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Crime and Reasoning in 1980s television dramas

  • Journal of Popular Narrative
  • 2023, 29(1), pp.37-71
  • DOI : 10.18856/jpn.2023.29.1.002
  • Publisher : The Association of Popular Narrative
  • Research Area : Interdisciplinary Studies > Interdisciplinary Research
  • Received : January 6, 2023
  • Accepted : February 6, 2023
  • Published : February 28, 2023

Song Chi Hyuk 1

1한국공학대학교

Accredited

ABSTRACT

This article aims to examine the aspects of reasoning and crime in television dramas in the 1980s. As mentioned earlier, the influence of the investigation team leader, who had been popular nationwide throughout the 1970s, provided an important foundation for the acceptance of mystery throughout popular art beyond television. This trend became a clue to reveal the various amplitudes of Korean television drama history, which seems to have focused on a specific genre, and later influenced the production and broadcasting of various genres of television dramas. Therefore, the conventional notion that a specific genre existed only as a non-mainstream or defective text in the history of Korean television dramas should be re-recognized through the overall analysis of the organization and discourse at the time. It should be remembered that the genre is always in the process. Genre is not a fixed thing, but a mixture of the intentions of the producer and the audience. The same was true of mystery in Korea. In the social context of Korea, where it was difficult for detective-type characters in Western mystery novels to gain sympathy in the social context, public power such as ideological prosecutors and criminal leaders has replaced detective positions. Through this process of change, the logical reason that the mystery must reveal began to change according to the needs and tastes of the inmates. Therefore, the phenomenon that Korean television mystery emphasizes rhetoric rather than reasoning and humanities of compassion and empathy rather than modern reason is a unique context for Korean television viewers to accept mystery narrative. Television mystery, which gained huge popularity under the name of a rhetoric drama in the 1970s, faced color broadcasting and media consolidation in the 1980s. Television dramas will be accompanied by the culture and arts policy of the new military administration under the banner of self-purification and openness. Accordingly, it is also worth remembering that viewers’ views on accepting the new joy of reasoning and crime are also changing according to the times. In the face of temporary freedom brought by democratization following the constitutional amendment of the direct election system in 1987, television mystery also had to transform itself. The acceptance of mystery novels, which emerged prominently in this process, was a choice that was highly conscious of the Korean context, and had a great influence on the transformation of television dramas, which were called rhetoric, into mystery dramas. The problem is that viewers who have encountered new forms of reasoning and crimes through these television dramas have begun to be aware of “beyond the country.” The public power, which attempted to guide and enlighten through television dramas by professing social well-being and maintaining order, can be seen as a popular art’s own way of social justice under the new military regime that lasted throughout the 1980s. In this sense, the new aspects of reasoning and crime that have appeared in television dramas since 1987 are close to popular questions about what justice is and how it can be defended in Korean society. The conflict between professional criminals and vigilante groups appearing in this process will be a reenactment of the television drama that reflects the feelings and attitudes of the viewers of the television drama toward real crime. It would be right to see that the phenomenon of feeling “emotional realism” toward the vigilante group, who will carry out private sanctions even while willing to do illegal acts, is due to distrust that the state no longer protects us. It is a significant phenomenon that this desire was achieved on television, which could not be inherently free from state intervention. The disturbing gaze questioning the desire of the new military regime, which had visually demonstrated the development of the country throughout the 1980s, is visible through the bodies of those who are broken and broken. Viewers’ genre desires surrounding television mystery leave room for new interpretation at this point.

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