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초록

This research is first to explore the adaptation of Charlie Chaplin in Joseon cinema via analyzing a specific text. Traces of Dr. Cheapie [Ssaguryo Baksa]—a project planned as the third X-Kinema film but abandoned—can be found in a serialized screenplay with the same title from 1931. This paper reconstructs Dr. Cheapie based on the screenplay and still images and compares it with The Kid (1921), examining the similarities and differences in three aspects: the figures of the urban poor and the child, the narrative structure of family romance, and the slapstick code and heroism. In doing so, this study derives the historical significance of the text that contemplated the role of popular culture amid the intersecting oppressions of imperialism and capitalism. Dr. Cheapie is political as it interrogates the material and epistemological regimes that divide useful and useless bodies based on economic utility; it is also ethical as it urges a response by representing the refugeeness of subalterns excluded from the family-nation-state. The production of comedy in colonial Korea was to pursue the potential of the film medium that can practice political inquiries and ethical responsibilities—a public sphere of laughter where sight and sound converge.