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Im/possible Americanization and Un/healthy Free Love - Reading by Overlapping Comedy in Liberation Period and in Post Korean War, 1950s

Jun Jeenee 1

1이화여자대학교

Accredited

ABSTRACT

American culture rapidly flowed into the people's daily life with passing through the end of the war in twice called the 8.15 liberation and the Korean war. Disorderly freedom, which originated from Americanization, namely, self-indulgence was connected with the gender-based dimension. The expansion in the tendency of freedom and equality according to the introduction of American-style sense and democracy made women liberated from the restraints of the home and the body. Lee Byeong-il's <Jayugyulhon(Free Marriage)>(1958) and Han Hyeong-mo's <Yeosajang(Female Boss)>(1959) are the texts at the end of free-love discourse in the 1950s as well as being in a field of ‘free whirlwind.’ Both movies are following the creation of the original plays and are simultaneously succeeding to a form of Screwball Comedy in Hollywood. All in <Yeosajang(Female Boss)>(1948) & <Yeosajang(Female Boss)>(1959), <Ddaldl, Jayuyeonaerlgugahada(Daughters Sing Free Love)>(1957), and movie <Jayugyulhon(Free Marriage)>(1958) contain a critical sight on Americanization-consumption culture following the liberation and point out Hello-girl and Aprés-girl of enjoying this as the subjects that will need to be enlightened. At this time, the free love becomes a means of educating women with turning around social standing between man and woman. Two movies establish conservative moral sense based on familism of the 1950s by uniting young people's sex, love, and marriage against the open sexual consciousness in those days. The satire and the resistance, which can be immanent in comedy genre, were vanished in the beginning with being combined with a material dubbed the gendered love. However, even if the ending returns to the most conservative direction, 'enlightenment' and 'marriage', Seoul's pleasure-based landscape and Aprés-girl's provocative image, which were suggested on the screen, could overwhelm the conservative happy ending. In other words, the postwar play and movie indulge in American-style freedom and fashion in the process of going back to the conservative conclusion. Even if advancing finally to the conclusion of woman's obedience, it couldn't completely control disorder in a name called freedom in the period that the people had been intoxicated with sensational vanity. The recognition on its impossibility was also the one on reality that was shown by the postwar comedy of representing custom in those days.

Citation status

* References for papers published after 2023 are currently being built.