• Journal of English Language & Literature
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• v.58 no.1
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• pp.69-91
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• 2012

Marina Carr's By the Bog of Cats.... (1998) is the last play of the trilogy of "the midlands plays" which can be regarded as her re-writing of both Euripides' Medea and J. M. Synge's The Playboy of the Western World by resetting the two plays in the midlands of contemporary Ireland. Carr intends to courageously explore into the dangerous liminal space, i.e., the middle between the past and the present, the high Greek and the Irish folk culture, dealing with the ghosts of the dead writers for her own Irish feminist theatre. Thus, in the middle Carr can build a new Irish theatre by minorating and abjecting the Greek tragedy and subverting and expanding Synge's theatre of grotesque realism. This paper attempts to read By the Bog of Cats... as Carr's final project of exploration into the midland of Ireland to establish a new Irish feminist theatre and at the same time a new Irish folk theatre. By focusing on her strategies of minoration and subversion through grotesque imagery and carnival rituals it argues that Carr put Hester's becoming-ghost in the middle, the bog of the cats as both grave and womb, waiting for the birth of a new Irish people. And it emphasizes that the ghost of Hester, merging with the ghosts of her mother and daughter by the bog of cats will haunt the official society as a threatening abjection, challenging the restoration of the social order.

• Journal of Environmental Science International
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• v.23 no.8
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• pp.1523-1536
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• 2014

Restoration is the process of reducing or reversing damage to an ecosystem so that it can function in its original manner. However, many restoration programs do not achieve this. In the Nakdong Estuary, the largest migratory nesting site in the center of the East Asian-Australasian flyway, an estuarine barrage was constructed in the 1980s that required site restoration following its completion in 1987 and the expansion of several large industrial complexes(Noksan and Jangrim) and a residential development(Myeongji). The goal of the restoration was to restore the function of the wetland to its pre-disturbance state. To achieve this, a restoration program was designed consisting of three stages. The first stage(1993-1995), saw the construction of three artificial wetlands(Shinhori, Daemadeung, and Eulsuk), the second(2003-2005) involved the dredging and returning of farmed lands to their natural state, and the third(2008-2012) focused on the rehabilitation and vegetation development of the wetlands. However, the project has not achieved all of the desired goals, and it is an example of the lapses in ecological restoration following anthropogenic disturbance. Issues that resulted in an incomplete restoration included the timing of the stages, noncompliance with the restoration plan, not directly monitoring the restoration or continuing the monitoring following completion of the development project, and the political subversion of the restoration plan. For the success of the restoration plan, it is necessary to avoid mistakes such as inconsistent monitoring, unequal levels of stakeholder involvement, and political interference.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Costume
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• v.54 no.7
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• pp.135-150
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• 2004

The purpose of this research was intended to investigate drag queens' and drag kings' gender identity not only as a comic and desexualized drag borrowing external characteristics of the opposite sex but also as the subject visualizing and performing' the third sex'. It also aimed to examine formative aesthetic characteristics and aesthetical value of drag queen's and drag king's fashion and to confirm the functions of drag queen's and drag kins's fashion to establish, visualize and Perform the discordant sex. For this process, research steps were as follows : 1. Understanding drag, drag queen and drag king in social, psychological context as well as in gender context. 2. Finding visualized forms which drag performance interchange with mass media 3. Analyzing similarities and differences between drag queen's fashion and drag king's fashion. 4. Examining the aesthetical characteristics and the value of drag queen's and drag king's fashion. The results of characteristics of drag queen's fashion could be categorized into stereotype, mimicry, kitch, inconsistency and commercialism. And the characteristics of drag king's fashion could be divided into reality, self-consciousness, mimicry, inconsistency, subversion and multiplicity. Drag queens create plausible impressions of feminity through the use of wigs, dresses, jewelry, makeup, hormones and through &role Playing&. Similarly drag kings produce a plausible masculinity taking gay male aesthetic using suits, crotch stuffers, facial hair, and greased hair. Male and female impersonation produce very different notions of gender performance for male and female embodiment. Drag kings' performance of masculinity demands authentic property of bodies so rather nonperformative, while drag queens' performance of femininity depends on more visible and theatrical fashion.

