 2020). This work is of particular interest because it is
manifestly linked to these two works, perhaps Murakami’s short story in
particular, and simultaneously highlights important social topics in pre-
sent South Korea if not beyond. Further, it exemplifies how in-
tertextuality might be constituted when it both travels from one disparate
time and place to another (America in the late 1930s to South Korea in
the 2010s) and uses influences or bricolage from a more recent and
culturally proximate country (Japan in the early 1980s). Therefore, it
requires a deeper analytical procedure to examine such preliminary
tendencies.
Some earlier studies have focused on Lee Chang Dong’s Burning
(Beoning, 2018): Min and Moon (2019), Yamane (2019), Fujiki (2019),
Boman (2020) and Yamada (2020) with the three first emphasizing
intertextual patterns and Min and Moon (2019) as well as Boman (2020)
focusing on character development. Both Yamane (2019) and Fujiki

E-mail address: bjorn.boman@edu.su.se.

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ssaho.2021.100119
Received 19 January 2020; Received in revised form 12 January 2021; Accepted 18 January 2021
Available online 29 January 2021
2590-2911/© 2021 The Author. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
B. Boman
(2019) have examined intertextual and ideological aspects of Burning,
such as geopolitics (South Korea–North Korea relations, see especially
Fujiki, 2019), but the readings do partly deviate from the ones in the
present article. The current contribution is mainly related to 1) liter-
ature–film intertextuality (Faulkner – Murakami – Lee), 2) class, gender,
and tertiary race (as related to Faulkner’s short story in relation to
Burning as a localized adaptation), 3) and globalization as either
hybridization/localization, homogenization, or polarization and how
this relates to the cultural-ideological themes in Burning. As such it adds
to earlier studies on Burning, as well as research on film adaptation and
film–literature intertextuality. Furthermore, by focusing on issues such as
class and gender it complements the literature on contemporary Korean
culture.
2. Theoretical framework
2.1. The sociohistorical context in South Korea
South Korea has made a rapid development from a Confucian to a
democratic society. This process has implied that educational opportunities
were extended from a small elite to virtually all segments of society within
the span of five decades. Formal class inequality was eroded in the late
nineteenth century in the aftermath of western influences that were
retrieved from Japan, prior to and during the colonial period (1910–1945),
when Korea was annexed by Japan. Democracy was introduced in 1987
(Chang, 2010; Jang & Kim, 2013; Lie, 2014; Savada & Shaw, 1992).
As several historians have noted, modernization in post-World War II
Korea (i.e., South Korea) was intimately connected to evangelization,
urbanization, and westernization. One may also add nationalism and
women’s movements to this triad. In other words, when Korea became
Christianized throughout the twentieth century, it granted women an
opportunity to be involved in social life to a greater extent than during
the Chosun era (1392–1910). Further, it provided an attempt of collec-
tive resistance to the Japanese colonial rule (1910–1945), and after the
permanent partition in 1953, South Korean Christianity (both Catholi-
cism and Protestantism) grew in parallel with millions of Koreans relo-
cating to the Seoul metropolitan area were they regularly attended
church services on Sundays (Baker, 2003; Jung, 2003). Later, the country
has leaned more towards atheism and increased westernization (Baker,
2008), often manifested by the emergence of hallyu (Korean wave), the
regional and global rise of South Korean popular cultural products, like
films, TV dramas, music, food, beauty items, and electronics (Chua, 2008,
2012; Dutta, 2014; Kim, 2015; Lie, 2014). Overall, this reflects a
neoliberal society in which the individual’s body is marketized (Lee &
Lee, 2017).
An oft-repeated notion is that Korea remains Confucian and conser-
vative even in modern times, which indeed is questionable given the
prominence of Western, democratic, capitalist, and secular elements
which have only but grew throughout the last five decades (Baker, 2008;
Lie, 2014). Things are, however, not unambiguous in that respect and
some Confucian residues remain, at least among the oldest family
members and relatives in the Korean community (Chang, 2010; Jang &
Kim, 2013). While Jang and Kim (2013) underscore the Confucian resi-
dues within the present Korean society, especially among the earlier
generations still alive, as a crucial sociocultural factor, Lie (2014) is
skeptical about the presence of such elements in contemporary South
Korea. Be that as it may, as noted by Yamada (2020), the Korean divisive
past affects contemporary films such as Burning where both Confucian
residues and neoliberal capitalism are present.
