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The Beginning of A Television Drama <Sign> and performativity
Journal of Popular Narrative
2011, (25),
pp.313-341
DOI :10.18856/jpn.2011..25.012
Publisher : The Association of Popular Narrative
Research Area : Interdisciplinary Research
DOI :10.18856/jpn.2011..25.012
Publisher : The Association of Popular Narrative
Research Area : Interdisciplinary Research
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This paper's aim is to analyse how a television drama <Sign>'s narrative interacts with viewers, paying attention to its three formal beginning strategies, that is, the first episode's beginning, each episode's beginning, and the sequel's beginning. In other words, focusing on beginning's narrative function, this paper's theme is to define the various interactions between <Sign>'s fictional world as narrative performance and viewers. First of all, <Sign>'s formal beginning strategies are divided into three discourse's beginnings, namely, the first episode's beginning as the first discourse's beginning, each episode's beginning as the second discourse's beginning, and the sequel's beginning as the third discourse's beginning. If the first discourse starts biological bodies' dissection with forensic gaze, the second discourse starts social bodies' dissection with panopticon's gaze by expanding clinical gaze into society. Through these gazes' cultural - political effects,viewers can penetrate biological bodies and social bodies. Therefore, they accept gazes'controlling power voyeuristically and absorb 'forensic drama' genre's features. But viewers don't only make efforts to identify with <Sign>'s fictional world, because it has a dramatic tension which forensic gaze and panopticon's gaze can not regulate. That is, dead body,crime, and criminal, which are an object of forensic gaze and panopticon's gaze, are also an object of abjection's gaze. This abjection's gaze disturbs a social accepted truth, symbolic values' meaning associated with conventional morality. The third discourse's beginning foregrounds this abjection's gaze strongly than the other beginning, for it leads viewers from real world to fictional world. Accordingly, the third discourse's beginning strategy induces viewers to enter into <Sign>'s dramatic world with a binocular ambivalent perspective between forensic - panopticon's gaze and abjection's gaze. Speaking figuratively,this dissects viewer's gaze. To sum up, from the first discourse's beginning to the third course's beginning, the various <Sign>'s beginning strategies show multilayered performative aspects in relation to interactive cooperation, competition between a drama text and viewers.
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