• The Journal of Art Theory & Practice
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• no.13
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• pp.133-156
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• 2012

This paper briefly charts the history of excrement as part of the late 20th-century art and explores ways in which excrement functions in the realms of 'High' art. From Piero Manzoni's to David Hammons' performance , excrement has taken a small yet distinctively important part in the development of contemporary art. In an attempt to challenge the hegemony of 'high' art, on the one hand, and resist the commercialization and fetishization of art, on the other, Manzoni allegedly offered his own "shit" preserved in a tin can and sold it at the price of gold of the same weight. Andy Warhol took the legendary Abstract-Expressionist painter Jackson Pollock as the object of parody, simulating Pollock's dripping action by pissing onto the canvas that had been primed with copper-based paint. Warhol's urination produced splashes and stains of iridescent colors just as the patterns on ordinary abstract paintings. In contrast to Pollock's masculine action, Warhol's pissing alludes to the artist's homosexuality. Excrements in art also provoked controversies, debates, and even acts of vandalism against the artworks. The works of Andres Serrano and Chris Ofili infuriated many Christians for the blasphemous use of excrement with religious icons. Politicians engaged in the heated debates on the use of public and national funds in support of some of the 'politically incorrect' contemporary art. In the midst of media sensation and criticisms, these works challenged the conventional understanding of artistic beauty. The preexisting artworks were also targeted. African-american artist Hammons assumed the role of spectator in by urinating on Richard Serra's sculpture in the street of New York City. It was an act condemnation levelled at the racist pattern of the way in which large portions of funds and commisions of "public" art tended to promote established 'white' artists, whose work or creative process often failed to reflect the actual public. The use of excrement in art is not unusual in contemporary art practices. With its subversive power, excrement plays an important critical roles in the shaping of contemporary art.

• The International Journal of Costume Culture
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• v.5 no.1
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• pp.1-13
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• 2002

The purpose of this study is to illuminate the relations between Pop Art and pop music, which formed a serious coupling loop in an identical cultural background. Also this study intends to set up a position of visualized sexual identity as it Points out the conceptional characteristics of glam, a subculture outside mainstream, which includes the matters of sexual minorities such as homosexuality and bisexuality under the influence of the aesthetic and philosophical composition by Andy Warhol. In conjunction herewith, we explore the visual representation of glam style focusing on the influence of Warhol. The classification and explanation about the visual representation of glam style under the influence of Warhol are practised by distinguishing as denotative representation and connotative representation. For the denotative representation shown in the glum style, first, the discordant images were put together by bricolage, then adapted into the new dramatic symbol of youth. Second, through a visually androgynous style a subversion of sex for symbols of sexuality and gender was represented. Third, the factitiveness as a weird display and fallacy is shown from boisterous make-up and unisex sかling in theatricality and put-ons, featuring artificiality, assemblage and unnaturality. And the connaotative representation shown in glum inglam style, first, glam style implies its experimental nature which attempts to break down boundaries between masculinity and femininity, homosexuality and heterosex-uality. Second, the bricolage in sequin and other discordant elements have connotative meanings as sensuality and excessiveness. Third, mixing various style as sexual play shows ironic visual images, in accordance with Superior Theory and Discord Theory.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Costume
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• v.50 no.3
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• pp.13-30
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• 2000