2.2. The South Korean response to globalization
Jan Nederveen Pieterse (1995; 2015) has outlined three major cul-
tural tendencies in the age of globalization which function as a point of
departure and terminological focal point: homogenization, hybridiza-
tion, and polarization. Homogenization basically implies a westernized
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Social Sciences & Humanities Open 3 (2021) 100119
imposition of culture and consumer products on virtually all societies
which are reached by its neoliberal framework, while hybridization
means the merging of local and global practices or local and other local
elements. Polarization is related to conflicts within or between societies
(Pieterse, 1995). In South Korea, westernized features such as Protes-
tantism, liberal democracy, consumerism, secularism, and neoliberal
capitalism co-exist with Confucian residues (Jang & Kim, 2013), Bud-
dhism (Baker, 2008), and politeness culture (Kim, 2011), which are not
typically western elements. Polarization has been identified in regard to
the relationships with China and North Korea (Jun, 2017), whereas
American culture has more smoothly become integrated and merged
with the ‘traditional’ Korean and East Asian cultural elements (Baker,
2008; Lie, 2014). The parallel presence of these three major cultural
globalization tendencies in various contexts has been discussed in recent
scholarship (Boman, 2021).
Regarding film adaptations (e.g., Allen, 2011; Shin, 2019; Yamada,
2020), not just hybridization (Jung, 2010) but localization (Schulze,
2019) may be of significance. For instance, a Korean director and
screenwriter might be influenced by western or Japanese literature (e.g.,
Yamada, 2020). When a Korean director borrows from an American
writer and a Japanese writer but adapts the manuscript to some extent to
fit the local context, hybridization and localization (i.e., contextual
adaptation) co-exist. Kim (2012) underlines South Korea’s general
response to globalization:
It is ironic that the obsession with global opinion is indeed motivated
by nationalist concerns. To understand this contradiction, I need to
briefly explain how globalization is conceptualized in Korean society. In
fact, the Korean government took the initiative to promote globalization
(segyehwa) in the early 1990s with its nationalist intention to enhance
Korea’s development in order to reach the most advanced level in the
world. In the Korean context, globalization has been ‘a strategic princi-
ple, a mobilizing slogan, a hegemonic ideology or a new national-identity
badge for a state aspiring to advanced world-class status’.
Whereas these ideological proclivities are significant for the broader
social, political, cultural, and economic contexts, the less polarized and
competitive aspects tend to be downplayed with regard to the production
and dissemination of Korean pop culture (Jun, 2017; Jung, 2010). At
least if transcultural borrowing or bricolages are used as positive or
‘harmless’ sources of inspiration. Yet, one cannot automatically assume
that polarization towards Japanese, North Korean or American elements,
ideologies or individuals will not be evoked for the sake of benign global
hybridity. Therefore, the reading of the material, in this case Burning, is
open-ended in that respect.
3. Findings
3.1. Constitutive elements of burning
Burning begins with the simple narrative drive in which Jong-su un-
expectedly meets Hae-mi – who also grew up in the small city of Paju near
the North Korean border – in an area of Seoul. Hae-mi admits that she is
cuter these days because of plastic surgery (for a critical examination of
plastic surgery and beauty ideals in South Korea, see Swami, Hwang, &
Jung, 2012; Epstein & Joo, 2012; Boman, 2019). They talk
open-heartedly and later have sex in Hae-mi’s apartment near Seoul
Tower in the city center. When Hae-mi leaves for a trip to the Kalahari
Desert in southern Africa, Jong-su promises to feed her cat, which is
reluctant to manifest itself. Thus, Jong-su wonders if the cat really exists
or is just an artistic imagination of Hae-mi. In another scene, Hae-mi
‘eats’ an imaginary fruit in front of Jong-su as an expression of her
penchant for pantomime. She attends such classes in her leisure time.
