• Journal of Popular Narrative
• /
• v.25 no.4
• /
• pp.135-158
• /
• 2019

The purpose of this paper is to elucidate the characteristics that make Guillermo del Toro's film Pan's Labyrinth (2006) a fantasy film, and the meaning and function of the labyrinth motifs closely related to it. Tzvetan Todorov defined the 'fantastic' as the hesitation between natural and supernatural interpretations in the face of supernatural events that invade reality. In Pan's Labyrinth, the fantastic continues to be seen, because the film does not allow the hesitation to disappear; thus, the fantastic does not enter the 'uncanny' genre or 'marvelous' genre, and because it keeps its fantastic state. In this case, the labyrinth symbolizes art as a passage into the fantastic world and a space that represents it. Rosemary Jackson saw the fantasy as a "literature of desire to compensate for a lack resulting from cultural constraints" and thus repeatedly dealing with unconscious materials. Del Toro's film shows the character of the fantastic as an expression of desire by allowing 'family romance' to take place in the fantastic world. In this case, the labyrinth symbolizes the mind as a place of desire. Kathryn Hume defined fantasy as a reaction to reality, like mimesis, and 'departure from consensus reality.' The film, operating in a 'vision' genre, satisfies its definition by allowing the fantastic world to illuminate the reality world through 'contrastive' technique, and brings out the fantastic it has. In this case, the labyrinth symbolizes the world as a mirror of the world of reality. Thus, Pan's Labyrinth is representative of fantastic film in that the fantastic functions very effectively, and the labyrinth appearing in this film can be evaluated as a motif that is full of meaning by symbolizing all three elements of art, world and mind. The significance of this paper is to shed light on how a motif works in a particular genre through the above considerations.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
• /
• v.7 no.6
• /
• pp.135-143
• /
• 2007

Dir.Guilermo del Toro, born in Mexico and started his career as a special make up artist, has been valued as one of most creative directors over the world since he went through hardship to adjust himself in Hollywood system. Del Toro as director has had interesting development in the boundary between Hollywood system' demand and creator(auteur)'s self-consciousness from the his first film to currently . His works reflect his Catholic view of the world. Del Toro like to have the variation of convention on his works from the classics to modern films in order to approach audience easily. He adopts plots and symbols from Bible, mythology and ancient tragedy as same reason. After then, Del Toro constructs his creativity on it. Thus, his works are consist of combination between universality and creativity. This is the reason why His works are making success both criticism and box office hit.

• Cross-Cultural Studies
• /
• v.50
• /
• pp.53-75
• /
• 2018

It is commonly emphasized that the metaphor of the monster is a rhetoric universally used to identify the "main enemy" of a society, for its effective function is seen as useful for the uniting of citizens to bend together to survive or succeed before the external threat. The problem of this metaphor is that it homogenizes and dehumanizes the heterogeneous individual members of the subsequently identified enemy group. This study emphasizes the importance of some traits of the posthuman subject, such as the flexibility and the multiplicity of consciousness, to overcome the otherizing binary perspective which is commonly held regarding the concepts of good and evil. To observe specific dimensions of the posthuman consciousness, we analyze three films based on Spanish history and reality: The Spirit of the Beehive, The Day of the Beast and Pan's Labyrinth. All of these films progress around the figure of the enemy-monster(s), showing how to transgress the dichotomous structure of consciousness that defines the self/good dividing it from the other/evil. The heroes in the films seek to overcome the fear about the monster, and approach him to discover new ethical horizons, that can emerge only when an individual's consciousness chooses to stay on the border between the established beliefs and the unfamiliar voice of the dangerous stranger(s).