대중서사연구

초록

Abstract

This paper examines the kind of film art that the magazine Younghwa-yesul(Film Art) was trying to establish through the political process of criticism and translation. By doing this, this, the aim was to newly establish the Korean aesthetics in the period between the 1960s and 1970s. Younghwa-yesul(Film Art) was first published in April 1965 and continued for about eight years until 1972. This paper focuses on the Western articles that were translated because the process of selecting and translating Western articles was a very political process. The translation of the articles can be classified into three periods. The first begins in April 1965 and lasts until September 1967. During this period, Younghwa-yesul(Film Art) discussed the emergence of a genuine ‘film writer’. The second period lasts from November 1967 to January 1969. During this period, there was a demand for films to deviate from the influence of literature and to establish their own aesthetic. The third period is between April 1969 and November 1971. At this time, Korean films were in a slump due to the growth of television. So Korean films had to build a new aesthetic for survival. This paper will lead to an understanding of how Younghwa-yesul(Film Art) established ‘film art’ through translated articles.

초록

Abstract

This paper examines the 1960s’ discourses on new cinema in Younghwa-yesul (Film Art), a Korean film journal that sought to not merely publish film criticism but also to introduce innovation to the entire Korean film culture since its first publication in April 1965. Although its publication was repeatedly suspended and revived until the mid-1990s, as the only film-specific journal of the 1960s. Younghwa-yesul raised an array of significant critical agendas such as critic Lee Young-il’s Riŏllijŭm ch’ogŭngnon (‘transcendence of realism’ thesis) as a key topic of its first issue, cinepoem (a.k.a. yŏngsangjuŭi [imagism]), internationalism, avant-garde cinema, modern cinema, cine-club movement, and scenario movement. This paper contextualize these agendas within the industrial and cultural contexts of the Korean cinema in the 1960s, including the government’s drive for the corporatization of the local film industry, its enactment of a new film law, and its excellent film reward policy. In so doing, it focuses on how these agendas could construct the synchronous modernity of Korean cinema in terms of their correspondence with the world cinema of the 1960s characterized as the age of ‘new cinema’. Additionally, this paper illuminates how the journal’s search for the professionalization and institutionalization of film criticism coincided with the local formation of film studies as an independent discipline, as well as how its effort to promote intersections of the official and the non-official film cultures aimed at public film education and the audience’s enlightenment. For these aims, this paper investigates the journal’s editorials, features, articles, round-table discussions, studies on modern film theories and film directors, cine-club correspondences, and scenario studies. In this course, it elucidates the ways in which several concepts delineated, employed, or supported by these sections, including auteurism, realism, globalism, cinepoem, and avant-garde cinema, were reflective of the processes of translation and refraction that were derived from the journal’s reception of Western film theory and criticism. In doing so, it takes a perspective of considering both the journal’s key critics and contributors and its readers as the active subject of culture.

초록

Abstract

The paper aims to examine South Korean Cinema’s memorial project in the 1960s, focusing on the commemoration of the ‘beginning of Korean Cinema’ and the mythologization of Na Un-Kyu. While the project to confirm the beginning of Korean cinema and enact ‘Movie Day’ as a national memorial day was a process of commemorating the history of Korean Cinema in the national temporality, the memorial of Na Un-kyu as a pioneer of Korean cinema was a separately meaningful celebration for the group of film personnel. Hanguk-Yeonghwa-Jeonsa (Comprehensive History of Korean Cinema, 1969), published by the Association of Korean Film Personnel in commemoration of “Half a Century of Korean Cinema”, was not only the fruit of a series of commemoration practices in the 1960s and the first whole historiography that covered a vast amount of data, historical descriptions, individual’s reflections, statistics and so on, but was also a historical turning point that marked South Korean cinema’s ambition to enter contemporary world cinema. In the 1960s, South Korean cinema’s memorial project was a venue where various voices and desires from both inside and outside the film industry clashed with each other in the complex context surrounding the nation, film industry, and culture. It created the most influential voices throughout the half a century of Korean cinema by showing the society of Korean filmdom and the group of Korean film personnel.