Later in the film, the rich and good-looing Ben, whom Hae-mi meets
during her trip, reveals to Jong-su that he has a strong urge to set
greenhouses on fire, which he apparently does frequently (approximately
one every two month). The act itself triggers his ‘inner bass’, he explains
to Jong-su. He reiterates this phrase later in the film when advising Jong-
B. Boman
su to take a more careless life stance. This sub-theme may capture the
polarization between their respective socioeconomic statuses, as Ben has
the freedom and means to act impetuously, while Jong-su is restricted by
both his moral sensibilities and monetary difficulties.
In relation to this, there are many potential metaphors discussed by
Jong-su and Ben and the audience is consequently encouraged to reflect
upon their meanings. For instance, does a greenhouse signify something
else, like a human being (specifically the bodies of killed females)?
(Boman, 2020; Fujiki, 2019).
In regard to the encounters between Jong-su, Hae-mi and Ben in
Gangnam, the materially affluent parts of the South Korean capital Seoul
is emphasized, as Yamada (2020) notes:
Much like adaptations of Murakami’s fiction set in Japan, Burning
upsets the self-evidence of the highly developed condition of present-day
South Korea by making the material experience of an affluent Seoul
landscape somehow less real, while giving tangible form instead to the
virtual effects of the nation’s divisive history. The melding of the virtual
dimensions of the past with the materiality of the present in Murakami
adaptations set in both Japan and Korea suggests a similar experience
with the illusory nature of rapid development in the historical imagina-
tion of both these national traditions.
Similar to many other fairly complex films, discerned themes and
narrative components complement rather than oppose each other. If
anything, they struggle for the position as nodal points in a particular
narrative or are linked to a broader ‘external’ discourse from the
discursive field (Fairclough, 1992, 2003; Laclau & Mouffe, 2001). As
such, Burning could at least cultural-ideologically be read as a class-based
criticism of contemporary South Korean capitalism. Most notably in that
regard, both the male protagonist Jong-su and the female character
Hae-mi are asymmetrically interpellated as vertically inferior subjects in
relation to the wealthy Ben, who subtlety plays with his two new friends
(Boman, 2020).
As I argue in this article, there are both class- and gender-related
themes present in the film, but South Korea’s approach to globalization
is mainly related to the socioeconomic issues, such as income inequality.
To the extent that Ben represents something foreign or external, one may
consider that he is highly Americanized, urbane, and urban while Jong-
su appears like a rural residue of Korea’s pre-modern past, although
struggling for a place in the urban epicenter. Such an oversimplified bi-
nary would be evoked more effortlessly if Jong-su was not also an
aspiring young author who is an avid reader of William Faulkner and F.
Scott Fitzgerald, which indicates a cosmopolitan leaning. He and his
disagreeable and angry hostile father, who gets convicted for assault, are
not just significantly lower in socioeconomic status compared to Ben and
other upper-class Koreans but a reflection of the earlier post-colonial
period, prior to the transition into industrialist capitalism and rapid ur-
banization (Boman, 2020). On the other hand, to remain or become a
farmer is currently an active choice more than a predestined fate for most
South Koreans. This is underlined by the lawyer to Jong-su’s father who
ponders about the father’s bad financial and vocational decisions
throughout life (this and other information indicate that the lawyer and
the father have some personal ties). He could have bought an apartment
in the fancy Gangnam district in Seoul when they used to be cheap but
chose to remain a farmer in Paju.
Burning consists of several such implicit or explicit class or socio-
economic indicators. The most palpable is the vast wealth differences
between Ben and Jong-su, whereas more subtle such include the chants
from the North Korean side of the northern border near Paju, as well as
the meta comments on substantial unemployment rates among younger
people. Thus, it may be regarded as a main theme or element within the
film’s discourse.
3.2. Burning in relation to Murakami and Faulkner’s short stories
Burning builds upon the Japanese author Haruki Murakami’s short
story ‘Barn Burning’ (1992) as well as William Faulkner’s short story with
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Social Sciences & Humanities Open 3 (2021) 100119
the same name (1993), but barn is substituted for greenhouse in this
more extensive and exhaustive film adaptation which stretches over
approximately two-and-a-half hours. Nevertheless, some elements of
both short stories are present in the film, although Burning explores class
and gender, with class being the nodal point, while Faulkner leans to-
wards the class–race nexus and Murakami perhaps neither.
