• Journal of Popular Narrative
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• v.27 no.3
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• pp.95-124
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• 2021

As the symbolic images of girls besides its definition have varied according to the age and society, a posthuman girl character recently appears in the digital cinema. This study aims to analyze its cinematic representations and the social contexts in which they are created. For this purpose, the study focuses on what extent the society allows its imagined figurations as a future female body and the meanings revolving around the image of 'technologically body-enhanced female fighter'. Current digital visualization technology has developed to the extent any imaged future humans can be represented, but posthuman girls' representations have its limitation that only a human-like figuration can be allowed in accord with the traditionally idolized image of girls. It is because of the representation logic in which digital cinema is visualized based on perceptual realism that values audiences' experiences. Despite such less critical figuration which does not dare to cross the boundary between the image of human and inhuman, the posthuman girl characters create a new category of the 'dangerous girls' who are both void of sexual femininity and independent of motherhood and heterosexual romance narrative. Of course, they support the modern human-centered belief that humans can take entire control of technology with their moral behaviors and dispel the fear about the negative impact the nature of technology may have on society at large by showing their child-like figuration protecting ethical values. However, the new character of 'unruly girl' exerts her subversive act that seeks to fight against the human-centered liberal humanistic values and melancholic feeling and vulnerability that the neoliberalism and technocracy enforce. When posthuman girl characters are considered to be a marker through which we can see how different social forces are intervening and competing each other in the upcoming posthuman age, the limited figuration of the posthuman girl characters in South Korean movies illustrates the opinionated thoughts toward the instrumentalism in technology but their bloodshed struggles reveal how the corporate or state-governed techno-biopower has oppressively treated and appropriated the human body as the technology-object and also provide a meaningful opportunity to rethink its unethical violence.

• Journal of Popular Narrative
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• v.26 no.1
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• pp.175-209
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• 2020

This paper examines how the cinematic representation of the Japanese military "comfort women" stimulates 'imagination' in the realm of everyday life and in the memory of the masses, creating a common awareness and affect. The history of the Japanese military "comfort women" was hidden for a long time, and it was not until the 1990s that it entered the field of public recognition. Such a transition can be attributed to the external and internal chronopolitics that made possible the testimony of the victims and the discourse of the "comfort women" issue. It shows the peculiar status of the comfort women history as 'politics of time'. In the same vein, the cinematic representations of the Japanese military "comfort women" can be found in similar chronopolitics. The 'comfort women' films have shown the dual time frame of the continuity and discontinuity of the 'silence'. In Korean film history, the chronotope of the reproduction of "comfort women" can be divided into four phases: 1) the fictional representations of "comfort women" before the 1990s 2) documentaries in the late 1990s as the work of testimony and history writing, 3) melodramatic transformation in the feature films in the 2000s, and 4) the diffusion of media and categories. The purpose of this article is to focus on the first phase and the third phase in which the issue of 'comfort women' is represented in the category of popular fiction films. While the "comfort women" representations before 1990 were strictly adhering to the framework of commercial movies and pursued the sexual exploitation of "comfort women" history, the recent films since the 2000s are experimenting with various attempts in the style of popular imagination. Especially, the emergence of 'comfort women' feature films in the 2000s, such as Spirit's Homecoming, I Can Speak, and Herstory, raise various questions as to whether we are "properly" aware of issues and how to remember and present the "cultural memory" of comfort women. Also, focusing on the cinematic representation strategies of the 2000s "comfort women", this article discusses the popular politics of melodrama, the representation of victims and violence, and the feature of 'comfort women' as meta-memory. As a melodramatic imagination and meta-memory for the historical trauma, the "comfort women" drama shows the historical, political, and aesthetic gateways to which the "comfort women" problem must pass. As we have seen in recent fiction films, the issue of "comfort women" goes beyond transnational relations between Korea and Japan; it demands a postcolonial task to dismantle the old colonial structure and explores a transnational project in which women's movements and human rights movements are linked internationally.