The purpose of this study was to analyzed the types of Deformation dipicted on the late 1990s western costumes. The late 20th century cultural experience or lifestyle is interpreted with 'popular culture' ,popular culture is described as cultural phenomenon in postmodern condition. Contemporary popular culture may no longer be strictly 'working-class' as the idealistic purists of political formalism would like to , but does emerge from subordinate cultures, from the inventive edges of the consensus, and from the previously ignored and suppressed. It gestured through a widening democratization of styles, sounds and images, to an important remarking , to new possibilities , new perpectives, new projects. The growing importance of popular culture as a source for change of expression in the art, expecially new desire and will of artists has been caused lots of ' Deformation' in their works. Deformation, doesn't mean to represent object faithfully as it were seen through the artist's eyes. In a sense it implies that artists deform it with conscious or unconscious form. So in this study , the phenomenon of the postmodern western costumes is to describe ' formative language' called 'Deformation.' and it is classified three types, that is, 'Deformation of human-body image.' , Deformation of silhouette.' 'Deformation of detail.'. First , Deformation of human-body image is represented by deconstructive , subversive image in western costumes, a lot of costumes types of deconstruction have been shown by fashion designers are emphasized empathy with Deformation of human-body image. Second, Deformation of silhouette is also represented subversion of traditional manner and ultiity, underwear and outwear structure and ugly image. parody image of postumodernism , and so on. Above all, the late 1990s western costumes with Deformation of silhouette was an infinitely larger and more complex world than it appeared from outside and has expressed as a rejection against the values which traditional aesthetic concept had pursued, And parody through the change of internal meaning is to bring about parodox, irony, contempt, satire , unexpectedness by applying the original to inapproporate subject through its substition, inversion. Third, Deformation of detail is represented overdecoration, exaggerative distortion of for , overlapping and fetish image, parody image, kitsch image, and so on , Once fetish achieve a certain' style factor' among trendsettler, they are picked up by internationally famous fashion designers, The characteristics of kitsch are overdecoration , unfitness , imitation , used western costumes.

• Journal of English Language & Literature
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• v.54 no.2
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• pp.263-279
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• 2008

Arif Dirlik in Postmodernity's Histories sees the issue of re-ethnicization in the case of John Huang, China's alleged attempt at lobbying the Clinton administration. In this view, Americans with Chinese surnames were suspected by the US Justice Department to be possible spies working for Beijing. Reethnicization here seems to serve the mainstream society in reducing an ethnic minority to a group of aliens operating for their countries of origin. However, re-ethnicization is not necessarily a one-way oppressive operation; it is often made use of by the ethnic minorities in their efforts to adapt to their country of arrival. Haroon and Karim, the protagonists of Hanif Kureishi's The Buddha of Suburbia, are cases in point. They are portrayed as winning social recognition and securing a place of their own within the hostile host society through a strategic use of re-ethnicization, that is, masquerading as 'genuine Orientals.' This study brings to light possible fallacies or misguided expectations concerning the political position of first- and second-generation immigrants. One of the fallacies is found in the racist metropolis, which regards the ethnic minorities as a sort of resident aliens, no matter what immigrant generation the latter belongs to. Another fallacy is found in the kind of postcolonial criticism that automatically regards an anti-racist critique advanced by people like Kureishi as something motivated by a confrontational tactic, that is, an attempt at subverting the colonial power relations. The conclusion of this study is that Kureishi's agenda, as presented in The Buddha of Suburbia, is neither the preservation of an ethnic identity nor the subversion of colonial power relations but survival in the metropolis. On this account Kureish's agenda can be called a micro-politics.

• Journal of English Language & Literature
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• v.55 no.1
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• pp.83-105
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• 2009

