Bong Joon Ho: Philosopher and Filmmaker

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With the release of Parasite (2019), recipient of the Palme dOr and an Academy Award for Best Picture, South Korean director, Bong Joon Ho, secured his place as one of his generations leading filmmakers. Yet while scholars and critics have long appreciated his penetrating critique of Korean society and global capitalism, his oeuvre has not been considered from a philosophical perspective. This book argues that his cinema is philosophical and in a radical and original rather than derivative sense.

Anthony Curtis Adler explores Bong's assertion that Western philosophy is itself a cinematic apparatus. He claims philosophy anticipates cinemas technical and expressive means and cinema in turn possesses an extraordinary capacity to criticize philosophy from within. Focusing on the interaction of three closely linked philosophical-cinematic apparatuses used by Bong (the projection of visionary spaces, self-domestication and human life itself as a drama), this book features close readings of his seven feature-length films.

Drawing out the philosophical depth of a visionary auteur, Adler brings us on a journey into a unique cinematic world.

Author Bio

Anthony Curtis Adler is a professor of German and Comparative Literature at Yonsei Universitys Underwood International College, South Korea. His most recent books include Celebricities: Media Culture and the Phenomenology of Gadget Commodity Life (2016), and Politics and Truth in Hlderlin: Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity (2021).