초록

Abstract

This study is on Theater Newspaper, a public relations magazine published autonomously by each theater and production company in Seoul in the 1960s. A method of publicizing a movie through media will be discussed specifically on the basis of a program issued by the business circles in the ‘heyday’ of Korean film. First of all, the theater newspaper is divided the entity of publication into the publicity department of a theater or a production company as the material available for reading a trend of business community in that the position and goal of the publicity department in a theater and a production company are delivered without processing. Also, the readers of theater newspaper were those that were potentially attendees of theater, beyond the movie fans or the specialized reading population. Accordingly, the theater newspaper tried to attract the readers’ attention by diversely mapping out pictorials and others, and published behind-the-scenes insights of the movie production that may interest readers. Sequentially, the theater newspaper emphasized audiences’ responses, contained theater-related information, and has a characteristic such as preparing for an event for luring readers as potential audiences. The theater newspaper aimed to ultimately promote a motive. But the publicity department, which is the main agent of publication, attempted to make the film ‘information magazine’ while arranging the specialized reading materials such as the detailed information on movie personnel or as the in-depth film review with having own sense of mission. This study had the objective of broadening the horizon of a research on film media by multi-laterally examining the publication entity and the reading population, and the contents composition and orientation through discussing the theater newspapers in the 1960s. There is a limit as saying of having taken research subject only as the currently-secured volumes. However, it is expected to become the foundation of considering a trend of movie circles at that time from different attention from the days so far.

초록

Abstract

Jeguksinmun distinguished itself by succeeding in publishing only in the Korean language starting with its first edition and carried out various strategies for Hangeul (Korean language) readers: the prize contest was one of them. This study focused on the prize contest in order to examine Jeguksinmun’s use of Hangeul and strategies for its readers, since the contest provides a useful perspective for a study on media. The prize contest was different from readers’ contributions, in that both the company’s position and readers’ responses can be understood through it. The prize contests held by Jeguksinmun were divided into <Malmodeum> and <Gukmunpungwol>. The former was a kind of quiz in which Hangeul words were suggested as questions and players solved them, while the latter was a contest of writing in which participants created poems in Hangeul. Such contests were widely held in 1907 and 1908 and are found to have commonly used Hangeul. Response to the prize contests was considerable, and the participants were mostly comprised of teenagers and female readers. It is demonstrated that the contests effectively attracted young male readers in their teens who spoke Hangeul. Thus, the prize contests was measures for Jeguksinmun to extend its directivity of media, use pure Korean alphabet toward the masses, practice of language toward readers. In addition, that was one of the strategies designed to compete with a variety of Hangeul media, including the Korean language version of Daehan Maeil Shinbo. The contest not only enhanced the readers’ understanding of the Korean language, but also induced their active participation. However, it could not be sustained, as the difficulty of questions and the level of verse writing could not satisfy the expectations or needs of the company and financial difficulties did not cease.

초록

Abstract

This paper defines the turning point of the “automation” discourse in South Korea as the 1990s, especially when the discourse and technologies of “financial automation” spread in the society, by analyzing the popular narratives in the media at the time. The “automation” discourse previously centered on a rather playful imagination of a hopeful future but, at this turn, connected with a sense of anxiety over an inhuman and cold-hearted dystopia. To examine this, the paper traces the trajectory of the “automation” discourses in South Korea and, based on that historicization, investigates the representations of financial automation in the films of the 1990s. It explores the transition from the 1980s when the automation technology and its mobility system were embraced as the objects of amusement and admiration in a consumer utopia to the 1990s when the financial transparency became the spirit of the times in that neoliberal globalization visualized the individual’s everyday life in the flow of financial automation.