In short, Faulkner’s (1993) short story takes place in the American
south around 1895. A boy named Sarty goes to court to testify because his
father is accused of burning down a barn, which Sarty knows his father
did but does not admit in court. The father later conveys that family
loyalty is the most important thing in life. There are a number of racial
slurs in this short story that evokes the biracial context in the American
south. At a new location things become complicated as Sarty’s father
considers burning down another barn to retaliate for a supposed
misdeed. However, Sarty warns the owners of the barn and runs away.
Murakami’s (1992) work is situated in Japan in the 1980s where a
31-year-old man gets to know a 20-year-old woman who does panto-
mime among other things. Their relationship is Platonic. After a trip to
Algiers in North Africa the woman returns with a somewhat mysterious
Japanese man who on one occasion stresses that he, for ambiguous
reasons, lights barns on fire every now and then. The trio listen to
Western music (i.e., Miles Davis) and smoke marijuana.
It is rather obvious that Murakami was influenced by Faulkner’s short
story whereas Lee’s Burning is inspired by both Faulkner and Murakami’s
works to different extents (Fujiki, 2019). At the intertextual level there
are some manifest examples, such as this passage in Murakami’s (1992)
short story which are almost identically visualized in Burning:
As I mentioned, when I first met her she told me she was studying
mime. One night, we were out at a bar, and she showed me the Tangerine
Peeling. As the name says, it involves peeling a tangerine. On her left was
a bowl piled high with tangerines; on her right, a bowl for the peels. At
least that was the idea. Actually, there wasn’t anything there at all. She’d
take an imaginary tangerine in her hand, slowly peel it, put one section in
her mouth, and spit out the seeds. When she’d finished one tangerine,
she’d wrap up all the seeds in the peel and deposit it in the bowl to her
right. She repeated these movements over and over again. When you try
to put it in words it doesn’t sound like anything special. But if you see it
with your own eyes for ten or 20 min (almost without thinking, she kept
on performing it) gradually the sense of reality is sucked right out of
everything around you. It’s a very strange feeling.
There are also other borrowings from Murakami’s short story, but many
things are partly replaced or altered: the film takes place in South Korea, not
Japan; the girl Hae-mi went to Namibia, not North Africa (Algiers, the
capital of Algeria) as the girl in the short story; the main character in the
short story does have a wife while Jong-su is single; Ben is older than the
male protagonist in the film but the opposite is the case in Murakami’s short
story; Burning is partially a ‘love triangle’ while Murakami’s work is not. On
the other hand, other things are close to identical, such as Ben’s sports car
and the reference to F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, the weed smoking
and corresponding confession about barn/greenhouse burning, the male
protagonists’ search for barns/greenhouses, the girls’ pantomime classes;
the brief dialogues about jealousy, the girls’ disappearances; and the pro-
tagonists’ visits to their apartments. Some of these similarities and differ-
ences have also been noted by Fujiki (2019).
Moreover, Burning has more spatial-temporal affinities with Mur-
akami’s short story than with Faulkner’s piece from the southern parts of
the United States, whose plot takes place around 1895 in a biracial
context. Japan and South Korea are culturally, ethnically, and
geographically quite similar, and the early 1980s and late 2010s – if we
take the publication dates at their respective face values in relation to
their plots and mise-en-scene – are not particularly distant in time, either.
While class, family, and race issues are the major social matters at display
in Faulkner’s work, the South Korean and Japanese contexts do more
effortlessly evoke class and gender issues. As Kim (2012) has empha-
sized, implicit racism has a role to play in contemporary South Korea but
in part due to less ethnic heterogeneity and fractionalization (Moon,
B. Boman Social Sciences & Humanities Open 3 (2021) 100119

2015) race matters are downplayed compared to for instance the US

context (Kim, 2017). Lee, the director of Burning, could for instance have
included an ethnic minority individual in the film adaptation, as a
counterpart to the black individual mentioned in Faulkner’s ‘Barn
burning’, but preferred not to. On the other hand, Murakami’s short story
is not saturated with neither class, nor gender and racial issues, although
Tanaka has stressed that barns could be interpreted as girl(s), which
would make the short story and Burning even more similar.
