대중서사연구

Abstract

The most controversially reminisced past in the recent Korean films is that of 1980s. ‘80s carry too many scars from violent political realties to be easily commodified. Until early 2000, the films on the ’80s showed the pattern of diverging into comedies consuming the periods as retro-style fashion items san the political realities and serious epics with explicit political themes. The ‘80s remembered in the current Korean cinema seem to overcome this divergence and seek a more popularized compromise. Sunny and The Attorney made the must successful contacts with the desires of the mass. Sunnyridicules the political austerism of the 80s by reconstructing the period from high school students’ perspectives. Yet its narrative strategy of invoking a nostalgia through the ‘80s’ pop-cultural icons ends up defending capitalism and patriarchy. As a result, this film mocks at the critics of the contemporary political powers and contributes to defending and maintaining the status quo. The Attorney follows the footsteps of a petit bourgeois’s political conscientization in the ‘80s. In the process, the nexus to the historical persons and events were intentionally abandoned so that an otherwise personal narrative was transformed into a the heroic narrative structure. Massive enthusiasm to this film represents both the mass’ subconscious political aspirations for democratic values deficient in the politics of “here and now” and the universal nostalgia for the success stories of self-made riches.

Abstract

Reply 1994 stimulated nostalgia of its viewers by restoring the scenery of 1990s in details and was a huge success. However, while the past was reorganized with the fantasy about eternal love and passion, and the idealized images of hometown and family, the unique characteristics of the times of 1990s failed to go beyond the level of a background, and the critical mind about the social issues of those times was omitted. On the other hand, the narration whose amount had markedly increased consisted of universal and philosophical contents and seemed to console its viewers, yet disguised itself as the one with privilege recollecting an era. As a result, 1990s retrospected in Respond, 1994 have left among us as if it's the general "correct answer" to remember that period, but eventually it relies on the impaired and partial memories of “the survived.” This soap opera has played such a great role to actively include 1990s into the area for remembrance, but simultaneously, it's been asking the fundamental question of how we should remember 1990s.

Abstract

This paper tried to examine the recent phenomenon of nostalgia for 90s in popular culture as the cultural project to form the specific generation subject, through analyzing the cases of Reply 1994 and Nine. This phenomenon is related to the current context of generation discourse that requests the narratives of generation’s collective memory as well as to the post-modern crisis of time concept. 90s generation, who expand leading influence in popular culture, attempt to spatialize their youth of 90s and to make narratives of their own memory in collaboration with memory industry in popular culture.

Abstract

Continuous publication of novels regarding ‘Gwangju’, which has been a phenomenon for the past few years, can be analyzed in connection with the political crisis in Korea. This thesis analyzes Legato (2012) by Kwon Yeosun and Here comes a boy (2014) by Han Gang which call for Gwangju Uprising as an important force in narrative, and aims to explore the way that enables bringing ‘Gwangju Uprising’, which has not been finished yet, to the present. ‘Gwangju’ in Kwon Yeosun’s Legato functions as an opportunity for the generation of so-called elite people who already have stable social status but participated in the movement back then to reflect their present and past. The fact that this novel summons ‘Gwangju as a superego’ is quite meaningful in that it harshly criticizes the fault and hypocrisy of the generation with movement group background through the author’s unique indicative. The damaged body of Jeongyeon who came back alive from the scene of Gwangju after nearly 30 years points out the violence of the present memory which tries to fossilize Gwangju as a historic event. Han Gang’s Here comes a boy is a novel which is concerned with the ultimate way of reproducing the tragedy. Usually, novels regarding Gwangju reproduce the tragedy of Gwangju through describing the damaged body of the dead or the painful souls of those who survived. On the contrary, Han Gang’s Here comes a boy tries to reveal the horrors of Gwangju more accurately through reproducing the tragedy by depicting the voices of the painful souls of the dead or describing the physical humiliation of survivors with the device of ‘impossible to testify’. Furthermore, Here comes a boy is meaningful in that it tries to deliver the testimonies of young boys and girls, and female workers who were not able to tell their stories fully in other existing novels. The accomplishment of Here comes a boy would be noticing the individuality of pains through resisting the movement of understanding and making the history of Gwangju as a mere anonymous collective tragedy. The meaning and possibility of bringing Gwangju to the present could be reconsidered through these novels which fill the gap where the existing narratives failed to cover.