• Journal of Korea Entertainment Industry Association
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• v.14 no.7
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• pp.319-331
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• 2020

This study investigated the meaning of absolute music of the first movement of Brahms' symphony No. 1, which was used as film music in the films "Tetro" and "Savages" and interpreted the meaning of this music used in these two films. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to explore the characteristics that classical music can be interpreted ambiguously in films. In particular, it was examined whether film music could be interpreted in a new meaning rather than a program music. The first movement of Brahms' symphony No. 1 is in a sonata form and has the characteristics of a chromatic grammar of the romanticism. In "Tetro", the irony about the value connection between this music and the characters of the film, the composition process of this music and the historicity that appeared in the character story of the film presented important. On the other hand, in "Savages", the chromatic grammar of this music expresses the emotional meaning of the characters in the film and the atmosphere of the event. This can be said to be the role of program music. In particular, the scene in which this music is used at the end of "Tetro" shows an ambiguous characteristic that can interpret a piece of music in different meanings depending on which of the two characters appearing in the film interprets the music from the perspective of the character. And the fact that Brahms spent 21 years to complete this music and that Tetro, the main character of the film, spent about 10 years before going through theatrical scenario and submitting it to the festival in the film, coincide with each other in terms of historicality. This gives the meaning of understanding film music from a new point of view, not from the point of view of absolute music or program music. In addition, this musical setting made the music recognized as an essential element of the film and as an irreplaceable auditory theme. When classical music meets other art such as film, this ambiguity Characteristics of music will have a great influence on the new perception of classical music.

• Journal of Popular Narrative
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• v.25 no.1
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• pp.281-313
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• 2019

This paper was written to investigate the narrative traits of Lee Ae-rim's Comic Books. Lee Ae-rim arrived on the scene with the boom of comic book magazines in the 1990s. Although she started her career as a Comic Book writer, she expanded her own area gradually and has been working actively as an animation director as well. The superficial characteristics of Lee Ae-rim's works can be summed up as sexuality, grotesqueness, and fantasy. In other words, Lee Ae-rim's comic books are mainly characterized by the visualization of sexual, grotesque, and fantastic shapes. Lee Ae-rim has faced challenges with her own overwhelming and compelling images like no one else. For that reason, it is true that people haven't paid careful attention to the hidden stories behind her pictures. This paper considers that looking back on the narratives that Lee Ae-rim has been interested in, from early days to recent days, that is to say, the contexts of stories, is a shortcut to reveal a point of contact between her past, present, and future. Especially, this paper focused on the properties of the circulated and repeated stories, the stories ruled by fate and coincidence, and the stories in which elements of fantasy encounter an attempt of violation. As a result, it was found that the narratives of Lee Ae-rim's comic books demand us to face suppressed desires in a new way, by wrapping up the most fundamental aspects of human being in universality and constancy with specificity and grotesqueness. The reason why Lee Ae-rim has continued the avant-garde and omnidirectional works thus far explains what our society suppresses, inversely. Moreover, the narratives of Lee Ae-rim are significant, by being devoted to the right function of art not only to disclose suppressed desires but to satisfy them. Making an in-depth investigation of the narratives of Lee Ae-rim's comic books in various contexts, this research is intended to establish a diversity of Korean comic books, by adding meaning to the creative values of individual writers.

• Asia Marketing Journal
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• v.9 no.1
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• pp.23-41
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• 2007

The current study analyzed the relationship between expression type of humor ads and their advertising effects and the differences in advertising effects by expression type according to temperament as categorized by the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI). Expression type of humor was classified into arousal-, incongruity-, and superiority-type humor ads. Advertising effects were measured by consumers' cognitive, affective, and conative responses. Three ads were created based on expression type of humor. A personality type, as measured by the MBTI, was categorized into four types of temperament, namely SP, SJ, NF, NT and used as moderating variables. As a result, the advertising effects varied according to the expression type of humor advertising. Interaction effects between ad expression type and temperament on ad feeling and ad preference were also found.