The reader also understands that the girl in Murakami’s story has
some financial difficulties, much like Hae-mi in Burning (see Fig. 1). It
does unhesitatingly have a social backdrop to some degree, but it is
mostly as a coulisse for the events and characters. Thus, Burning expands
quite impressionistically on these two stories and adds new features,
while simultaneously removing much of the core of Faulkner’s work. By
means of re-contextualization (e.g., Fujiki, 2019), it has used the global
discursive field as a resource and consequently hybridized and localized
elements and themes from American-Western and Japanese works and
discourses that are perhaps better suited for the contemporary South
Korean context (see Fig. 2).
The most striking source of inspiration from Faulkner, besides the
class dimension, is on the one hand the rural aspect, in the context of
Burning being transhistorically, transculturally and transgeographically
re-contextualized in Paju, located about 30 km from the Seoul Capital Fig. 2. Intertextual flows and relationships.
Area. The urban/rural binary is present in Burning, and overlaps the so-
cioeconomic dimension related to inequality, while Faulkner’s ‘Barn
The general hybridity present in Burning stems from its intertextual
burning’ exclusively takes place in a rural setting in the late nineteenth
links to Murakami and Faulkner, which implies latent and manifest ele-
century. The other major aspect of similarity is the dysfunctional and
ments of transcultural and transnational borrowing. Thus, Lee draws
disagreeable fathers present in both texts, although the father plays a
from the Japanese and American contexts. But these are not all compo-
peripheral role in Burning. Some Korean cultural scholars (e.g., Kim,
nents; there are additive features of a more contemporary character, such
2017) have emphasized the subordinate affinity between Koreans (in
as South Korea as an OECD member (an indication of global homogeni-
relation to the Japanese) and African Americans (in relation to
zation) and the brief manifestation of Donald Trump as the face of pre-
Euro-Americans). However, such a theme is in both discourses quite
sent America. Ben, the assertive, wealthy, and handsome antagonist who
far-fetched because not even Faulkner’s story presents race as a nodal
easily outcompetes Jong-su and his equals on the ‘dating market’, is
point but rather as a peripheral topic. It is a part of the broader
indeed more Americanized and cosmopolitan than the rural protagonist.
socio-historical context, entrenched by racism against black Americans,
In fact, many of Murakami’s novels are associated with western culture,
which the work hinges upon but is nonetheless placed at the fringe of the
inclusive of cosmopolitan ingredients (e.g., Norwegian Wood, Kafka on the
plot. Moreover, in Burning class is the key differentiator among
shore, Sputnik Sweetheart, After Dark, and ‘Barn Barning’ with its inter-
co-ethnics. Ben may be Americanized, an interpretation which Korean
textual references to Miles Davis) but these are majorly re-contextualized
American actor Steven Yeun agrees with (Yeun, 2018), but he is not
as benign influences rather than malign elements related to a hostile
American (or Japanese). South Korea’s economic issues have a global and
exterior. Even though (un)employment rates are similar across the OECD
thus external component, but the struggle is chiefly internal.
countries (OECD, 2018, p. 85), Lee has preferred to evoke the class
Furthermore, Jong-su is perhaps more similar to Colonel Sartoris
dimension as the most significant obstacle facing the country’s in-
‘Sarty’ Snopes, the protagonist in Faulkner’s short story, compared to the
habitants. Perhaps the most urgent issue with contemporary South Korea
male storyteller and protagonist in Murakami’s work. They both struggle
is not unemployment rates per se but the fact that many young people
with various troubles and do literally run to find solutions to their
have to rely upon part-time jobs (아르바이트, ar ubaitu) and that tertiary
problems. Moreover, the protagonist as a child in Faulkner’s work might
education does not guarantee a safe and long-term position in con-
be reminiscent of the young Jong-su, who briefly appears in some
glomerates or small- and medium-sized enterprises, SMEs (Hultberg,
dreamlike scenes of the film. Ben, on the other hand, is a blend of the
Santandreu Calogne, & Kim, 2017).
