• English & American cultural studies
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• v.14 no.1
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• pp.241-267
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• 2014

Media representations of race have attempted to contain blackness by packaging and commodifying it to reflect and affect preconceptions and prejudices of dominant culture. From the early beginnings of blackface minstrelsy as entertainment form in the $19^{th}$ century, representations of African Americans in popular culture and mainstream media have been closely associated with the notion of performance. The performative nature of racial representations is situated within the discursive struggle over what it meant to be Black, or what it meant to be labeled and portrayed as Black in American culture. This essay discusses four films that contain performances of "blackness" that assemble race and gender in complex configurations: Bamboozled (Spike Lee, 2000), Girl 6 (Spike Lee, 1996), Big Momma's House (Raja Gosnell, 2000), and White Chicks (Keenen Ivory Wayans, 2004). I explore how the performative nature of "blackness" is emphasized, thematized, and problematized in these films through the physicality of corporeal figures that embody the close link between race and gender identities. Once we are cognizant of the fact that race and gender are fabricated cultural constructs and performative acts, we can recognize that notions of "blackness" and "femininity" are not naturalized or essentialist, but open to recontextualization and revision.

• Cartoon and Animation Studies
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• s.38
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• pp.1-28
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• 2015

The work appeared a featured female character in the Disney animation film begins with 'Snow White' released in 1937. After then, the 11 female characters appeared included 'Tangled' in 2010. Female characters reveal their identity due to obedient, family-oriented and marriage with prince and then gradually develop to heroine who leads to man, and is independent, pioneering, and sometimes saves the nation. Nevertheless, the ending of the Disney animation was still not escape the institutional, traditional discourse. Female characters are followed to meet the featured actor kissing and marriage, or was to show the virtues of sacrifice for the actor. However, Elsa in 'Frozen' is the character with an independent identity compared with the patriarchy, male chauvinism and heterosexual dichotomous discourse given so far in Disney. In this study, it is to explain the change of gender identity in the character of Elsa through Queer theory that deconstructs the distinction between sex and gender, and is constituted by the actions typed and performed the gender concept, and is dismantling the dichotomy itself such as male/female, heterosexual/homosexual. The performative of Queer make the boundaries between lesbian-gay, sexuality and heterosexual ambiguous. It can be said that the performative has political nature resisted to the dominant discourse through these parodiable strategy. The performative showed of Elsa is in the boundaries between the sisterhood and the heterosexual. When analyzed in a heterosexual perspective Elsa's identity is to be understood as simply just love the intimacy of a sister and a sister. On the other hand, if you focused on the relationship between women and the relationship between Elsa and Anna is recognized as the point of view of homosexuality. Because if you look at the concept of lesbian continuum, the homosexual love in the female characters of Disney seems like a bond between women, easier than heterosexual love can be hidden sexual desires. Elsa has developed into a performative identity through the expression of performative and the inhibitory of queer identity. And then the her sorcery that was initially contraindicated and the presence of a fear became to the 'lesbian phallus'. The sorcery that can be seen the signifying phallus against to the privileges of heterosexual patriarchy is recognized in the world of Arendal. Elsa is a new women featuring Disney characters. as this character is analysised by Queer theory, this study seeks to expand the area of the various character analysis methods.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.20 no.12
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• pp.380-389
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• 2019

Animation is a medium that can be enjoyed by many age groups, and it often reflects the discourse and ideology of the time. Therefore, studying the tendency of gender identity as it is expressed in animations is meaningful as a process to understand current trends. Therefore, I examined how the female characters' performative gender identity has been expressed in Disney animations and how it has changed. Disney animations have stuck to dichotomous gender performance, with men playing active and adventurous roles, while women play submissive and passive roles. Disney began to deviate slightly from the dichotomous gender performance through "Pocahontas" and "Mullan", which emphasized the heroic role of women. However, these animations have been limited in the way that love stories between men and women make up the main theme. In "Frozen", however, women actively explored their lives by overcoming these limitations, and expressed their happiness through sisterhood rather than love between men and women. Therefore, "Frozen," which expresses an active female character who sets up her own kingdom as an independent entity, is meaningful in that it has demonstrated the changed gender performance.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.15 no.6
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• pp.191-202
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• 2015