Abstract

This paper looks into the competition of Kwangsuck Kim’s three musicals and uses methodology to connect the fierce competition with aesthetic styles in order to highlight how Kwangsuck Kim’s songs were individually appropriated into the three musicals, which have been collectively used in Korean musicals in 2013. The three musicals have separately paid for Kwangsuck Kim’s the larger-than-life value in accordance with the production scale and business strategies, and recontextualized the value to suit the ideas of the musicals. The ideas that drove the three musicals were: “The universality of Kwangsuck Kim’s songs”(Wind), “The everlasting friendship between Kwangsuck Kim and his friends”(Those Days), “The romanticism during Kwangsuck Kim’s era’(December), and these ideas were materialized in a common narrative. That is, the main characters are discontent with the present day which summons the past, and then they welcome in a brand new reality. The aesthetic style of each musical was the key element through which such narratives were thoroughly individualized. And the decisive factor to determining the differences among the aesthetic styles laid in the scope of purchasing the copyright contents of Kwangsuck Kim. In other words, the production company of December NEW monopolizing Kwangsuck Kim’s materials from the right of publicity to Kim’s unreleased songs had a decisive effect on purchasing the copyrights of Wind and Those Days. Therefore, Those Days purchased the right to consent to make musical arrangements from the original writers of the songs, then only used the songs purchased excluding the singer’s original songs. While the Wind used the songs by purchasing the copyrights and the arbitrary arranged songs which contained the maximum conformity from the originals. While Those Days and December have transformed the songs’ structures and placement through an active arrangement, Wind’s pursuit to approach Kwangsuck Kim’s original songs for as long as possible in the form of an acoustic concert was an inevitable result already determined with the copyright purchasing power.

Abstract

Abstract

This study focuses on the transition from 'culture' to 'contents' in korea since the late 1990's. Culture industry has become the one of basic industries because of the economic crisis in the late 1990's. A new Korean coinage, 'culture contents' derived from Korea Culture Content Agency(KOCCA) which was founded in 2001. KOCCA was transformed to Korea Creative Content Agency(KOCCA) in 2009. The word, 'contents' has become in common use up to the present. The transition from 'culture' to 'contents' represents the industrialization of culture and the popularity of 'Korean wave'. This study discusses the capitalization of the state in neoliberal age focusing on the progress of culture industry as basic industry in Korea.

Abstract

This study analyzes two of Park, Beom Shin’s latest work, Eungyo and Trifling Landscapes. Released in 2010, Eungyo became a big issue as it brought up to the surface the biological aging of humankind and the sexuality of elderly. Released in 2013, Trifling Landscapes is different from Eungyo in terms of subject matters, but it can also be interpreted on the same extent as it dealt with the desire of a student and teacher for writing and the conflicts of desire and love among three men and women. Eungyo depicts the exclusive love of human beings who are destined to be confined in the limited calibration of time, while Trifling Landscapes shows the original form of love born by free beings in the causality of time. In this respect, it is valid to say that Trifling Landscapes both extends and exceeds Eungyo. The focus of Eungyo is the problem of human existence suffering between the natural aging of physical body and the sexuality that never ages and the agony of a person who struggles between the desire to substantiate himself through literature and the lack of natural talents. Eungyo depicts the exclusive love that eventually leads to destruction three people who have their unique ways of love, while Trifling Landscape depicts the collective love of free entities that are not confined to body and time. The triangle of three people in Eungyo all about jealousy and conflicts, while the triangle of three people in Trifling Landscape shows the original form of love that is possible just because it is a triangle. This is possible because Park’s premise is that love is the deep understanding to reach the essence of the other, beyond narcissism. The collective love in Trifling Landscape is also the aesthetic completion of art. The plot of Trifling Landscape, where the inside and outside of the epic intersect without being confined by the causality of time, also matches the internal flow of the story that deviates from all conventional ethics and norms.