arsonist father Abner Snoops in Faulkner (1993) and the male arsonist in
In Burning, both Jong-su and Hae-mi are affected by such socioeco-
Murakami (1992). It seems that elements of both characters have merged
nomic conditions, including inequality, debt, and uncertainty. Jong-su’s
within the frames of Burning, an instance of hybridized intertextuality.
passion and academic subject, creative writing, is devalued at the benefit
This may have come naturally as Murakami seems to have been, to some
of other sectors such as technology (e.g., Hultberg et al., 2017). Hae-mi is
degree at least, influenced by Faulkner and alluded his work (Tanaka;
at best an imitator of a pretty female K-pop idol (e.g., Boman, 2019). The
Fujiki, 2019; Yamada, 2020).
rage and resentment towards Ben and other ‘Great Gatsby’s in South
Korea might be an expression and extension of Ben’s materially privi-
leged while undeserved position in the local socioeconomic hierarchy.
However, Burning is in part also an intense love triangle drama and
Jong-su’s decisions may reflect passion or obsession (Min & Moon, 2019)
as much as a search for socioeconomic justice.
The processes of homogenization associated with the US and more
recently the OECD, have been understood in the light of a rather smooth
yet gradual localization and adaption of American culture and customs
(Lie, 2014), but there is an ambiguous element present in Burning (2018)
in that respect. Indeed, it is not an anti-American film per se but there is a
subtle critique and polarization present as latent sub-themes. As Jun
Fig. 1. Nodal points and sub-themes.

4
B. Boman
(2017) notes, the externally construed South Korean polarization is
associated with North Korea and China. Throughout earlier phases,
Japan was the country’s arch enemy but has transitioned into a sort of
economic rival (Lie, 2014). The propaganda chants that Jong-su has
become accustomed to, as he and his family have lived close to the 38th
parallel (near the North Korean border) for decades, might motivate him
to ‘become someone’ (an author) in the South Korean neoliberal society.
Or it has, perhaps unconsciously, made him eager to fight inequality. The
cultural-ideological ambiguity and subtleness complicate a definite
interpretation in that regard. However, as underscored by Fujiki (2019)
there is a risk of reducing Burning to merely a superficial statement of
class differences and resentment among South Korea’s less privileged
youth. Nonetheless, class or socioeconomic status appears as one of the
major main themes or nodal points, using a discourse analytical termi-
nology, (Laclau & Mouffe, 2001, pp. 105–114).
3.3. Gender as a sub-theme in burning
What about gender, the secondary social element manifested in
Burning? Despite the relative educational equality, at the macro-social
level, that has been present in the country since at least the 1960s
(Baker, 2008; Ministry of Education Korea, 2017; Savada & Shaw, 1992),
there are still striking gender disparities in the current labor market (Lee
& Park, 2015; OECD, 2018). Some South Korean TV dramas, such as Live
(2018) and Something in the Rain (2018), have emphasized these condi-
tions and Burning appears to build upon a similar cultural-ideological
premise. However, in this regard the more subtle aspects of rich narcis-
sistic males who effortlessly outshine poorer and less attractive males
(Ben as opposed to Jong-su) and treat young and pretty women largely as
sexual objects (Hae-mi and Ben’s other disposable girlfriends) are in the
focal point.
The initial scene, when Hae-mi and another young female wear short
skirts and excessive makeup and dance to the K-pop girl group Sistar’s
song ‘Touch my body’ (2014), is a manifestation of the constitution of
generic gender roles in South Korea, although nuances and complexities
are at display both throughout the movie and in the broader society
(Brown, 2017; Lee & Lee, 2017; Lee & Park, 2015). The audience quickly
learns that Hae-mi has an interesting or at least peculiar personality that
transcends the constitution of merely having a pretty face and body.
Nonetheless, there are several instances of the sexualization of her body,
such as the intercourse scene with Jong-su in her apartment, and the
naked dance scene during a marijuana trip outside Jong-su’s house in
Paju.
The more disturbing issue implied in Burning and perhaps Murakami’s
short story too according to some interpretations (Tanaka; Fujiki, 2019),
is that young women are killed and disposed of and that few seek them
after they suddenly disappear. In that regard the genre and entertainment
aspects are important to consider – such components make literature and
film more intriguing and thrilling. Yet, the harsh realities of South Korean
females (Jung, 2003) make the narrative angle somewhat less
improbable.
