mimicry

Mimicry, in The Stray Bullet, has incredible and veiled consequences, according to Cho.  Yong-ho’s mimicry, in particular, lends a hand in exposing the authority of the colonizer.  His mimicry of classical Hollywood cinema is a “disavowal of his lack” (111)  His complete failure in disavowing this lack, though, shows the “breakdown of his imagined community” (111). 

 The difference between the colonizer’s original and the colonizer’s mimicry serves as a catalyst for a new panoptic effect.  The gaze of the other, the gaze of the colonizer, establishes the internal gaze of the colonized.  Yong-ho can realize his failure both in completing his heist, as well as replicating the image he strived for.  His feeling of “inferiority” is self-inscribed.

 This complicates and even breaks the imagined community.  “Patriarchal social codes” seem to wither as the onscreen male actors are emasculated.  This recognizes South Korea’s need for a complete restructuring, a new way of imagining the community—either but a shift in the social codes, or through repair.

 I am a little confused on how this all “destabilizes” the colonizer’s authority, though (109).  If some sort of self-gaze is put in place I would think that authority would be reinforced.  Or does this self-gaze somehow draw attention away from the gaze of the colonizer?