• The Research Journal of the Costume Culture
• /
• v.16 no.5
• /
• pp.963-978
• /
• 2008

This study examined the images and formative features of female characters portrayed in fantasy films. This study aimed at providing an applicable theory to modern fashion by reconsidering the images of women appearing in fantasy films and arranging fantastical features reflected in costumes of female characters. The followings were the results of the study: The first divine nature that human beings discovered was woman nature. The discovered stone worked of the prehistoric age had a meaning of the great mother of universe and expressed a positive image. Such positive images of the goddess were variously differentiated to negative images or reduced in their roles and meanings in the settlement process of patriarchy as well as sociocultural transition. The foremost examples of negative image were expressed as grotesque, destructive, otherness, sensual, and exotic. The positive image of a goddess in fantasy films was not especially emphasized. On the other hand, the negative images of the goddess and the case of costumes were variously expressed as well as emphasized the typicality of the negative image of the characters. It was reconsidered that the typical features of characters in fantasy films were a result of the image of women following sociocultural transition. In addition, it was confirmed that such result was being reflected in film costume.

• Journal of Korean Theatre Studies Association
• /
• no.40
• /
• pp.61-96
• /
• 2010

This research established that the two characteristics of Femail Gugguek were explored on the character as genre and the nationalism discourse. This research also included how to encounter the characteristic of Female Gugguek as a popular entertainment with the social context at the time and how to re-produce the social ideology. The 'historical nationalism narrative' piercing Female Gugguek had the close relation with the nation/state discourse of the time. The history reproduced by Female Gugguek was not real. It was the imagined past, the history as image. The Female Gugguek was a genre which typically showed how to intermediate fantasy, ideology and narrative. The happy-endings with the victory of male hero, the narrative pattern on overcoming national crisis, the narrative emphasizing the glorious past and the unification of nation, all these were projected the discourse on nationalistic ideology and nation/state-making in 1950's. The Utopian desire of Female Guggeuk imagining the glorious past and strong nation was the fantasy which concealed the contradiction in real life and the national identity damaged by colonial experience, division of territory, governance by U.S. Military Government and the Korean War. The Female Guggeuk was doing well, because it had amusement. Futhermore, imagination of glorious past and strong state/nation of Female Guggeuk satisfied the public's desire of escapism and wish to establish their position and identity in the rapid social-economic changes. However, Female Guggeuk repeatedly produced the never-changing characters, narrative pattern and conservative world-view. Thus, it became regarded as immature and obsolete thing in late 1950's. Female Guggeuk, which kept re-producing the retrogressive image of the past without modern viewpoint and interpretation, was not sensitive about change of time and trend of the people. Consequently, it was pushed out of people's major interest.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
• /
• v.14 no.3
• /
• pp.113-124
• /
• 2014

Ah! My Goddess has impressive narrative structure including a "narrative as a discourse," a "narrative as a story" and a "narrative by narrator": in a narrative as a discourse, North and South Korean soldiers make friendship; in a narrative by a narrator, main characters (including Sun-ho, Seok-gu, Ju-hwa, Chang-seop and Dong-hyeon) appear in the outer story and narrate the inner story of characters (including Dong-hyeon, Goddess and Seok-gu) within the frame of a play within a play; and in a narrative as a story, reality and fantasy intersect by the appearance of the "Goddess." This narrative structure contributes largely to 1) the character formation of space, 2) the strategic minimization of the stage, 3) the multiplicity of main characters, 4) the repetition of similar life story, and 5) the flexible change of a point of view. And the musical number serves as dramatic functions such as 1) pursuing the multiplicity of characters, 2) maximizing the effect of the expression of tragic feelings, 3) drawing audience's interest by irony and fantasy, 4) evoking the nostalgia for delicate feelings and pure wishes, and 5) ordinary female characters' playing the role of healing and salvation, thereby contributing to the reconstruction of reality and the style of fantasy.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
• /
• v.14 no.10
• /
• pp.41-50
• /
• 2014

This study is the subsequent full-scale research of a TV drama writer who has been out of scholarly pursuits as it explores in-depth Su-Hyeon Kim's underlying consciousness with focusing on her male characters of the and . Su-Hyeon Kim shows difference which clearly distinguishes a melodrama from a home-drama by her own self control, a rare case in TV drama genres. This study, in her distinguished melodrama, analyses the writer's more clearly ignited consciousness. This study enlarges the result of the precedent study by applying the same Lacan's theory to the male characters with the study's female characters. Lacan's concepts of sexual difference notes that the sexual differences is not the product of the fixed differences from the biological organs or the inequal system, custom, but that of the psychological, cultural causes. According to Lacan's sexuation theory, the male subject is an all 'fractured' one of subordinating to symbolic/phallic order by becoming a exceptional being of breaking the order through a fantasy despite his existence of subordinating the order. The writer conceives men and women as the 'same', 'privative', 'fractured' subjects who search for the impossible phallic jouissance in their own different ways, which is the same method of Lacan's. Also the gap of 20 years of two works marks the writer's change of male perspective, in which shows being more accepting, more sex-neutral to a man who can only enjoy the phallic jouissance through a fantasy, while a woman who can enjoy both of the phallic and feminine supplementary jouissance.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
• /
• v.22 no.2
• /
• pp.739-744
• /
• 2021

This study examined the fantasy drama series Tale of the Nine Tailed, which uses the world view of a folktale and adopts the motif of reincarnation. Tale of the Nine Tailed adopted a cyclical structure where the fate of the past repeats itself in modern life. The traditional Korean folktales that are used in the drama series all share the same topic, but they also vary slightly by region or era. Tale of the Nine Tailed changes people's common negative perception of the nine-tailed fox. First of all, the series portrays the nine-tailed fox as an attractive male, rather than a seductive female. It also incorporated various episodes to tell the story of a heroic nine-tailed fox that uses supernatural powers to save not only those whom he loves, but also the general public. Furthermore, it was a new attempt to bring the nine-tailed fox together with other characters from different folktales into a story to make different world views merge into one. This study analyzes how the narrative structures of traditional folktales are adapted and changed in fantasy drama series, and it explains how various types of result can be created from the storylines of traditional folktales and the imaginations of the authors.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
• /
• v.18 no.9
• /
• pp.510-520
• /
• 2018

This study explored the phenomenon of heterosexual women embracing Boys' Love manga within the heteronormativity context from a feminist psychological perspective. Specifically, the issue of genre characteristics of Boys' Love manga, women's psychological mechanism of reading Boys' Love manga, and the functions and effects of embracing Boys' Love manga were discussed. As a theoretical framework of analysis, I started from the classical psychoanalysis and critically adopted the concepts of the various camps of feminism, queer theory, and Huizinga's Homo Rudens. The results show that Boys' Love manga can be classified as a sub-category of the romance genre, which fulfills heterosexual women's desires of eternal love and equal partnership. From these wish-fulfilling fantasies, heterosexual women attempt to be decontextualized from the heteropatriarchism, to enjoy distancing and voyeuristic separation from the characters in the texts, and to disturb the dichotomous gender system through gender reversal identification. These processes, which can be regarded as a women's play challenging sexual rigorism, ultimately bring about an awareness of the female sexual subjectivity.