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| Korean poster for Na Hong-jin's The Yellow Sea (2010). |
And so Bowdler and his sister published a heavily redacted collection of Shakespeare�s works, and because of their censorship, this edition of Shakespeare was said to have been �bowdlerized.� And for some of these plays, I really don�t know what would have been left. I mean, what�s Measure for Measure without the sex? What happens to Lucrece? Is it just The of Lucrece? What happens to Falstaff? Is he just banished all together? Does young Prince Harry have no problems to mature out of? Et cetera? Et cetera?
But anyway, that�s where we get the word �bowdlerized,� and it describes a process by which a work of art is butchered by high-minded prudes who think the work�s intended audience �can�t handle it.� And that, ladies and gentlemen, is what has evidently happened to the American release of Na Hong-jin�s 2010 film The Yellow Sea. The film depicts the misadventures of a debt-ridden ethnic Korean living in China who is offered an economic windfall if he�ll travel to South Korea to kill a businessman. Now, as this is a Korean movie, we should not be surprised if this devolves into an especially brutal and merciless bloodbath. Because it�s a Korean thriller, and that�s how they�re made. Because the Korean movie-viewing audience is mature enough to �handle� movies like this and the people who make movies in Korea are aware of this.
The same cannot be said for American movie-going audiences, alas; or rather, the same cannot be said for the distributers of films for the American public, who have bowdlerized the American DVD release of The Yellow Sea.
Allow me to explain. There are three different version of this movie. There is the Korean theatrical release, which was 157 minutes long. There was an international �director�s cut,� which was 140 minutes long. And then there is the American DVD release, which is a mere 137 minutes long, and is thusly missing twenty minutes of material from the original film. Now, I must say at this point that I have not seen the movie yet, as the only version of it available to me is the 137-minute Fox Lorber American DVD release. Now, initially I thought, �Well, shit, they�ve cut it down because they thought it was too long� (just like the original American release of Farewell, My Concubine, which raises the question of why American distributers�and Harvey Weinstein is a serial offender in this regard�buy the rights to movies which they don�t think will find an American market. Weinstein, in addition to butchering Farewell, My Concubine, also cut thirty minutes from Wisit Sasanatieng�s Tears of the Black Tiger, and while he didn�t abridge Zhang Yimou�s Hero, he did sit on it for several years because he didn�t think there was a market for it. So again, why�d you buy the damn thing? If you don�t think there�s a market for it, let the distribution rights be purchased by someone who does, so the movie can get distributed and people can actually see it).
But there�s more going on here. Because, based on what I�ve read about the The Yellow Sea, from people who have seen two or more of the three versions, and from people who speak Korean, the Fox Lorber version isn�t just an abridgement for the sake of time. No, they�ve actually tried to tone down the extreme violence! They weren�t just cutting for the sake of space, they were cutting for content. They thought American viewers �couldn�t handle� the violence. This is absurd for several reasons: A. This is a country that made hit films out of atrocities like Saw and Hostel; I think we can handle extreme movie violence. But perhaps more importantly, B. The sort of people in the United States who are going to want to see a Korean thriller are the sort who expect it to be an insane bloodbath, and so they�re probably the last people who would �need� to have their violence censored. Oh, and finally, C. This is a fucking work of art and you philistines have no business cutting a single second from it. And it�s not just the violence, either! According to�and I admit these don�t sound like the best experts�but according to self-proclaimed speakers of Korean or people who have seen the international cut of the movie, the subtitles themselves for the Fox Lorber DVD are inaccurate, and have been designed to tone down the bleakness of the film.
Well, at this point I knew there was no fucking way I was going to watch this bowdlerized mess. Perhaps it would be possible to get my hands on the Korean DVD, which should have been 157 minutes long and uncensored (this would have been an enormous hassle, because of the DVD region racket, which is another issue worth railing against, but not here. The point is, getting my hands on the Korean DVD was theoretically possible). But there�s a problem. You see, The Yellow Sea was actually co-produced by �Fox International Productions.� And as part of their distribution deal, they prohibited the Korean DVD release from having English subtitles. So they have deliberately made it so that even the most persevering Anglophone fan of Korean films who wants to see this movie as Na Hong-jin intended for it to be seen, are unable to do so. If you don�t speak Korean, and you want to buy this movie through legal channels, you have to buy the shitty bowdlerized version.
And it�s these same pricks who work themselves into a self-righteous fury over movie piracy. How dare you illegally download movies? They ask. How? You�ve actively prevented me from seeing this movie through legal channels. The only way to see it is to find an illegally pirated fansub on the internet. And I wouldn�t pay for your shitty censored version anyway, so it�s not like you�re losing money on that. If the illegal version was not available, I simply wouldn�t see the movie (and actually, I�m paranoid about downloading things, so I probably just won�t see it anyway, which is a damn shame).
So for the record, Fox Lorber, I would happily pay money to see this movie if you had not obstructed me at every turn with your bowdlerization and rank philistinism, which is positively obscene. And now I probably won�t get to see The Yellow Sea at all. What a goddamn shame.
Dear readers, if any of you have seen the film in any of its iterations, please feel free to tell me what you thought about it. I would very much like to know.
