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I.
Park Chan-wook's film, The Handmaiden (o)7|-M|, Agassi), tells a story of seduction, manipulation, and revenge set during the colonial period in Korea. Though this is the South Korean auteur's first, and so far only, period-set feature film, it nevertheless develops themes around ethics and moral judgment raised in his previous work, including the films that comprise the so-called "Vengeance Trilogy" (Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance [2002], Oldboy [2003], and Lady Vengeance [2005]), Thirst (2009), and Stoker (2013). In this essay, I will discuss The Handmaiden and show how this film posits, through critique, that the state of abjection constitutes a necessary precondition for moral judgment. I am interested in the problem of subjectivization and the manner in which it acquires legitimacy to accuse another of moral deficiency (reminding the viewer, perhaps, of The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari [1920] with its series of accusations and framed narratives). The four main protagonists in The Handmaiden, play out a melodrama of politically and culturally oppressed subjects of the Japanese Imperial regime. But by the end of the film, two of these four, both women, outmaneuver and liberate themselves from the men who attempt to manipulate them for their own sexual and financial gain. The film does more than tell the story of emancipation, however, in its critique of how the colonial subject acquires the power and legitimacy to judge the other. As we shall see, this capacity to judge and, by co-extension, the capacity to accuse the other of moral wrong-doing emerges when the colonial subject realizes him or herself to be an exception to the force of law and yet must operate within it. This capacity is embodied in Park's film by the Collaborator.
Based on the 2002 novel by Sarah Waters called Fingersmith, which is set in Victorian England, the narrative of Park's Handmaiden relates the story of Sook-hee/Okja/Tamako (played by Kim Tae-ri), a young woman who comes from a family of thieves and con men. The name she assumes is contingent upon the context and the language being spoken for with the implementation of colonial rule, as we know, Koreans were forced to take Japanese names and speak only Japanese. Sook-hee is brought to the vast manor of Uncle Kouzuki (Jo Jin-woong), a rich book...