KJCKorea
Journal Central

This paper presents an investigation into the patterns and meanings of a play within a play in a television drama titled <The Produca>, whose inside dramas are ‘Documentary Three Days’, a documentary program aired on the same KBS channel, and ‘2 Days and 1 Night’, an entertainment program on the same channel. These inside dramas intentionally reveal that they are fictional, which helps the audience take a more objective and critical attitude toward the programs. They, at the same time, promote the immersion of the audience by employing such strategies as hiding the truth of characters and projecting the viewers’ desire. The drama’s significance as a metadrama reflecting relations between fiction and the reality is created by the repetition of the viewers’ distancing and immersion through these plays within a play. The drama shows through its plays within a play that inner dramas and fiction can possibly to alter the outer drama and reality, respectively. Fiction is created because there is actuality, and once it is created, it can in turn impact actuality. These interactive relations can be linked to those between a television drama and the actual reality. A television drama is made in the real world, and its fictional stories can influence actual reality, which reflects the pattern of simulacra to perceive the world through fiction in today’s modern society in which people cannot directly perceive the actuality of the world despite its presence. <The Produca> ultimately reminds the viewers through its plays within a play of the real world that can be defined only through a fictional world.

a play within a play, television drama, metadrama, documentary, entertainment, image, desire, <The Produca>, Documentary Three Days, 2 Days and 1 Night