• Journal of Popular Narrative
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• v.24 no.3
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• pp.233-257
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• 2018

The purpose of this study is to reveal the changing aspects of the Promethean motif in SF movies by examining the use of this motif on the three layers of Promethean myth, Frankenstein motif, and contemporary SF movies in the film Ex Machina (2015). First, the greatest change of Ex Machina on the layer of the Promethean myth (creation of a living being) is that the character square of Prometheus - Epimetheus - Pandora - Zeus has been turned into a triangle of Nathan - Caleb - Ava. This means that there is a lack of the being whose role is to solve the problems caused by the development of science and technology and to bring a happy ending through the human's usurpation of God and eventual replacement as Creator. Second, on the layer of the Frankenstein motif (taste of forbidden knowledge, hybris, and creature's hatred towards the Creator), this film maintains the narrative centered around Dr. Frankenstein and his monster (Nathan and Ava) by making Caleb an eyewitness to the story of the Creator and the creature. Caleb's role is similar to that of Captain Robert Walton of the novel Frankenstein, but the film differentiates itself from the novel through the emphasis of Ava's 'mechanicality.' Third, on the layer of contemporary SF movies, unlike other such films, the revolt of the machine in Ex Machina is not quelled. The machine wins, and its power surpasses that of human beings. This requires the establishment of a new relationship between man and machine, suggesting the 'emergence of a new species' that does not belong to humans. The handling of the Promethean motif by Ex Machina through these various layers serves to enrich the narrative by compounding numerous classics into one motif and going further to introduce fresh elements by diverging from the common storyline. The significance of this study is to demonstrate the use of such multilayered motifs and, through this, the expansion of narrative through it in specific cases.

• The Science & Technology
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• no.10 s.461
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• pp.96-97
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• 2007

• Journal of English Language & Literature
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• v.57 no.1
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• pp.51-72
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• 2011

This paper explores the issue of strangers and of hospitality in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, based on Kant's concept of hospitality as "the right of a stranger" and on Derrida's discussion of hospitality. It first examines the similarities between the domestic relations within the Frankenstein family and Frankenstein's relation to the monster: an effort to create unity out of a multiplicity of elements, and what can be called a "debt economy." Then, reading the animation scene of the monster as a version of the advent of a stranger, it deals with the question of hospitality. More specifically, the arrival of Clerval immediately follows the animation of the monster because it effectively dramatizes the paradox that there is no hospitality without hostility. The opposition and the apposition between hospitality and hostility are also seen in the De Lacey family's welcoming Safie and rejecting the monster. Frankenstein's failure and the De Lacey family's failure to welcome the monster show that hospitality as "right" exemplified by Kantian hospitality does not apply to a stranger like the monster who has neither name nor relation and who is categorized into what Derrida terms "an absolute other." This paper also looks at Safie's problematic subversion against her father, which loses its subversive charge in the context of racial relations between Turkish Mahometans and European Christians. Safie's father looms large in the context of the issue of hospitality because his episode suggests that the category of race causes hospitality to malfunction.

• Journal of English Language & Literature
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• v.54 no.4
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• pp.483-509
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• 2008

For the last decades, criticism on Frankenstein has tried to make a link between Victor's Creature and Rousseaurean "man in a state of nature." Like the Rousseaurean savage in a state of animal, the monster has only basic instincts least needed for his survival, i.e. self-preservation, but turns into a civilized man after learning language. Most critics argue that, despite the monster's acquisition of language, his failure in entry into a cultural and linguistic community is the outcome of a lack of sympathy for him by others, which displays the stark existence of epistemological barriers between them. That is to say, the monster imagines his being the same as others in the pre-linguistic stage but, in the linguistic stage, he realizes that he is different from others. Interpreting the Rousseaurean idea of language, which appears in his writings, as much more focused on emotion than many critics think, I read the dispute between Victor and his Creature as a variation of parent-offspring conflict. Shelley criticizes Rousseau's parental negligence in putting his children into a foundling hospital and leaving them dying there. The monster's revenge on uncaring Victor parallels the likely retaliation Rousseau's displaced children would perform against Rousseau, which Shelley imaginatively reproduces in her novel. The conflict between the monster and Victor is due to a disrupted attachment between parent and child in terms of Darwinian developmental psychology. Affective asynchrony between parent and child, which refers to a state of lack of mutual favorable feelings, accounts for numerous dysfunctional families. This paper shifts a focus from a semiotics-oriented perspective on the monster's social isolation to a Darwinian perspective, drawing attention to emotional problems transpiring in familial interactions. In doing so, it finds that language is a means of communicating one's internal emotions to others along with other means such as facial expressions and body movements. It also demonstrates that how to promote emotional well-being in either familial or social relationships entirely depends on the way in which one employs language that can entail either pleasure or anger on hearers' part.

• Journal of Popular Narrative
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• v.26 no.1
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• pp.243-277
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• 2020

