[Limelight] Using Death as a Tool for Attention with a Hypocritical Face...

Movie 'Geunyeoga Juk-eotda' Han Sora Role Shin Hye-seon
"Expressed through twisted desires that are hard to empathize with"
Annoying paranoid acting fills the lack of subject 고민

※ This article contains many potential spoilers for the movie.

The term "gwanjong" is a compound of "interest" and "jongja" (seed). It has emerged as a symptom dominating the era with the popularization of social networking services (SNS). It is difficult to interpret with traditional ontology. One must first understand the attribute that stands out more as the Other disappears. The impulse to gain attention inevitably contains an element of violence.

In the movie She Died, Han Sora (Shin Hye-sun) is a gwanjong who builds castles in the air. She eats sausages at a convenience store while posting pictures of vegan salads on SNS. At a cafe, she secretly takes pictures of a neighboring customer's bag and posts it as if it were her own. She sustains her life through acts of attracting, gathering, earning, and accumulating attention. There is no other ideal or purpose.

Shin Hye-sun stated, "Although I work as an actress playing others, I do not fabricate my daily life. I could not empathize with Han Sora at all, so I wanted to portray her as a twisted desire."

"I maximized the expression of her obnoxious face so that the audience would neither sympathize nor understand her. I wanted her to appear as if she would do anything to get attention. Han Sora's narration is placed in the middle and latter parts of the film. It is filled with self-pity, and I worried that the audience might feel sorry for her. I wanted to completely block that possibility through exaggerated expression."

The excessive acting certainly provides genre entertainment. However, the underlying mental world is omitted, so it does not convey a deeper meaning. This is the loss of subjectivity. Gwanjong exists by substituting an absolute relationship with the object for a relative relationship with followers. Director Kim Gok, who directed Voice (2021), described this in his book The Age of Gwanjong as follows:

"Gwanjong cannot be said to 'exist.' A new mode of existence called 'inter-esse' replaces 'existence.' All 'existence' scatters and disappears into that 'in-between.' Attention is the entire existence of gwanjong."

Han Sora's weakness, which could turn attention into criticism, is discovered by Gu Jeong-tae (Byun Yo-han). She then stages a situation as if she were murdered. She tries to overcome the crisis by involving Gu Jeong-tae. Ironically, the moment the plan is executed, her relationship with followers is completely cut off.

For her, this is both another crisis and an opportunity. The last century was at least the age of existence. The subject existed because there was an object. They were neither truly alive nor truly dead, so there was no problem more urgent than existence.

The gwanjong that arrived via the internet and SNS is different. Anxiety is completely relieved by collecting "likes" and star balloons, and existence becomes fulfilled. However, the light of attention is not reflected. This is because there is no Other, that is, no object itself.

Han Sora’s self-imposed isolation due to everyday anxiety could be an opportunity to recover the lost subject. But director Kim Se-hwi pays no attention to this. Instead, he focuses on raising the intensity of paranoia heightened by the relationship with followers, building tension.

Paranoia is a narcissistic disorder that progresses through identification with a virtual ego. Unlike obsessive-compulsive disorder, which deepens with development, it shows infantile tendencies regressing to a pre-developmental stage. To preserve the ego, it repeatedly severs relationships with the outside, fabricates, and forges.

Shin Hye-sun expresses the symptom of losing touch with reality as delusion, filling the lack of dimensionality. The portrayed ego is not repressed but filled with infinite possibilities such as "I can do anything" or "I can be noticed by anyone." This is evident the moment she shows her face again on SNS. Shin Hye-sun said, "I acted even more obnoxiously than the script’s directions."

"Han Sora deceives her followers like a victim who was kidnapped and released in front of a camera she turned on after a long time. Although the screen time was short, I agonized a lot before filming. Simple hypocrisy seemed insufficient. I needed the face of a sociopath who commits bad deeds by any means for her success. There was disagreement with the production team on this, but I thought it would be perfect if a duality that feels no guilt appeared."

Amid the pouring attention, Han Sora is confident in her new expansion. She is a face that believes she can even erase gravity. There is no resistance that might be felt when exchanging existence for attention. This is similar to Jonathan Robinson in Louisiana in 2018, who threatened his ex-girlfriend to apologize on Facebook Live and pulled the trigger. Just before shooting, he said, "Everyone wants to be famous. Let's be famous today."

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.