Modern poetry begins as criticism of modernity and, by so doing, rejects its idea of time. Modernity emphasizes sequential, linear, and irreversible time and progress. Williams rejects the modern view of time, and attempts to substitute literature for history assuming that literature can take us into the immediacy of time. His poetry asserts the true moment of experience as an immediacy, of words co-existent with things. He suggests that modernity and its idea of time already led to World War I and could clearly lead to an actual, manmade apocalypse with continued technological progress. Already in the 1920s, Williams sensed that he was living in a world where such an end could come all true, which is why Spring and All, his greatest early achievement, begins with a parody of the modern apocalypse. Throughout the work, Williams criticizes "crude symbolism" and expresses his longing to annihilate "strained associations," for he believes that the metaphoric or symbolic association is related to order, the center, and the traditional concept of time itself. The metonymic model of Spring and All substitutes a self-reflexive, open-ended, and indeterminate structure of time for the linear and closed one. Instead of supplying an end, Williams only asserts the rebirth of time and attempts to arrive at immediacy while attacking the mediacy of traditional art. His characteristic use of fragmentation and abrupt juxtapositions disrupts the reader's generic, conceptual, syntactic, and grammatical expectations. His radical poetic experiments, such as the isolation of words and the disruption of syntax, produce a sense of immediacy and force the reader to confront the presence of the poem. His destruction of traditional forms, of the tyrannous designs of history and time, opens up rather than closes the possibility of signification, and takes us into a moment of beginning while disallowing temporal distancing. Spring and All, as a criticism of the modern idea of time, asks us to view Williams's work not as an ahistorical text but as a cultural subversion of modernity.

• Cross-Cultural Studies
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• v.41
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• pp.299-320
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• 2015

Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland expands scope of Children's Literature genre by introducing the discourse of pleasure as opposed to that of didactic discipline. Carroll's narrative is important, not only for children's literature, but also as a forerunner of post/modernism of James Joyce with its language play and linguistic invention. Its treatment of Alice's body change follows the motif of body transformation in myth and literature. Comparing "stasis" of Susan Sontag's character Alice (James) in her play Alice in Bed and "movement" of Carroll's Alice, this study explores the issues of woman's alienation and the dichotomy of mobility/immobility in reality and in their literary representations. Focusing on a female child's double alienation as woman and child, I argue Alice's Adventures in Wonderland is a counter-narrative of alternative bildungsroman. Alice gains her subjectivity through her adventure by power of language and story-telling. Through representation of the dream/adventure of two desiring sisters, Carroll's narrative exhibits subversion of social order and emergence of new order of "chaosmos" out of chaos. As a method of study, this study traces genealogy of "curiosity" in myth and literature as a motivating force that triggers adventure and argues "creative curiosity" is a dynamic energy propelling Alice's adventure.

• Cartoon and Animation Studies
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• s.47
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• pp.81-101
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• 2017

The present study argues that film director Lee Ae-rim animation works depict the world of the grotesque and not only are important sociocultural phenomena but also hold the significance of humor and subversion. The grotesque exhibits the intriguing characteristics of expressing a perspective critical of the existing society through the sensibilities of minorities and is used broadly as a term not only in the aesthetic sense but also designating sociocultural phenomena. Although discussed separately in terms of Mikhail Bakhtin's carnival grotesque and Mary Russo's uncanny grotesque, the grotesque fundamentally rejects existing order and conventions and is externalized through unique expressions, thus opening up a rich possibility for rejection, humor, satire, transformation, and deconstruction of and regarding the authority of the mainstream. Although they constitute a fictional medium, animation films are social products as well so that they are affected by society, culture, and history and stand as important texts that must be interpreted in terms of the relationships between humans' instinctive desires and society and between the overall culture and artistic media. However, the rarity of grotesque portrayals in South Korean animation films also proves that it is a society where even problems that are in themselves sensitive must be manifested ingeniously on a conventional level. South Korean society has a unique history of colonialism and national division and is simultaneously in the unique situation of a society that has undergone growth at a nearly unprecedented rate. Consequently, the society exhibits closed yet dynamic particularity where everyday tension and rigidity, wariness of others and extreme competition are intertwined in a complex manner. Intensively analyzed in the present discussions, director Lee's animation films and are characterized mainly by grotesque images, nonlinear narratives, and vivid depictions. In such a context, these works not only are artistic products of South Korean society but also rejections of a rigid society and share the significance of the aesthetics of the carnival grotesque, which consists of subversive expressions directed at a new world.