Reworking the Relationship Between Domesticity and the Foreign West – From Late Spring (1949) to Parasite (2019)

Yasujirō Ozu’s Late Spring (1949) has inspired discourse surrounding its usage of domestic themes as an ‘engagement with the depiction of contemporaneous social change and its specific effect on gendered cultural milieux and social relationships.’ (Phillips 2003: 155). This practise of symbolic portrayal in Late Spring is commonly addressed in scholarly environments regarding its specific contextual ‘contestation between the seemingly irreconcilable elements of tradition and transition’ (Phillips 2003: 155) that are contextually instigated by western intervention. However, I argue that this employment of domesticity has now transcended beyond reflecting simply on cultural eras. In a world that has made strides towards surpassing these questions of gendered obligations, domesticity has become more broadly adapted to serve grandiose and dramatic questions of class relations and economic survival regardless of intersectional identity and historical phase. None more accurately embodies this than Bong Joon-Ho's Parasite (2019), which in essence repurposes domesticity to portray the internationally shared fault of ‘neoliberalism’s global fantasies’ (Gabilondo 2020: 2), allowing its enquiry to remain un-anchored to time nor place.
 
In Late Spring we are introduced to Ozu’s style of ‘dramatizing questions of belonging and change in ways that could speak to the national female audience’ (Phillips 2003: 159). The domestic relationship between the father Shukichi and the daughter Noriko embodies the ‘The conflict between the national tradition of the family unit and individual female desire.’ (Phillips 2003: 155). In a scene that exhibits the subversion of traditional Japanese culture, Shukichi brings tea upstairs for his daughter and her friend Aya. Noriko and Aya appear ‘notably separated from the mainstream by their taste for private, non-Japanese-style living spaces above the conventional paternal space below’ (Phillips 2003: 159). Aya is portrayed within the space in question as physically incompatible with the traditional floor cushions, and likewise Shukichi is incompatible with domestic practises as he ‘forgets two of the key components of the occasion - sugar and spoons’ (Phillips 2003: 159) (see figure 1). His absent-mindedness toward the westernised habit of putting sugar into tea and the undertaking of domestic tasks illustrates that ‘he is neither familiar nor comfortable with this modern feminized environment’ (Phillips 2003: 159). This parallels Japan’s cultural dilemma at the time, which emerged due to America’s occupation and subsequent influence on Japanese culture, a culture which immediately after the post-war period ‘resistance to “women's liberation” was implicitly linked to the protection of traditional values’ (Russel 2003: 34).

Figure 1

In Parasite scenic elements of domestic harmony conflict with western imagery, alluding to a global conceptualisation of oppression that mirrors the experience of the poorer Kim family. One of the most jarring initial elements of Ki-Woo's introduction to the Park’s home, is the maid’s determined removal of toy arrows left by the Parks “Indian Fanatic” son Da-Song. Through this scene, when we are not focussed on the objective of Ki-Woo, that is teaching the Parks daughter Da-Hye English, the son is threatening the scenic harmony shooting arrows toward them and the offerings of food laid neatly before Ki-Woo (see figure 2). Whilst teaching the daughter the language of the oppressor (English) is represented as a preserver of harmony, the presence of the oppressed (Native American) directly threatens the domestic bliss as Yeon Kyo (the mother of the family) states with concern “He’s eccentric and easily distracted. He can barely sit still”. This representation of western culture constitutes the ‘encroachment of American global capitalism that has exacerbated it all’ (Barber 2020: 52), in essence this embodies their oppressive thinking in a world that has embraced capitalistic globalism characteristic of America and the west, Bong Joon Hoe even states ‘...it’s not as if I wrote this story with the intention to return to Korea’ (Sims 2019). This is prophetic of the classist attitudes that are later revealed toward the Kim family, who at times are visibly disgusted by their presence (see figure 3). Just as the home manifests as a ‘fortress, designed to keeps its occupants ‘safe’ and thus, in essence, to keep people like them out’ (Barber 2020: 52) they seek to expel the western spectre of the oppressed from their child.

Figure 2

Figure 3

Whilst both films engage with themes of the home, Parasite expands to larger and more far-reaching area of discourse by rearranging the relationship between domesticity and western intervention. Late Spring offers up a cultural snapshot that ‘corresponds to a time when national culture had to be reinvented’ (Russel 2003:24), domesticity works to illustrate a culturally specific experience and remains enclosed with national and historical borders. Contrastingly, Parasite employs distinctly western imagery to imagine a global and universal experience of oppression, conjuring images of western oppressed using the filmic practise of domesticity to instead create a ‘rich-vs-poor story archetype recognizable to all (universal)’ (Collins 2020: 49) for an audience that is becoming ever-increasingly more global. 
 
Bibliography:
​
Barber, Laurence. 2019. ‘Killing the host: Class and complacency in Bong Joon-ho's 'Parasite'’, Metro Magazine: Media & Education Magazine, 202: 48-53

Collins, Donald. 2020. Local Detail, Universal Appeal: Parasite’s “Best Picture” Win & Trends in South Korea-Us Film Exchange, (Master's Thesis: University of Southern California)

Gabilondo, Joseba. 2020. ‘Bong Joon Ho's Parasite and post-2008 Revolts: From the Discourse of the Master to the Destituent Power of the Real’, International Journal of Zizek Studies, 14(1)

Phillips, Alastair. ‘Pictures of the past in the present: modernity, femininity and stardom in the postwar films of Ozu Yasujiro’, Screen, 44(2): 154-166

Russell, Catherine. 2003. ‘Three Japanese Actresses of the 1950s: MODERNITY, FEMININITY AND THE PERFORMANCE OF EVERYDAY LIFE', Cineaction, 60: 34-44

Sims, David. (2019). How Bong Joon Ho Invented the Weird World of Parasite, <https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2019/10/bong-joon-ho-parasite-interview/600007/> [accessed 18 April 2021]
 
Filmography:
Late Spring, dir. By Yasujirō Ozu (Shochiku, 1949)
Parasite, Dir. By Bong Joon-Ho (CJ Entertainment, 2019)