How Do Contemporary Critics in Hong Kong and Taiwan Incorporate high aesthetics and popular aesthetics When Evaluating Korean Queer Movies?

Although not all films are art, it is argued that it can be. In the art world of films, there are various cultural intermediaries working for the legitimation of film as an art form. Here, as one of the intermediaries, critics play an important role in disseminating the legitimating ideology of films. In the contemporary context, in recent years, there has been an interesting phenomenon that Korean queer movies have enjoyed growing recognition and popularity across Asia, especially in Hong Kong and Taiwan. However, the study on Korean queer movies has been comparatively small-scaled Therefore, this study is about the film discourse of Korean queer movies in Hong Kong and Taiwan. Specifically, the research is interested in how contemporary criticism in these two discourses incorporate reviewing elements associated with high aesthetics and popular aesthetics. To do this, this study has conducted a content analysis on 40 film reviews on Korean queer movies. These 40 reviews were first separated into three types—reviews with a critical tone, reviews with a popular tone, and reviews with both critical tone and popular tones, the last of which is based on the fact that some Korean queer movies are celebrated both critically and commercially. Then, the study used Baumann (2006)’s theory on how art worlds are like social movements to analyze them. In the research, 13 themes have been generated from the data set and then grouped into the three main concepts from Baumann (2006)— ‘Opportunity Space’, ‘Resources’, and ‘Framing’. Specifically, the study examined how exactly they have been mobilized by critics to support their claims as well as the differences in terms of their usages across film review types. In a nutshell, the study finds that Baumann (2006)’s three concepts work for all the three types of reviews, however, the ways they have been mobilized by the critics are different, which are closely related to the type of each review. Particularly, the concept ‘Framing’ is used most frequently by critics to support their claims—be that critical or popular. In terms of reviews that have both critical and popular tones, the research finds that it is more of the incorporation and combination of different themes instead of the dominance of one single theme that help push critics’ acclaims on Korean queer movies further.