The Film 'A Taxi Driver' and the May 18 Uprising

These days the film A Taxi Driver seems to be a hot topic. Considering that people around me — among those who watch films often, or among those who go on dates at theaters — came up to talk to me about having seen 'A Taxi Driver,' I can understand that a little. Even though my hometown is Gwangju, since the place I currently live isn't Gwangju, I've often had chances to see and hear the images and thoughts that outsiders hold about the May 18 Uprising, and well, it's not greatly different even now. After all, May 18 still feels, both to me and to those people, like a past from a long time ago. Some people said that interpreting history through 'film' is wrong, but the mere fact that a series of 'works of art' — whether film or literature — appear in various forms with a single theme is, honestly, something I'm just grateful for. I feel that way because it seems like a decent method of dragging past events into the present reality.

As those with a little interest would know, the film A Taxi Driver is a film based on the story of a taxi driver who once gave a ride to the German journalist who reported on the May 18 Uprising. As Sohn Suk-hee mentioned when Song Kang-ho appeared on JTBC to promote this film, there have already been several films themed on May 18. Films like May 18 (A Splendid Holiday) and Peppermint Candy are exactly the ones that fall under this. May 18 is a film about the very moment the democratization movement was taking place, and Peppermint Candy is a story about a person suffering from trauma created while suppressing the May 18 Uprising. In other words, May 18 depicted the citizens' militia, and Peppermint Candy depicted the suppression forces. A Taxi Driver depicts a civilian. That's the difference. That civilian is the taxi driver who gave a ride to the journalist who later made this affair known. In that sense, this film can be seen as having portrayed the position of ordinary citizens better. To explain in a bit more detail, it's a film depicting people who, though they didn't fight on the front lines, held thoughts similar to those of the citizens' militia at the time, yet contributed to the democratization movement in their own way while considering their situation of being unable to throw themselves directly into battle.

These days, when I watch Korean films, I judge whether or not this film has the characteristic 'melodrama' feel that Korean film expresses best and that is also clichéd. I suppose I've grown jaded about watching wrung-out, forced emotional moments — when you keep watching formulaic emotional moments, you gradually build immunity, and at some point you no longer feel moved by such plots. But whatever the plot, if it's based on a 'true story,' how the true story is composed becomes more important, and whether it's a melodrama stops mattering. In that sense, A Taxi Driver is a film that shows individual awakening — how well it expresses the 'taxi driver's' perspective, and how an ordinary little person seeks out a way to participate in society and comes to open his eyes. So whether this film itself was well-made or poorly made, I'd want to recommend it if only for the occupation of 'taxi driver.'

The other day, at a parish young adults' gathering, the moment the priest was talking about May 18, the people concentrating on May 18 were about 3 out of nearly 10 young adults. The rest weren't particularly interested in May 18. They might not have seen the film, or, as the priest said, it's also because they have no interest in the democratization movement to begin with. But considering that protests kept being held in Seoul until just a few months ago, and that I had even gone to one of them once, such 'indifference' is disappointing. In fact, throughout the time the protests were happening in Seoul, I was on edge. I worried all the more because a massacre could happen at any time and the events of the past could recur at any time — but the kind of unknowable faith that such things wouldn't happen seems to be something we must, though fearfully, accept as reality.

Whenever I see the attitude of these people around me — that is, people other than those from Gwangju or South Jeolla Province — toward democratization, I'm reminded of writer Lim Chul-woo's novel 'The Tourists.' The writer 'Lim Chul-woo,' whom many friends around me, including myself, who majored in Korean education or Korean literature would likely have heard of, was a student attending Chonnam National University at the time of May 18, and so in academic circles he's such a major writer of literary works related to May 18 that he's called a writer of May. In this novel 'The Tourists,' it depicts 4 people who came to Gwangju on a trip for the 10th anniversary of May 18. They experience the atmosphere of Gwangju on the 10th anniversary of May 18. They breathe tear gas as protesters and police clash, and they experience a memorial mass being held at a cathedral. But those people are merely tourists, not people who experienced May 18. The 4 protagonists, listening to the sounds of clashes between protesters and police that reach the rooftop on the top floor of the hotel, wish to leave this city as soon as possible. These 'tourists' are, in fact, the attitude toward May 18 that I can expect from ordinary people. And the thought that I'd like films like 'A Taxi Driver' to contribute at least a little to changing this attitude sits within my heart.

Sadly, among some people in the world there are those who call May 18 a riot. It's because the citizens' militia, who occupied the police station and seized weapons from the armory to arm themselves, resisted the state. But I still have doubts, because the thought of whether it's wrong to resist the state remains. The state is not something we chose. And calling people who stood up against it 'rioters' — when the state was carrying out abnormal acts — is something wrong. It's disappointing that, in this state of affairs, people who acted rather than stood by are the ones being blamed. I take an interest in the sacrifices of the countless individuals that occurred throughout history. I think the nation was maintained because they existed. I think that when the path wasn't right, they left behind the energy to return to the right path. Indeed, if Catholic organizations and people like Roh Moo-hyun hadn't traveled all over the country playing the May 18 footage privately, outsiders wouldn't have understood that tragedy. Even to this day.

For the time being there probably won't be occasions to talk with anyone about May 18, but later on I really want to show people the photographs of the tragedy in the underground exhibition hall of the national cemetery. Come to think of it, since I grew up seeing those photos from childhood, I've become a bit desensitized, but I wonder whether a complete stranger could look at those photos and still call it a riot.