초록

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to reveal the changing aspects of the Promethean motif in SF movies by examining the use of this motif on the three layers of Promethean myth, Frankenstein motif, and contemporary SF movies in the film Ex Machina (2015). First, the greatest change of Ex Machina on the layer of the Promethean myth (creation of a living being) is that the character square of Prometheus - Epimetheus - Pandora - Zeus has been turned into a triangle of Nathan - Caleb – Ava. This means that there is a lack of the being whose role is to solve the problems caused by the development of science and technology and to bring a happy ending through the human’s usurpation of God and eventual replacement as Creator. Second, on the layer of the Frankenstein motif (taste of forbidden knowledge, hybris, and creature’s hatred towards the Creator), this film maintains the narrative centered around Dr. Frankenstein and his monster (Nathan and Ava) by making Caleb an eyewitness to the story of the Creator and the creature. Caleb’s role is similar to that of Captain Robert Walton of the novel Frankenstein, but the film differentiates itself from the novel through the emphasis of Ava’s ‘mechanicality.’ Third, on the layer of contemporary SF movies, unlike other such films, the revolt of the machine in Ex Machina is not quelled. The machine wins, and its power surpasses that of human beings. This requires the establishment of a new relationship between man and machine, suggesting the ‘emergence of a new species’ that does not belong to humans. The handling of the Promethean motif by Ex Machina through these various layers serves to enrich the narrative by compounding numerous classics into one motif and going further to introduce fresh elements by diverging from the common storyline. The significance of this study is to demonstrate the use of such multilayered motifs and, through this, the expansion of narrative through it in specific cases.

초록

Abstract

This article analyzes the narrative characteristics of Park Kyong-ni’s novel Toji and describes the popular enjoyment strategies based on them. Toji is very difficult to read. Because it is too long. In addition, the narrative keeps breaking. So it is very hard to focus on reading for a long time. For this reason, despite Toji being recognized as a representative work of Korean literature, it is rare for people to completely read Toji. Based on an awareness of this dynamic, this paper proposes a new reading method for Toji. The essence of new reading method is to be more ‘loosely and tolerant’ read, away from the burden of being able to understand the work properly if the entire work is completely read. In this article, I suggest the publication of an abridged version of Toji, a transformation of genre, and popular cultural events. Especially, if several shortened versions are published and compete with one another, a single abridged copy may come to stand out over time. This will be a significant contribution to the popularization of other literary works. As such, the popularization strategy for Toji may become an important model for the popularization of other works of art. It will be an important touchstone for the interpretation of various Korean classics and for the enrichment of national culture through freely changing genres.

초록

Abstract

This paper seeks to examine the dystopian representations and the ‘zombie’ image of North Korea reproduced from a global perspective. Globally, North Korea is often imagined to be a ‘zombie state’ today. Especially in the media, the North Korean people are likened to zombies in parallel to the ‘homo sacer’ when spotlighting their escapades and starvation or their robot-like obedience to the sovereign. This article, however, is based on the idea that the image of North Korea as a ‘zombie state’ is more telling of the global system rather than the reality of the state. Through this premise, various dystopian novels, movies, and newspaper articles that portray North Korea as a zombie are examined. As a result, this article sought to understand the political imagination involved in the view of North Korea as a zombie state. Particularly, Max Brooks’ post-zombie apocalypse novel ‘World War Z’ deals with North Korea vaguely in response to global Zombie crisis. According to this novel, It is assumed that North Korea responds most systematically to the Zombie crisis or that the entire people are turning into zombies in underground caves. In short, North Korea must remain in a state of exception for the world system to return to normal.

초록

이 글은 ‘비평 시대’가 개막되기 시작한 1970년대 전후로 한국문학의 대표적 재현 대상이었던 존재들의 윤곽을 젠더적 관점 속에서 들여다보고 그 재현적 틀을 재고해보는 데 목적을 둔다. 누락되고 배제된 관점과 영역은 어떻게 복원될 수 있는가. 재현 대상에 대한 젠더적 관심은, 작가의 여성관이나 작품을 통해 구현된 여성의 면모에 대한 관심이라기보다는, 소설이 구현하는 세계의 젠더적 성격에 대한 관심에 가깝다. 따라서 이 글에서는, 이념의 외화인 논리의 결을 쫓기보다, <창작과비평>의 이름으로 1970년대를 대표하는 작품으로 선택되거나 거론되었으며 담론적 위상을 마련한 작품을 대상으로, 작품이 전하거나 재조직하고 있는 집합감정에 주목했다. 방영웅의 「분례기」와 황석영의 「객지」를 검토하고 이를 통해 시민, 민중, 대중이라는 구분틀에 의해서는 보이지 않거나 볼 수 없는 공유지반과 그것이 갖는 성격에 대한 새로운 이해의 가능성을 가늠해보았다.

