From Subjects to Assemblages: Insights from Oldboy

Drawing on the insights of media ecology, this essay explores the potential of media to mobilize representations, feelings, and habits to transform individuals into extensions of media themselves. Specifically, I undertake an analysis of the South Korean film Oldboy, which I argue demonstrates how, in the contemporary moment, media narratively and affectively mobilize individuals to become not only ideological subjects but also media appendages that, consequently, carry out cinema’s central functions.