This research aims to analyse gender identity and its internal meanings through the main character, Laurence, of the movie (2012) directed by French-Canadian film maker Xavier Dolan. Study examines performative gender identity revealed through the fashion images of Laurence who was born biologically as a man; depending on a theory of Judith Butler who represented a parody, repeatability action, and incorporation as an effect of gender identity. Also 'Internalization of others' and 'Dis-identification' are presented as an internal meanings of Laurence's gender identity which appeared on his(her) fashion images. Laurence parodies woman's fashion styles in repetition to obtain feminity as his(her) appearance. His(her) repetitive actions are construing an internalizing others(women) and visualizing a new-self to become a stylized doer. Dis-identification signifies that gender can be reconstructed regarding the differences of the place and the time and reconstructed outside can be analyzed as externalization of internalization. 'Becoming a woman' means more than what it sounds like to Laurence. It means a new signification of being a woman or redefining gender identity. That is something can be called a genuine transformation and a grant leap for Laurence.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Clothing and Textiles
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• v.47 no.2
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• pp.232-243
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• 2023

The boundaries between fashion and contemporary art are increasingly blurred showing their interchangeability. This study examines Judith Butler and Athena Athanasiou's concept of dispossession to analyze expressions of gender, racial, and class identity in Martine Gutierrez's representative work, Indigenous Woman. First, gender expressions in Indigenous Woman emphasize the possibility of performative and practical gender as an image that rejects norms that grant authority according to the possession of innate body parts. Second, racial identity is expressed through resistance to the ideology of whiteness and imperialism reinforced by fashion media. The author aims to overcome normative stereotypes through the media she creates, which reveals her identity as a person of color. Third, class identity is represented through stereotypes that limit the lives of indigenous people to primitive and natural things. The author reveals a critical awareness of the hierarchical structure and cultural appropriation these stereotypes have created. This study analyzed contemporary artworks using fashion media through the concept of dispossession. The significance of this study lies in raising a critical awareness of the practices that diffuse minority identities in fashion media.

• Korean Journal of Social Welfare Studies
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• v.41 no.4
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• pp.5-44
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• 2010

The main purpose of this study is to critically examine the existing theoretical as well as analytical scope of 'sexual minority' in Social Welfare, and to (re)construct and expand it incorporating feminist theories on sexuality. The body of literature on sexual minority or homosexuality in social welfare in Korea as well as in the West can be characterized as two distinct features: first, medical discourse leaning on pathological perspective which perceives homosexuality as a disease or defect, homosexual as a pervert; and second, human rights perspective premised upon the idea of diversity and multi-culturalism, both which are anchoring at 'essentialism.' Based upon the understanding of sexuality as a social construct, we argue that feminist insight on sexuality can lead to reconceptualizing homosexuality and reorienting theories and practices in social welfare. From radical feminism to postmodern queer theories, feminists have developed diverse ideas and complex theories on sexuality and homosexuality, including the concept of 'compulsory heterosexuality,' 'lesbianism as political resistance,' and 'performative gender.' For feminists, particularly, sexuality which is constructed in the complex power matrix of dominations to producing and maintaining inequalities and discriminations is not merely a distinctive variable, but one of the important organizational principles such as gender, class, race, age, and nationality. This epistemological principle will hopefully shed lights on alternative 'knowledge' on homosexuality in social welfare, and lead to significant contribution to its critical expansion in theory and practice.

• American Studies
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• v.43 no.1
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• pp.25-56
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• 2020

The essay examines two contemporary American plays that portray adult Korean American adoptees' return to South Korea: How to Be a Korean Woman (2012) by Sunmee Chomet and Middle Brother (2014) by Eric Sharp. While the existing scholarship on transnational adoption has discussed homecoming as a predominantly female experience of birth mothers and daughters, Chomet and Sharp suggest the differing ways in which the adoptee subjectivity is re-imagined in particularly gendered ways after homecoming. In these plays, adult adoptees' repeated, mundane bodily performances of Korean cultural norms illustrate how notions of femininity and masculinity are inscribed onto the body of adoptee individuals under the patriarchal system. Such performative construction of Korean-ness departs from the earlier theatrical representations of young, adolescent adoptees' homecoming that served as a symbolic rite of passage, a necessary process through which they would gain cultural hybridity and mature into cosmopolitan American-ness.

