Summary Of 'The Host And The Geopolitics Of Outbreak'

Outbreak Narrative in The Host and the Criticism of Korean Society behind It In “The Dangers of Biosecurity: The Host and the Geopolitics of Outbreak,” Hsuan L. Hsu insists that the monster film The Host shows how neoliberal economic reforms and the discourse of biosecurity imposed by international intervention on South Korea cause economical, biological and environmental harm to the nation and destruct the social reproduction of Korean society by revising the outbreak narrative. In the first page of the article, Hsu proposes the correlation between the monster’s origin and catastrophic effect of international intervention on South Korea. Defining that fictional creatures in monster films are originated from the concerns about the overall …show more content…
By interpreting the monster as a “weak family” without a mother, Hsu explains the association between monster and humans and points out the demolition of social reproduction in Korea. To be more specific, Hsu refers that Korea’s rapid economic reforms in the past causes the absence of traditional roles of a mother and consequently results an incomplete family such as the main family in the film and inability of proper social reproduction. Furthermore, by continuously suggesting the commonality between the monster and humans, Hsu emphasizes that the movie constantly states that the real threat to Korean society is not the creature itself but the unstable social fabric of the nation. However, Hsu comments that the movie, at the same time, presents one of the solutions to the current situation of Korea and the partial reinstatement of broken social reproduction with the last scene of the film showing Gang-du’s family which is still weak but restored and stronger than before. To conclude, by analyzing the monster movie The Host as the revised version of the outbreak narrative, Hsu indicates that the movie could be interpreted as the criticism of