• Cross-Cultural Studies
• /
• v.42
• /
• pp.285-311
• /
• 2016

This paper examines the constitutive relationship between realism and magical realism using a genealogical approach. Georg $Luk{\acute{a}}cs^{\prime}s$ The Theory of Novel and Gabriel García $M{\acute{a}}rquez^{\prime}s$ One Hundred Years of Solitude, as two founding texts of each genealogy, meet each other obliquely, sharing the most essential features. Even if realism and magical realism appear in opposition to each other in their political, cultural, epistemological outlooks, they in fact constitute the same truth regime in two different guises. Karen Tei Yamashita's Tropic of Orange interrogates this discursive regime of magical/realism, refusing to be contained within it. Her novel de-emphasizes the current idea of solidarity based on identity politics because it cannot resist effectively against the all-reifying power of globalization. Instead, she abandons the idea of imagination itself, and thus, tries to cease the dominant operative of magical/realism. On the temporary vacuum caused from such a conscious act of abandoning imagination, Tropic of Orange posits the urgent need to rethink 'solitude' and 'community', which already have been hopelessly compromised in the history of literary imagination as a global governmentality.

• Cross-Cultural Studies
• /
• v.34
• /
• pp.7-41
• /
• 2014

This article examines magical realism in contemporary european film, which is considered to be one of the most popular styles in the present culture, with regards to Antonio Negri's theory of art. Magical realism is "alternative approach to reality" (Maggie Ann Bowers, Magic(al) Realism) and defined as "a fictional technique that combines fantasy with raw physical reality or social reality in a search for truth beyond that available from the surface of everyday life" (Joan Mellen, Magic Realism). The term of Magic Realism was coined in 1923 by Franz Roh, German art historian, as the concept for the post-expressionist painting in Germany. It has flourished in the Latin-American literature during the 1950s to 1980s and spread worldwide. Since 1980s magical realism is considered to be a universal artistic mode. Since 1990s magical realism is to find in the various novels, and since 2000 one encounters magical realism in the cinema very often. Antonio Negri writes about the relationship between life, imagination, art and the political in his book Art et Multitude. According to Negri, the hard life of people in the present society liberates the imagination and this creates the art as "the excess of the existence". In this process the aesthetic becomes to the political. Negri calls this space of art as "magical time and space". Claire Denis' film Vendredi Soir is analyzed as a contemporary magic realist text, which realizes Negri's concept of art: vendredi soir (friday night) in Vendredi Soir is the magical time, when the impossible becomes the possible, and paris in the public transportation strike is the magical space, where the individuals meet the other in a new situation. The film analysis associates itself with Negri's theory of art: in Vendredi Soir, it is to see, that the excess of the existence liberates imagination and creates the magic reality both in the movements of things and the human relationship. The phenomenon of magical realism in contemporary culture can be understood as the symptom of the emotional and existential pains of contemporary people in the current world. The contemporaneity of the magical realism can be read in the film as "the metaphor for contemporary thought" (Alain Badiou, Cinema). As Antonio Negri writes, art can become "the aesthetic redemption" (Negri, Art et Multitude) for us. At the same time "(t)his is where aesthetics can be transformed into the political." (Lee, "Communism and the Void")

• Journal of Digital Convergence
• /
• v.14 no.12
• /
• pp.495-501
• /
• 2016

The film has always reflected the culture of the era based on reality and imagination. The visual effect in the film has mainly played a role of expressing the reality more realistically or recognizing the virtual as reality. This study examines the meaning and the effect of fantasy realism through Oasis of Lee Chang-dong. Fantastic realism has separated the reality from the imaginary space by using a dual meaning tool that affects the time and space in the film and reflects the human desire and desire to see. It was also reproduced in the real world through the medium of pigeons. In addition, it separates visualized space from non-visualized space in film narrative structure, separation of real and unreal space, segregation of consciousness and unconscious space, and separation of reality and reality space into power structure. With the development of technology, the image of the yellow image comes closer to us like reality, which will express the space of unconsciousness that we could not think of.

• Korean journal of communication and information
• /
• v.77
• /
• pp.137-163
• /
• 2016

In the early 1900, photography, magic lantern and cinema were simultaneously introduced and experienced until the mid-1910s as mysterious and magical symbol of modern science and technology. The technology of vision, cinema in particular demonstrated its commercially expandable potentials through serial films in the mid-1910s, silent cinema in the 1920s and talkies in 1930s. I argue that a metaphor 'like a movie' which was would be spoken out by peoples as a cliche ever since the late 1910s whenever they encountered something uncanny, mysterious, and looking wholly new phenomena informs how cinematic technology worked in colonial society at the turning point to the early 20th century. Mass in colonial society accepted cinema and other visual technologies not only as an advanced science of the times but as texts of modernity that is the reason why cinema had so quickly taken cultural hegemony over the colony. Until the mid-1920s, discourse on cinema focused not on cinema itself, rather more on the theatre matters such as hygiene, facilities for public use, disturbance, quarrels and fights, theft, and etc. Since the mid-1920s and especially in wartime 1930s, discourses about negative influences and effects of cinema on behavior, mind and spirit of masses, bodily health, morality and crime were articulated and delivered by Japanese authorities and agencies like as police, newspapers and magazines, and collaborate Korean intellectuals. Theories and research reports stemming from disciplines of psychology, sociology, and mass-psychology that emphasized vulnerability and susceptibility of the crowd and mass consumers who would be exposed to visual images, spectacles and strong toxic stimulus in everyday lives. Those negative discourse on influences and effects of cinema was intimately associated with fear of the crowd and mass as well as new technology which does not allow clear understanding about how it works in future. The fact that cinema as a technology of vision could be used as an apparatus of ideology and propaganda stirred up doubts and pessimistic perspectives on cinema influence. Discourse on visual technology cinema constructed under colonial governance is doomed to be technology of mass control for empire's own sake.