Abstract

This article aimed to look into the representative objects of Korean literature in the 1970s when the era of criticism opened. I have reviewed the representation framework of Korean literature and its critique from a gender perspective. How do we find missing point and excluded spaces in literary criticism based on the gender perspective? A Reading literature from a gender perspective is not about studying female characters or looking at female novelists’ viewpoints. It means examining the gendered nature in the expressed reality. Accordingly, I examined the horizon of critical discourse, focusing on novels that were selected or discussed as representative works by critics around the 1970s. Concretely, I reviewed of Bang Young-woong’s novel titled “A Bunye story” and Hwang Seok-yeong’s novel titled “A strange land” from a gender perspective. As a result, It was possible to capture the hidden points by the representation framework of Korean literature and to confirm the possibility of new understanding of the representation framework itself.

초록

Abstract

This study investigates the features of the ‘evil woman’ in the colonial era’s detective narratives within the perspective of urban space. Particularly, the modern visibility and mobility of the female villain is observed. Through this, there was an attempt to present the figures that overcome the stereotypical gender differences represented in modern literature. There are various female criminals in modern literature. They are usually described as having ‘barbarous passion’ or filled with uncontrollable desires. This symbolization reinforces the need to control or expel femininity. However, in the colonial detective stories, the female criminal simultaneously appeared as a combination of the object of control and the subject of surveillance. Jung Maria, the female villain in Love and Sin, is a woman who seduces men by using her sexuality. Yet she also shows a rational subjectivity that explores the complex environment of urban space, finds clues, and solves the riddle. Seo Kwang Ok in The Beautiful Demon is also a woman who frees her sexuality. However she is not abstracted as object of ‘male gaze’, but became the subject of ‘power of vision’. Finally, Ju Eun Mong in The Demon set herself as an object of surveillance, but actually manipulates and takes advantage of the male characters. It can be seen as an overthrowing of typical gender roles. Through this, women are expressed as subjects that utilize modern qualities and urban resources.

초록

Abstract

This paper scrutinizes The Secret Forest, which has been praised as a well-made TV drama series, as work of crime fiction. While the approach in the previous study on the TV drama has confined The Secret Forest to the drama genre that touches up on a detective or crime-investigation narrative, this study analyzes The Secret Forest with the wider viewpoint encompassing crime fiction. The Secret Forest is a crime fiction equipped with both criticism and entertainment; it interweaves social issues that expose corruption in contemporary Korean society in the guise of the popular speculative drama genre. The narrative of The Secret Forest is constructed in layers where crime investigation overlaps with design of concealment and exploration. The result is a frame narrative. The space of the ‘secret forest’ is the trope that illustrates the corrupt and exclusive arena of the Prosecutors Office and its accumulated powers and wealth in politics and indictment. In this space, corrupt figures conform to the times of darkness and are engulfed in private ownership and personal interests. In contrast, political thinkers resist to escape from such darkness and corruption. Throughout the series, the corrupt society is accused and accused with disillusionment by these corrupt figures and the hope of eradicating corruption and ushering in a new era is sought by the political thinkers. Previous studies on the Korean style of crime fiction or TV drama have been fragmented or stopped at the level of journalism. In this respect, the aim of this paper can be seen to be a search for a niche of academic discussions on The Secret Forest in terms of the theory of crime fiction. However, it puts more weight on analyzing The Secret Forest itself. Thus, a further study on the genealogical or historical trends of Korean crime fiction should be researched.

초록

Abstract

This paper examined the characteristics of sexual discourse surrounding teens in the mid-1960s, focusing on the popular 1960s magazine Myeongrang. This paper analyzed the social attention to disordered teenagers, the discourse about teenagers in popular magazines, the representation of teenagers, and finally the features of sexual discourse in adult men and their perception about sex and love of teenager girls. In the high-teen fictions, designed by Myeongrang, there were depictions of girls who voluntarily abandoned virginity. The girls were the target of criticism and the object of enlightenment in intellectual discourse; otherwise, in popular magazine discourse and novels, they were used as a means of men’s desire. They were the object to satisfy the instincts of the male public without guilt. Nonetheless, the girls in popular magazines longed for being the subject to voluntarily enjoy love and sex with their lovers. This desire began to form the basic element of romance, in which men who were reasonably protective of women and women who were passionately approached men made romantic love. In this paper, I analyzed the discourse of sexuality and the representation of teens who were defined as a disordered beings in the flow of the 1960s conservatism. Through this, the study revealed the perception and desire of the public that was suppressed in mainstream discourse in the mid-1960s, as well as the background of the formation of teen culture and novel that appeared in the 1970s.

