Cold Water Pass Film Analysis

Yang Kwija’s “Cold Water Pass” is another work by him that does not conform to the ideals of utility by showing how a family is negatively affected by the state of their society rather than showing how the majority is prospering. “Cold Water Pass” follows the story of a family in which the father died and left them with a lot of debt and had to be taken care of by their older brother despite their financial difficulties. During this story when their mother was talking about their struggles, she said that “’Weren’t for your big brother, we would have starved.’ Mother often recalled her eldest son’s labors, and it was true. Like a cloud drifting in the sky, Father cared only for otherworldly things and died suddenly, leaving behind intense poverty,

Due to this they rebel in little ways such as growing out their hair longer than it is supposed to be. Throughout the film they talk about the dreams and what they want but are constantly bombarded with pushback and criticism for their wants while the people stand upon a self-entitled moral high ground. This eventually leads to one of them going into his term in the army and the other killing himself by riding his bike off a cliff at the beach. These occurrences while focusing specifically on those outside the system are to show how utility might seem good on the outside, but create a lot of pressure/struggles for others and cannot be ignored. The film also shows how morality is intertwined through utilitarianism as the characters in the movie that conform to the ideal displays a sense of moral superiority; which in fact shows demoralization in society. This demoralization can be seen within Jean-Joseph Goux’s Utility: Equivocation and Demoralization, in which he states that “These premises have the advantage of being clear. They set out from the beginning with an unambiguous affirmation of the axiological indifference of the notion of utility, and with a radical demoralization that goes far as to take a stance completely contrary to that of ordinary language” (Goux 12). Stating that utility and turning a blind eye to those struggling because the overall happiness is greater leads to demoralization and can have strong effects on a society that employs such an ideal; just as some of the characters in The March of Fools were demoralized to the hardships around them. However, Park Chung Hee would disagree that utility is the problem as in his work Our Nation’s Path, he says that “The fault does not always lie with the institution itself; it lies rather with the individuals who comprise and operate