A less fatal gender aspect present in the film, partly associated with
Korea’s Confucian past, are the bitter and resentful words uttered by
Jong-su after Hae-mi has stripped naked and danced, in a way akin to
people living in the Kalahari Desert, at Jong-su’s house in Paju during a
marijuana trip. Jong-su asserts that only ‘whores’ undress like that in
front of other men (Boman, 2020; Fujiki, 2019). The parlance and atti-
tude might be a consequence of the love triangle aspect of Burning
because Jong-su does not want Ben to see her naked body, but it is also a
reminder of that even relatively agreeable and conscientious men like
Jong-su may be affected by the Confucian/modern hybridity linked to
South Korea’s particular sociohistorical trajectory, which imposes a
particular pressure and ambiguous standards on contemporary women.
As a colleague to Hae-mi stresses in a later scene when Jong-su looks for
her whereabouts: Korean women might be criticized for dressing up or
dressing down, looking too attractive or unattractive, leaving them in a
5
Social Sciences & Humanities Open 3 (2021) 100119
Catch-22 situation. Thus, (South) Korea is not a country made for
women. Jong-su is unhesitatingly attracted to Hae-mi’s assertive
undressing in her apartment, where they have sex, but is also repulsed by
a similar corporeal gaiety in another context.
As Fujiki (2019) notes, the eventual male gaze of Jong-su and the
male reader of Burning – and perhaps parts of Murakami’s broader
authorship – which is magnified by specific camera angels, seems to
reduce Hae-mi to a sexual object in several scenes. However, it is far from
clear that this was the intention by either Murakami (in the short story)
or Lee (in the film adaptation), or the final interpretation of Hae-mi’s
personality and Jong-su’s understanding of her. As a relatively
open-ended film, possible to read form different perspectives and with
several ambiguous scenes and cultural-ideological elements (Boman,
2020; Fujiki, 2019; Yamane, 2019), it might be possible to regard
Jong-su’s retaliation of Hae-mi as an act of transcendence from the more
superficial sexual attraction that he first experiences.
4. Discussion and conclusion
This article set out to analyze how the intertextual nexus between
Burning, Murakami’s ‘Barn burning’, and Faulkner’s ‘Barn burning’ is
constituted, what major features from Murakami and Faulkner’s work
have been included and excluded in Burning, and which major cultural-
ideological themes have been identified and how are they constituted
with regard to the triad of chief globalization propensities (hybridization,
homogenization, polarization, see Pieterse, 1995).
Burning does quite impressionistically and freely draw from these two
short stories as well as adding new features, while simultaneously
removing much of the core of Faulkner’s work and some of Murakami’s
counterpart. By means of intertextual borrowing and re-
contextualization (e.g., Shin, 2019; Yamada, 2020), it has used the
global discursive field and consequently hybridized and localized ele-
ments and themes from American-Western and Japanese works and
discourses to perhaps make them better suited for the South Korean
context. An element of polarization might, quite implicitly, be discerned
in regard to the resentment against the Americanized Ben and the brief
presence of Donald Trump in one early scene. All in all, this demonstrates
a parallelization of hybridization and polarization (Boman, 2021). The
relation to North Korea’s ideology appears more ambiguous. The film is
perhaps primarily about class and secondarily about gender with regard
to social dominance and power relations, whereas Faulkner’s ‘Barn
burning’ is primarily about class and secondarily about race, and Mur-
akami’s work seems non-ideologically saturated, at least on the surface
level.
As with content and discourse analyses in general, there are other
elements and sub-themes at display or at least situated as latent such, and
the earlier research, theoretical framework and related contexts evoke
different cultural-ideological elements. Therefore, other aspects could be
further explored in an analysis of the same material and by using a similar
methodology.
CRediT authorship contribution statement
€ rn Boman: The author and corresponding author is the sole
Bjo
author of this article and fully responsible for its accuracy.
Acknowledgements
The author acknowledges two reviewers for their important critical
comments on earlier versions of this article.
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