Abstract

Mad Scientist's Laboratory and Imperialistic Nostalgia— The Study of Korean Gothic SF Films in the 1960sSong, Hyo-Joung (University of Seoul)It is very difficult to distinguish the “unique” SF films in Korean film history. Once they were in a decided minority. In addition, for a long time SF films were regarded as a exclusive property of the child. This article deals with the origin, emergence and development of the Korean SF films in 1960s. In this study, I have concern about Korean SF films by and large from 1960s to early 1970s. The objects of study are placed from the first Korean SF The Last Invisible Man (1960) to Scary Double Human (1974). These films have revealed a gloomy laboratory of a lunatic scientist in common. The event usually occurs in a remote mansion, villa or hospital. I called them “Korean Gothic SF” films. Under the influence of horror films of United States and Britain exploited films in late 1950s, new Korean genre films began to be made. At first, they imitated a little bit of The Invisible Man (1897), Dracula (1897), Frankenstein (1818). At the same time, they applied the Korean motives, for example tear jerker narrative (Sinpa, 新派), adventure story of anticommunist boys and resentment-revenge story. Sometimes imperialistic nostalgia was reflected in the Gothic SF films. They were a cinematic reaction to the atmosphere of the Third Republic in Korea that was accustomed to order and standardization. It turned out through the negativity, sadism, melodramatic excess and grotesquerie. Although there were scientists handling modern science for example botany, medicine, life sciences, Korean Gothic SF films are characterized by regressive moral emotions and resentment which dates back to the colonial era. When it was in the early 1970s, gothic SF film had faded and occult films for adult and animations for children began to appeared. So Korean Gothic SF films were obviously the style in 1960s.

Abstract

Kim Byung-ik's Discourse on Popular Culture and Cultural Democratic Consciousness of 4.19 Generation Song, Eun-Young (Yonsei University)This essay was intended to get over the established frame on 1970s' literary fields and 4.19 generation's identity and directivity by analyzing one of the main members of Literature and Intellectual, Kim Byung-ik's discourse on popular culture. His essays and articles on popular culture in late 1960s and 1970s, showed a new perspective on Literature and Intellectual dealt with in terms of elitism, conservatism and literature-centrism. Although he agreed with the ruling discourse to criticize popular culture's vulgarity and lewdness, he supported the Youth Culture based on popular culture because it helped to realize the more freedom and equality. He didn't separate popular culture's vulgarity with elites' commercialism. His announcement that popular culture would help a development of cultural democracy, proved that 4.19 generation's cultural directivity stemmed from their desire to realize political freedom and social equality.

Abstract

A Birth of new human species and the evolutionary imaginationOh, Youn-Ho (Ewha Women’s University)This study takes a close look at Frankenstein, a science fiction written in the early modern era by Mary Shelley, and Transcendence, a 21st century film directed by Wally Pfister, to identify how scientific knowledge is utilized to create new human species in the cultural context. Also, the study identifies and analyzes changes in evolutionary imaginations stemming from the development of new technologies and scientific knowledge ranging from evolutionary theory to quantum dynamics and nanotechnology. In this study, the author attempted to take a fresh approach to science fiction to reach a conclusion that cultural plots that cut across the fields of science and fiction are not always fake and fictional but can be reasonable and futuristic. Through this observation and analysis, the author tries to present a new vision for anthropology based on humanities in the 21st century. Human evolution in this context does not merely mean biological evolution. Evolution functions as imagination and knowledge that are important to understand humanity amid rapid changes in our society and technology. The concepts of natural selection and survival of the fittest that underpin evolutionary theory take new perspectives and logics depending on cultural, historical and scientific contexts. Human evolution illustrated in Frankenstein and Transcendence may be the realization of human desires for immortality and tragic nature that is intrinsic in science and technology. Evolving into immortal beings has been the longest dream of mankind. Now, it has become a possibility that may come trun in the future.

