[Opinion] Gangster Movies

`Friends` is a Korean box office hit which lured last year as many as 8.2 million moviegoers. It not only rewrote the history of Korean movies, but also broke the taboo against vulgar languages and violence in movies. A gang member, suffering from craving for drugs, verbally abuses his wife in the presence of his friends using such horrible words. A head of a group of mobs teaches his members how to kill people, saying something like how to put an end to a victim`s life. At one scene, a man was stabbed more than 30 times to death. It makes us wonder, then, whether special killing trainings and cold-blood murders should be allowed to be seen under the name of art and freedom of expression.

▷A comprehensive study on the influence of violent TV programs and movies on young students was recently conducted. George Gerbner, an American scholar, released appalling data that young students in America grow up watching 32,000 murder cases and 40,000 attempts on murder until they become 18 years old. As some people even copy the crimes described on TV or in movies, it has become a social problem. In the movie `Deer Hunter,` there was a scene in which a Vietnam war veteran killed himself during Russian roulette game. After the movie, 29 people reportedly died of a gun shot in the head while playing Russian roulette.

▷Some studies argue that movies work to curb violent crimes in the real world by helping people releasing their pent-up feelings through violence and vulgarity. Most studies, however, agree that violence in the media has a bad influence on young students. In the past when all the movies went through censorship, scenes showing nipples and pubes of actresses were deleted with no exception. What is more harmful to young viewers, however, is extreme violence in movies or dramas not nipples and pubes.

▷Movie and drama producers prefer to put some violence in their works because it gets people excited and catch their eyes more easily. It also costs little to translate when selling movies in the global market. After the unprecedented success of `Friends,` a gangster movies began to boom in Korea, giving birth to such hit movies as `Moonlight in Shilla,` `I Am Married to a Gangster Boss` and `Glory of Family.` It was recently reported that the director of the movie `Friends` is suspected of handing some of the 500 million won-worth bonus he got from the production company to a gangster who was a real-life model for the main character. Whether it constitutes a crime or not to, offering money to a gangster currently serving his term after murder conviction is mostly likely to give a bad influence to young students.

Hwang Ho-taek, Editorial Writer, hthwang@donga.com