• Cross-Cultural Studies
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• v.40
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• pp.111-131
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• 2015

An unusual success engendering loyalty among cult fans in the United States, Mamoru Oshii's 1995 cyberpunk anime, Ghost in the Shell (GITS) revolves around a female cyborg assassin named Motoko Kusanagi, a.k.a. "the Major." When the news came out last year that Scarlett Johansson was offered 10 million dollars for the role of the Major in the live action remake of GITS, the frustrated fans accused DreamWorks of "whitewashing" the classic Japanimation and turning it into a PG-13 film. While it would be premature to judge a film yet to be released, it appears timely to revisit the core achievement of Oshii's film untranslatable into the Hollywood formula. That is, unlike ultimately heteronormative and humanist sci-fi films produced in Hollywood, such as the Matrix trilogy or Cloud Atlas, GITS defies a Hollywoodization by evoking much bafflement in relation to its queer, posthuman characters and settings. This essay homes in on Major Kusanagi's body in order to update prior criticism from the perspectives of posthumanism and queer theory. If the Major's voluptuous cyborg body has been read as a liberating or as a commodified feminine body, latest critical work of posthumanism and queer theory causes us to move beyond the moralistic binaries of human/non-human and male/female. This deconstruction of binaries leads to a radical rethinking of "reality" and "identity" in an image-saturated, hypermediated age. Viewed from this perspective, Major Kusanagi's body can be better understood less as a reflection of "real" women than as an embodiment of our anxieties on the loss of self and interiority in the SNS-dominated society. As is warned by many posthumanist and queer critics, queer and posthuman components are too often used to reinforce the human. I argue that the Major's hybrid body is neither a mere amalgam of human and machine nor a superficial postmodern blurring of boundaries. Rather, the compelling combination of individuality, animality, and technology embodied in the Major redefines the human as always, already posthuman. This ethical act of revision-its shifting focus from oppressive humanism to a queer coexistence-evinces the lasting power of GITS.

• Journal of Popular Narrative
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• v.25 no.3
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• pp.67-99
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• 2019

This paper analyzed romance novels imported into Korea in the 1980s and examined the traits of Korean girls' culture at that time. To this end, This paper chose as subjects the series of 'high-teen romance' published by Samjungdang, 'princess bestseller' by Seoul Publishing and the 'silhouette romance' by Joongang Ilbo in the 1980s. Through the aspects of the paperback romances, the traits of the artist, the content of the work, and the response of the reader, this paper analyzed the position and affection of romance as a genre in Korean culture in the 1980s. In the 1980s, most of the paperback romances available in Korea were translations of the modern and progressive present lines of Harlequin Enterprise's category romance. There were also many writers who were mostly introduced with progressive characters like Charlotte Lamb. The Harlequin romance depicts a story of sensual love. These translated 1980s paperback romance novels allowed girls in Korea to freely imagine the problems of sex and love. In particular, it showed a new perspective on women's sexuality. In Korean love novels, the sexuality of women was treated as an object for the gaze of men. The novels of female writers as college student who criticized this dealt with women's sexuality, but focused on criticism and resistance to the ideology of chastity. The paperback romance made it possible for women to freely enjoy their sexuality by escaping the ethical standards of reality. In addition, the paperback romance was an escape from the frustration of love. Romantic love in Korean love novels did not lead to the unification of mind and body, and always ended in tragedy. On the contrary, the paperback romance started with the fear of the girl who felt love for the first time, showed the process of winning over anxiety, confirming love and reaching a happy marriage. Through this, girls understood general love that was not subordinated to the ideology of chastity, and accepted love positively. The process of establishing romance as a genre in Korean culture and the traits of its readers have not yet been sufficiently clarified yet. This paper compared the romance genre with the other love novels of the day, explaining the position and meaning of the romance genre in Korean culture in the 1980s. Through this, we were able to chart the historical development of the Korean romance genre.

• Journal of Popular Narrative
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• v.25 no.1
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• pp.217-247
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• 2019

This research paper intends to examine the intertextuality of Klaus Mann's novel Mephisto (1936) and István Szabó's film Mephisto (1981) and how the derivative contents (i.e., film) accepted and improved the schematic aesthetics of conviction in original contents (i.e., novel). In general, the aesthetics of conviction is applied to criticize the state socialism of the artists of the Third Reich or the ideology of the artists of East Germany from a biased ethical perspective. Mephisto is also based on the aesthetics of conviction. Thus, it would be meaningful to examine the characteristic similarity and difference between Klaus Mann's real antagonist (i.e., Gustaf Gründgens) and fictional antagonist (i.e., Hendrik Höfgen) from a historical critical perspective. In this process, an aesthetic distance between the real and fictional antagonists would be secured through the internal criticism in terms of intertextuality. In this respect, the film aesthetics of István Szabó are deemed to overcome the schematic limit of the original novel. The conviction in both the novel and film of Mephisto pertains to the belief and stance of a person who compromised with the state socialism of Nazi Germany, i.e., succumbed to the irresistible history. Klaus Mann denounced Mephisto's character Höfgen (i.e., Gründgens in reality) as an "Mephisto with evil spirits" from the perspective of exile literature. For such denunciation, Klaus Mann used various means such as satire, caricature, sarcasm, parody and irony. However, his novel is devoid of introspection and "utopianism", and thus could be considered to allow personal rights to be disregarded by the freedom of art. On the contrary, István Szabó employed the two different types of evil (evil of Mephisto and evil of Faust) from a dualistic perspective (instead of a dichotomous perspective of good and evil) by expressing the character of Höfgen like both Mephisto and Hamlet (i.e., "Faust with both good and evil spirits). However, Szabó did not present the mixed character of "Mephisto and Hamlet (Faust)" only as an object of pity. Rather, Szabó called for social responsibility by showing a much more tragic end. As such, the novel Mephisto is more like the biography of an individual, and the film Mephisto is more like the biography of a generation. The aesthetics of conviction of Mephisto appears to overcome biased historical and textual perspectives through the irony of intertextuality between the novel and the film. Even if history is an irresistible "fate" to an individual, human dignity cannot be denied because it is the "value of life". The issue of conviction is not only limited to the times of Nazi Germany. It can also be raised with the ideology of the modern and contemporary history of Korea. History is so deeply rooted that it should not be criticized merely from a dichotomous perspective. When it comes to the relationship between history and individual life, a neutral point of view is required. Hopefully, this research paper will provide readers with a significant opportunity for finding out their "inner Mephisto" and "inner Hamlet."