• Korean journal of communication and information
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• v.62
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• pp.30-50
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• 2013

Exploring the relationship between body and technology in gender studies, this paper argues that 'being women' as an analytical concept is not fixed but progressing, that is, 'becoming women.' In the age of neo-liberalism, gender and identity politics raised critical questions regarding the relations between women and technology. Understanding these dynamic relations asks us to reconsider the concept of 'body.' Thus, this study begins with a review of the discourses of body in feminism and gender studies. Then, it continues to the meaning of technology in body and gender relations, arguing that body is the discursive and material site where gender identity and being are simultaneously constructed. An introduction of cyberfeminism, which focuses on the triangular relations among body, gender, and technology follows, discussing the significance of technology in 'becoming women.' Finally, it is argued that finding the meanings of technology in becoming women requires reconsidering the discursive and performative construction of body. 'Becoming women' can be achieved through exploration of the articulations and processes of body, gender and technology, which allows us to figure out the (re)construction of gender identity.

• Journal of Popular Narrative
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• v.27 no.1
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• pp.133-185
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• 2021

This study is an attempt to connect television drama M, which deals with abortion issues, with theoretical focus such as materiality, relativity, and agency, to understand diffractively as an cartography of agential reality. According to Karen Barard's Agential Realism, Television drama M is a sociocultural phenomenon produced by the agential intra-actions of material-discursive apparatuses such as medical technology, ghost stories and legends, and male-affect. The 1990s repeatedly revealed "hate" through apparatuses such as technology, discourse, and affect, which are directed at women's gendered bodies. The material -discursive practice of plastic surgery and abortion proves that the agential reality surrounding the body is closely intertwined with medical technology, as well as with the genderized hate. Another related material-discursive phenomenon is rediscovery of the legend and fad of the ghost story, which is also produced from the hate of the denaturalized body, which is once again expanded and reproduced. Appearing in this environment of affect, M enacts diffraction, which is based on backlash, lacking posthuman implications for the materialization of the techno-body. M puts humanistic assumptions about "Man" as a universal definition, historically framed and defined in context. But it is not universal and it is gendered. The current time when the political turmoil surrounding medical technology, discourse, and bodily matters is violently intra-acted is the time to carefully account and respond to the alternative definitions of human beings that M has rejected.

• Cross-Cultural Studies
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• v.48
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• pp.361-389
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• 2017

This essay examines 'precarity politics' by Judith Butler, a well-known gender theorist and queer philosopher, in Notes Towards a Performative Theory of Assembly (2015) focused on concepts as unchosen cohabitation of Hannah Arendt and unwilled proximity of Emmanuel Levinas. Butler's precarity politics is the condition of our dispossessed political beings with fundamental vulnerability and interdependency that cannot choose with whom we will live on this Earth. Butler's political ethics is twofold: on one hand, she examines significance of 'action'' the most significant vita activa in the public area, and 'plurality'' the condition-not only the necessary condition but the possible condition-for a political life suggested by Hannah Arendt in Human Condition; on the other hand, Butler reflects upon global precarity based on a diasporic precarious life in the social world towards freedom and equality. Unchosen cohabitation of plural humans on Earth, and global pervasion of precarity, that indicates "politically induced condition in which certain populations suffer from failing social and economic networks of support and become differentially exposed to injury, violence, and death," so called "differential distribution of precariousness," are practical possibilities of ethical and equal cohabitation of different ethnic groups in the social world. Ethical obligations or ethical demand to respond to others' suffering in distance and proximity originated from precarity politics, mentioned in Precarious Life, Parting Ways, and Frames of War, could be non-foundational joint of plural people living together globally. We should presume the 'reversibility' of distance and proximity in others' suffering, based on responsiveness and responsibility of others, if we want to stay attuned to the pain of others we never chose to live together. That is the significance of Butler's 'precarity politics' with 'ethical obligation' to accept 'unchosen plurality' of living population on Earth, and 'reversibility between of distance and proximity,' in her 'new plural and embodied body politics' or 'new corporeal ontology', through human primary vulnerability, fundamental interdependency, being exposed and responsive to suffering of others.