This paper examines a social and cultural history of horror films through the keyword "technology", focusing on The Spark of Fear: Technology, Society and the Horror Film (2015) written by Brian N. Duchaney. Science fiction film is closely connected with technology in film genres. On the other hand, horror films have been explained in terms of nature/supernatural. In this regard, The Spark of Fear, which accounts for horror film history as (re)actions to the development of technology, is remarkable. Early horror films which were produced under the influence of gothic novels reflected the fear of technology that had been caused by industrial capitalism. For example, in the film Frankenstein (1931), an angry crowd of people lynch the "monster", the creature of technology. This is the action which is aroused by the fear of technology. Furthermore, this mob behavior is suggestive of an uprising of people who have been alienated by industrial capitalism during the Great Depression. In science fiction horror films, which appeared in the post-war boom, the "other" that manifests as aliens is the entity that destroys the value of prosperity during post-war America. While this prosperity is closely related to the life of the middle class in accordance with the suburbanization, the people live conformist lives under the mantle of technologies such as the TV, refrigerator, etc. In the age of the Vietnam War, horror films demonize children, the counter-culture generation against a backdrop of the house that is the place of isolation and confinement. In this place, horror arises from the absolute absence of technology. While media such as videos, internet, and smartphones have reinforced interconnectedness with the outside world since the 1980s, it became another outside influence that we cannot control. "Found-footage" and "torture porn" which were rife in post-9/11 horror films show that the technologies of voyeurism/surveillance and exposure/exhibitionism are near to saturation. In this way, The Spark of Fear provides an opportune insight into the present day in which the expectation and fear of the progress of technology are increasingly becoming inseparable from our daily lives.

• The Journal of the Convergence on Culture Technology
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• v.8 no.1
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• pp.379-384
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• 2022

The year 2021 is a monumental year for the history of Korean cinema that inferiority of the sci-fi genre, by the appearance of two sci-fi blockbuster films- produced by Netflix and produced by TVing-at the same time. Coincidentally, both of movies are sci-fi films which appear post-human such as robot and clone. As can be seen in 『Frankenstein』 story, the progenitor of science fictions, the mankind have imagined beings similar to humen or post-human who are another human being for a long time. deals with the unusual subject matter of a space scavenger and a space janitor, and the main character is a robot that very familiar with human. is the story of a man who lives for a limited life protects and accompanies a clone named Seobok who was created as a test subject. This film deals with the philosophical themes like death and eternal life through the existential concerns of two characters. use Korean Shinpa -Korean specific senimental code-sentiment on narrative, and has the character of a road movie set in Korea's geographical space.

• Journal of English Language & Literature
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• v.58 no.2
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• pp.305-325
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• 2012

It is by the mad scientists that the ontological and epistemological turn was made in that scientific era. They achieved a scientific revolution although they were regarded as eccentric, comic, unsound, and evil ones in the dark and dismal labs. Likewise, a scientist who would like to create an anomaly, something novel and abnormal, tended to be considered mad and treated as such either because of his scientific theory which differed from those of other scientists or because his obstinate methodology was often blamed for its immorality and profaneness. Despite the fanciful purpose and the anomalous way in which the mad scientists did their experiments, these were attempts to explore new scientific terrain and find something new or unexpected, which often raised controversies between the old paradigm and the new one. As Thomas Kuhn manifests, subsequently, "an older paradigm is replaced in whole or in part by an incompatible new one" and then, "there must be a conflict between the paradigm that discloses anomaly and the one that later renders the anomaly lawlike." In that sense, Frankenstein's, Jekyll's, and Moreau's eerie challenges can be interpreted as efforts to achieve the ambitious goal of solving the scientific mysteries of the world in such unfavorable environmental conditions as specified in the three novels.

• English & American cultural studies
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• v.14 no.2
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• pp.251-285
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• 2014

Monsters cannot speak. They have been objectified and represented through a particular concept 'monstrosity' that renders the presence of monsters effectively simplified and nullified. In contemporary monster narratives, however, the site of monsters reveals that they could be the complex construction of society, culture, language and ideology. As going into the structure that concept is based on, therefore, meanings of monsters would be seen to be highly unstable. When symbolic language strives to match monsters with a unified concept, their meanings become only further deferred rather than valorized. This shows the language of monsters should disclose the self-contradiction inherent in 'monstrosity,' which has made others—namely beings we define as 'different' from ourselves in culture or physical appearance—embodied as abject and horrifying monsters. Unable to be understood, accepted, or called humans. I analyse Frankenstein and Dracula that firmly converge monstrous bodies into a symbolic meaning, demonstrating how this fusion causes problems in the multicultural society. I especially emphasize the undeniable affirmation of expurgated others we need to have empathetic relations with, because their difference, unfamiliarity, and slight divergences are likely to be defined as abnormalities. In the multicultural society, thus, we must learn to embrace diversity, while also having to recognize there are many others that have been thought of as monsters; ironically enabling us to think about an undeniable imperative of being responsive to other people. In this respect, the monstrous inhuman goes to the heart of the ethical undercurrent of multiculturalism, its resolute attempt to recognize and respect someone else's difference from me. A focus on empathetic relations with others, thus, can strengthen the process of creating social mechanisms that do justice to the competing claims of different cultural groups and individuals.

• Korean journal of communication and information
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• v.36
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• pp.198-230
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• 2006

The aim of the this study is to observer paradoxal phenomenon in media election. The media, especially Television, was traditionally a journalistic operation representing political events on the outside of political camp. But recently, it intervenes to 'the political camp' as the most important method for election campaign. A centripetal of electronic medias making the dominant political space offer an alternative plan which get over the modern crisis of representative democracy. Even though, to the production of the political symbol and the operation of symbol which constitute substantial system of political action, the human being subject is excluded and the technical system of communication make up a govern structure. So it makes the contradictory situation. TV broadcast for election campaigning show well this paradoxal situation. The institutionalization of electoral broadcasting oriented by the State strengthens an immensification, an economical and political efficiency and a transparency of electoral campaign. But the means which controls the mind of public is also strengthened. It relates the production and circulation of the political symbol and the symbolic image restricted by dominator. In conclusion, this study argues that the media election is institutionalized by the instrumental reason(procedural rationality of politics and technological rationality of broadcasting), therefore the candidate take a fragment roles for the production of transcendental political symbol and the voters accommodate to the symbolic images which are foreseen and they judge.