Abstract

Early modern ‘dramatic novels’ are distinctive narratives combining the characteristics of speech, meeting, novel, and drama. A ‘dramatic novel’ represents in the novel a conference or meeting propagating the messages of enlightenment to an audience through broadcasting the characters’ speeches and meetings realistically as if actors perform on the stage. This unique style of narratives emerged in the late 1900s when all public speeches and assemblies for common people were prohibited through political oppression including the promulgation of the National Security Act and the Publishing Act. Early modern ‘dramatic novels’ are largely divided into those representing speech meetings and those representing the scenes of meetings. Some remarkable characteristics of ‘dramatic novels’ such as Geumsuhoieuirok, Gyeongsejong, and Mangukdaehoirok, which borrowed its motif from Geumsuhoieuirok in another boom of new novel writing in the 1920s, are ‘the plot of frame within a frame’ and the relief of the physicality of speaking. ‘The plot of frame within a frame’ is a product from combining the characteristics of allegorical novels and speech meetings. The outer narrative, in which the narrator explains how he came to observe the speech meeting of animals and how he was impressed, contains the inner narrative describing the scenes of the speech meeting, and the inner narrative again contains the animals’ speeches within another frame of the opening address and the closing address. In addition, through physical motions resembling actors’ performance on the stage, the scenes of animals’ speeches make the readers feel as if they themselves are in the scene of the speech meeting. That is, by inserting rhetoric expressions asking or answering to the audience and the audience’s physical responses such as laughter and hand clap here and there, the story induces the readers to feel synaesthetically collective affects happening in the scene of the speech meeting. ‘Dramatic novels’ representing meetings pursue double purposes: one, educating the readers on the rules and proceedings of meeting, and the other, asserting the necessity and justness of meeting. Depending on its characteristic, meetings are divided into those emphasizing rules and procedures and small‐size talks. Byeonginganchinhoieuirok, Cheonjunggajeol, and Geumsujaepan belong to the former, and Jayujong to the latter. Both of the two types maximize the effect of learning and the effect of enlightenment through using the plot of frame and spotlighting the bodies of meeting. Byeonginganchinhoieuirok and Cheonjunggajeol form a sequential structure, which organizes and integrates opinions and reaches the final agreement through the meeting rules. Geumsujaepan also adopts a sequential structure, reaching a rational conclusion according to the meeting rules and judiciary proceedings. Due to its characteristic as a small talk, however, Jayujong has a distinctive structure combining sequential and parallel structures, in which the pattern of ‘presentation of agenda → free expression of opinions → closing’ is repeated. A commonality of ‘dramatic novels’ representing meetings is that they foreground the physical norm that the meeting proceeds according to the rules with blocking narrator’s intervention as in a drama scenario and using meeting terms such as motion, second, and carry through direct speech. Such a meeting scene plays the role of a textbook for teaching the readers on the proceedings of meeting in which the participants reach an agreement through meeting rules and principles.

Abstract

Haksaeng Gwahak, which stands for ‘the only science magazine for young adults’, was published in 1960’s. Science Fictions in the magazine are very important in the history of Korean literature. Park Chung-Hee administration made science policies including new national ideology. Space race overseas in 1960’s also inflated scientism. Haksaeng Gwahak followed policies of the administration very positively. Seo Kwang- oon, O Min-Young, Kang Sung-Chul and Yi Dong-Sung were main writers in the magazine. They reflected atmospheres of the time when they created novels. The new wave of scientism triggered ‘young soul’ and built a huge fantasy empire. In their science novels, heros emphasized scientific armament and never allowed science repression. There always was utopia in the end of stories instead of dystopia. The wave became more stronger when scientism was combined with patriotism. The idolization of General Yi Sun-Shin is one case of scientific patriotism in Park Chung-Hee administration. Novels continuously showed science-sociology applying to the space age. When a new type of novel, which allegorically attacked mindset of older generation, appeared in the end of 1970’s, Haksaeng Gwahak faced a turning point.

Abstract

My purpose is to discuss the form and acceptance aspect of food documentary television, examining the Korean Table. Basing on these findings, my goal in this paper is to outline its characteristics of popular culture from visual ethnographic perspectives. This paper thus attempts to identify the taste culture's performativity with impact on reality construction as a mediated popular culture. In other words, an exploration of how audiences construct their identity through watching the mediated Korean tastes is examined in our discussion. In this article, I will endeavor to elucidate the significance of food in popular culture. focusing on the issue of a cultural approach to television culinary programs. Moreover, I wish to address a new approach to a rapid surge of television cooking shows. In the present paper, we shall first consider four documentary forms of the Korean Table as the foodmentary, that is, expository, observational, reflexive, poetic documentary forms. So, I will provide an framework for the transparency of experiential realism related with Korean food in the Korean Table. Secondly, we shall analyse audience acceptance. On foodmentary characteristic, it is important for audience to learn an argument for historical, social truth of Korean food. Yet, through imaginatively deconstructing, reconstructing body's limits by making and eating the Korean food, audience responses with desiring to become other beings are stimulated. Finally, this study purports to reveal the importance of emotion and memory in order to cognitively fabricate the Korean food as wanting something to eat. This structure functions as strong incentives for constructing the Korean Table as audiences communicative events. Emotionally experiencing or remembering the traditional cooking skill of Korean grandmothers and old ladies provides a key motivation for audience's imagining television screen as table. Nevertheless, this paper is to make explicit that Korean Table's images as traditional table are too convenience commodities for selling preindustrial life styles. The reason for this is that audience watching and feeling for real people, real emotion, real memory related with Korean food are themselves strategic rhetorics for constructing cultural reality.