초록

Abstract

This paper analyzes the film styles and visual spectacles that are articulated with the audience’s ‘way of seeing’ “Along with the God”. The purpose of this paper is to clarify the success of the movie with regard to the problems of desire and impulse which are connected with such formal elements. The film consists of various sequences that turn the sinners in hell into inanimate objects. This dynamic intensifies towards the latter part of the film and stimulates a sense of anxiety in the audience. The protagonist, Ja-hong, is confronted with conflicting feelings of temptation or rejection of his punishment. As a result, he wants to return to being an inanimate object like the sinners in hell. The film provides a variety of visual styles that stimulate and induce his conflicts. The spectacle of death drive corresponds visually with the desires of the Korean audience that suffers from the reality of ‘Hell Jo-Seon(헬조선)’. On the contrary, the words and actions of underworld characters such as angels of death, kings of Hell and Su-hong are overly lively and are directed as living figures. The customary sequence/style of Hollywood movies that are being introduced in recent Korean blockbuster movies makes that visual directing more verisimilar. On the other hand, it also acted as a deterrent to the narrative completeness of “Along with the God”. However, the familiarity and déjà vu of the visual form caused by certain scenes can be seen as attracting audience response. Furthermore, the introduction of existing familiar styles restricts the possibility of the Jouissance that the spectacle of death drive caused. In addition, directing all the characters in the film do not die, and the dream of ending provides a visual reassurance that has led to the audience lives and does not punishment. It means that the viewer can stay inside the pleasure principle related to life instinct. This paper contradicts the general argument of the existing argument that the success of “Along with the God” is due to the successful application of elements of Sin-pa(신파). First of all, we have highlighted that Korean movies are not merely influenced by their content elements, but that this is a complex issue related to various factors such as the visual form, the desire and drive of the audience, and the surrounding cultural context. In addition, the style of Hollywood blockbusters that is introduced and borrowed in Korean cinema today leads to the a sense of familiarity of the audience and reveals the complex interaction with the desire of audience and reality of Korean society.

초록

Abstract

In his book K-Pop: Popular Music, Cultural Amnesia, and Economic Innovation in South Korea(2015), John Lie explains K-pop as the emergence of export-oriented South Korean popular music, and makes sense of larger South Korean economic and cultural transformations. In K-Pop, John Lie provides not only a history of South Korean popular music―Japanese colonial influence, post-Liberation American impact, and recent globalization―but also a description of K-pop as a system of economic innovation and cultural production. However, John Lie’s description of the history and circumstantial background of South Korean popular music is too lengthy and based on inaccurate information and a prejudiced point of view, and thus is not free from criticism about undervaluation and factual errors. This might be because John Lie, who is known to have been raised in Japan, relied too much on Japanese documents. Nevertheless, this paper mainly intends to critically accept and re-interpret John Lie’s opinion about K-pop’s dilemma between capitalism and genuineness, rather than to point out the errors of his opinion. In addition, this paper intends to propose that the hybridity and diaspora of K-pop lay the foundation of building the identity of and developing K-pop. This paper also intends to criticize the current status of K-pop from the perspective of socio-musicology in reliance upon the main concepts (i.e., production, marketing, consumption, and listener regression) of Theodor Adorno’s theory of popular culture and to seek the measures to develop the future-oriented identity of K-pop and facilitate the sustainable development of K-pop in reliance upon the concept of “articulation” under Stuart Hall’s theory and methodology of cultural studies. This paper does not support John Lie’s assertion on K-pop’s naked commercialism after the 1997 financial crisis of Korea. Rather, based on John Lie’s view that the “lack of authenticity” of K-pop is attributable to its “severance from tradition,” this paper intends to put forward a new point of view on “how authentic music can be created.” If K-pop interacts with consumers (listeners) after its hybridity articulates with authenticity (tradition) and its diaspora articulates with regionality (identity), the tradition of Korean culture and the essence of global culture would naturally interact with one another. What is required of us now is not the vague prediction or expectation of K-pop’s improved capitalism, but the clear understanding and activism of K-pop’s recovery of authenticity.