• (The) Research of the performance art and culture
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• no.34
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• pp.111-131
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• 2017

Korean Shamanism has long been regarded as the peripheral cult or supersition by the majoriy of the society. This fact is a result by the influence of the mass media, especially the motion pictures, which intentionally reflected the negative images of the Shamanism. The documentary films, which stress the objectivity and the reality, rather disclose the neutral position toward the Shamanism. In fact, the directors of the documentary films who have more or less close relationship with the Shamanism have tried to exhibit the mental world and the traditionality of the Shamanism. In this paper, I will explore the value of Shamanism reflected in the documentary films. I focus of two films; directed by the Korean and directed by a foreigner. In this way, I can compare the attitudes of the two directors toward the Korean Shamanism. The director of confessed that he was attracted by the aspect of a musical underlied in the shaman ritual. However, the film does not show the artistic beauty of the shaman music because the director failed to understand the essential aspect of the shaman ritual, that is, the music. In this way, the director failed to show the distinct characteristics of the shamanism to the audience. The director of , a music herself, was focused on the music of the shamanism. The story flows to the adventure to seek a "master" with a long journey to enjoy diverse genres of Korean performing arts. This story resembles the epic shaman song, the Princess Bari. In this way, the audience can easily grasp the beauty of Korean culture. Music is said to be a universal language and, at the same time, a non-universal language which reflects a special trait of a cultural community. The Korean shaman ritual music is a non-universal language that is an accumulation of the Korean culture for a long time. The Korean director fails to exhibit the essential characteristics of the Shamanism since he does not have enough knowledge toward the shaman ritual music in . However, the foreign director, who is a music herself, successively disclose the underlying beauty of Korean shaman ritual music and Korean traditional culture in .