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A Study of Emotional Excess and Its Political Implications in Lee Hyeon-se's comic book An Outsider Club of Terrors- in connection with the structure of feelings of Young Readers in 1980s

LEE JUN HEE 1

1서울대학교

Accredited

ABSTRACT

This paper examines emotional excess and its political meaning in Lee Hyeon-se's comic book An Outsider Club of Terrors(1983) in connection with the structure of feelings of young readers in 1980s. The comic book was published amid the popularity of professional baseball, which was a part of the South Korean military dictatorship's policies that were enacted in the early 1980s, and amid a sports-comics boom. The majority of the book's characters have excessive attachments to victory and display emotional excess. The display of emotions is presented visually and emotionally through the extreme actions of the characters and their corrupted body images; the display encourages a state of emotional excess in readers. When the book was published, the comic's dramatic setting and the rise of its characters, who are alienated from society, often satisfied the increasing desires of young people, who were the main readers of the contemporary comics and experienced intense frustration and alienation from the political and social realities of the Korean society in the 1980s. The comic inspired the widespread response of those young readers. Similarly, the Kkachi syndrome, which was triggered by the comic book, is closely linked to the structure of feelings of young readers, who felt defeated in the real world but dreamed of transforming society. This phenomenon can be noted as a major cultural event in that it shows the young readers' affects/passions were latent with the consumption of popular culture; Actually the phenomenon partly contributed to real political changes in the late 1980s.

Citation status

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