• Journal of the Korean Home Economics Association
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• v.44 no.12
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• pp.117-126
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• 2006

A movie's fashion style delivers the overall atmosphere of the scene including the characters's class, personality, spiritual world and inner thinking and even their conflicts in the story. The movie 'American Psycho' directed by Mary Harron and based on from Bret Easton Ellis's original novel ridicules the American yuppie culture of the 1980's through the behavior of the hero Patrick Bateman. The life style of the yuppie sees itself as the high-class embodiment of a particular culture, but the various subcultures such as Glam and Punk show that it is merely a two-faced culture suffering from hypocrisy and mammonism. An analysis of the costumes found in the movie indicated an exhibition of the 1980's Haute Couture fashion, which was mainly occupied by the mainstream social class and of the social phenomenon of post-modernism. The anti-fashion presented in the movie as the resistance culture formed by the subculture was in extreme contrast with the expression of self-actualization.

• Psychoanalysis
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• v.29 no.4
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• pp.63-71
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• 2018

One of the most striking features of modern society in the 21st century, is increased levels of aggression. Aggression refers to aggressive or hostile behavior, and is manifested in suicide or an attack against others. Aggression in modern society is more accidental, reckless, and aimless than before. As more patients visit hospitals due to the serious problem of aggression control, we need to address the nature of this growing aggression. The authors analyzed sources and the nature of aggression, based on the movie 'American Psycho.' The main character of the movie, Patrick, is similar to many people today, with traits such as egotistical thinking, lack of empathy, demand for attention and admiration, and exploited and superficial relationships. Patrick's aggression is in reaction to narcissistic injury. Through this, one can think of pathological narcissism, behind growing aggression in modern society. There are a number of social and environmental factors, attributable to increasing narcissism in modern society. Among them, change in parenting practices, and parent-child relationships, is likely to have affected increase in narcissism in terms of personality development. In conclusion, when treating patients exhibiting aggression in psychotherapy, it is critical to fully consider the possibility of pathological narcissism and its use in analysis.

• English & American cultural studies
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• v.9 no.1
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• pp.185-219
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• 2009

This article aims to illuminate the comic characters and their humor in Dickens's novel David Copperfield in Bakhtinian point, and to clarify what the humorous characteristics are, and how they contribute to his reinforcement of socially critical messages in this novel. So far this novel has been called the only one of Dickens's comic novels, even though it includes lots of social critical meanings. But it is true that Dickensian critics couldn't make sure of the clear reasons why it is both very interesting and critical. Furthermore, it is also true that this novel has been criticized as a clumsy one in the realistic, psycho-analytic, dramatic angle. This approach to Dickensian comic characters through Bakhtinian fool, clown, and rogue concepts here could make up for or correct such criticisms, and reevaluate Dickens's humor and social criticisms in the context of general public culture. Bakhtin believes oppression by social ideologies prevent us from having good mutual relationships and divides our society. He thinks laughter liberates us from such oppression and restores our good relationships. As he applied his concepts based on the laughter of Middle Ages to Rabelais's novels, and examined what the authentically liberating power in Rabelais's laughter is, this article could clarify the liberating power of laughter by Dickens's comic characters, such as Mr and Mrs Micawber, Dick, Miss Betsey Trotwood and Miss Mowcher. In this novel, they often lead comic happenings, and such happenings are very similar to carnival-amusements including burning the dummy of the czar who has oppressed his or her citizenry. Especially, Dickens's comic characters's social criticisms, in the case of this novel, contain many complaints of social marginers, even though he has been labelled as being conservative politically. They always criticize the ideological absurdities in their society through the humorous words and behaviors in their comic happenings, like those of a carnival fool or clown in his or her amusements. This shows Dickens achieves both laughter and social criticism in David Copperfield by using Rabelaisian characterization-devices based on his general public culture. Like Bakhtin and Rabelais, Dickens seems to have believed that when we all truly liberate ourselves from the oppression of social ideologies, we can have desirable relationships between ourselves, and also solve social problems positively.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Costume
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• v.52 no.2
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• pp.19-30
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• 2002

This is the research of Abject Art which was originated aesthetically in Abjection Theory of Julia Kristeva, a french psycho-analyst who argued liberational discussions about feminine identity against patricentric ideology which had fastened existing beautiful and elegant oedipal-feminine image and femininity as the secondary sex or the other's sex. and which became known by the planning display at whitney Museum of American in 1993. In Julia Kristeva's Abjection Theory which was written in her book(Power of Horror : An Assay on Abjection, 1992), she named pre-oedipal stage in which there is no sexual difference and has the same significance to both sexes instead of the oedipal stage which is becoming male-supreme reality as the semiotic and reinterpreted that an infant disregards feminine body--mother's body (Julia Kristeva, named it as Chora) as the love and the pain which carries her baby in herself and creates the baby which belonged to herself--which belongs to the semiotic to enter the symbolic smoothly. So the Abjection art is partly consist of some works which express the concertion of the boundary rebated with infant Identity which is not yet the other perfectly nor the subject perfectly, and of some works called Excretory Arts which express the excretion and vomiting which is the original experience of the abject. I expect that this research can be the chance of breaking from the fastened identity which was granted on female and feminine costume in this masculine-view centric society and creating the new position of costume and dress in the field of art by analyzing the costumes especially among these works.