ScholarWorks@경상국립대학교

초록

This paper aims to explore how the Soviet Red Western genre specifically constructed its unique aesthetics through a micro-textual analysis of the film The Hostage. For this purpose, the entire narrative of The Hostage, from its beginning to the final conclusion, has been established as the organic unit of analysis. This segment is optimal for analyzing the themes and style of the entire work, as it compellingly encapsulates the full process wherein the core conflict between the ‘Soviet revolutionary forces’ and the ‘Basmach counter-revolutionary forces’ intensifies, the central motif of the ‘hostage’ is established, and the ideological confrontations and ultimate fates of the main characters are determined. This study will examine the narrative of The Hostage through three analytical axes: thematic analysis, aesthetic analysis, and an analysis of the ‘doppelgänger’ motif. The thematic analysis will investigate how The Hostage adopts, ideologically reinterprets within the Soviet historical context, and simultaneously differentiates itself from generic conventions such as ‘civilization vs. savagery’, the ‘frontier’, and the ‘heroic figure’, through an intertextual comparison with the traditional Western genre. The aesthetic analysis will trace how the cinematic language of Eastern and Western masters—such as John Ford, Akira Kurosawa, Sergio Leone, and Sam Peckinpah—is inherited and transformed in this work, and will analyze the process of constructing The Hostage’s original visual language. Finally, dedicating a separate section to the ‘doppelgänger’ motif, which maximizes the narrative‘s originality, this paper will explore how the relationship between the Basmach leader ‘Bek’ and his double, the ‘fake Bek’ ‘Gado’, evolves and how this corresponds with Dostoevsky's literature. Ultimately, this paper argues that The Hostage is not merely a propaganda film but a text that demonstrates the aesthetic and ideological essence of the Red Western, a genre that creatively adopted and modified the powerful archetype of the Western. Through this, it will prove how genre films from two different cultural spheres can serve as mirrors to each other, and will argue that the film embodies, to a certain extent, the originality of the Red Western genre, in which personal conflicts, collective ideologies, everyday humanity, and historical necessity are intricately intertwined.

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