Children's day (어린이날) is upon us, so the family was off to the neighborhood CGV at 군자역 to see "Avengers: The Age of Ultron." I'm not a fan, but I consoled myself with the thought that the movie would somehow work into my research on Seoul and science fiction. And, indeed, it's certainly gratifying to see Avengers battling it out in front of "Kimbap Heaven." However: without the still, I would have missed it. For all of the money spent (and for all of the incentives the city of Seoul dished out), there's barely five minutes of Seoul in this film, and that--beside a couple of signs in Korean and an 옥상 텃밭--is of a generic "any city," bits and pieces of Seoul strung together into a non-place. And I was not the only one disappointed. As Gang Yu-jeong argued in 경향신문: A masterpiece of atmospheric kitsch, the back alleys where the action takes place in the Avengers don't really look that different from the back alleys of Hong Kong...
Occasional posts on anthropologically interesting science fiction, anthropological futures and my own future as an anthropologist.