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Status of dance in Korean society in the 1930s by observing it from a movie SweetDream

CHUNG, EUI SOOK 1,  BYUN, DANIEL H 1

1성균관대학교

Candidate

ABSTRACT

This paper studies the status of dance in Korean society in the 1930s by observing it from a movie SweetDream(미몽, 1936) on the viewpoint of symbolic interactionism of Erving Goffman. Having been produced in time when the nation was under the Japanese colonial rule, the movie illustrated the society experiencing confliction between its traditional ideology and western culture introduced. In that situation, the society was the “total institution” in the symbolic interaction theory, while the western-styled dance theater in the movie, a place extended from the social reality, played the role to help break the rules of the total institution. Also, the main character Ae-Soon’s behavior to go off the track could be explained with the “mortification of self” which Goffman suggested. In the movie, Ae-Soon, an ordinary housewife, went off the “right-track” to live a different life with her lover in a hotel room and later, ended up her life in a hospital. Here, the modern woman Ae-Soon’s death implies punishment to herself who threatened the order of the patriarchal society with her “ill-behavior”, and with her situational impropriety of reckless spending stemmed from institutional ceremony. Having lost her identity through the mortification of self, Ae-Soon went to the stage of “reorganization of individual”, to be injected a new identity while watching a dance performance of the male character CHO Taek Won. In this part of the movie, the “reorganizing of individual” process while watching dance performance seemed resistance to what the “institution” requested her to do. However, ending up her life of the new identity could be interpreted that things finally went with the intention of the “institution”. Also, although meeting CHO Taek Won was a trigger to resist to the “institution” to Ae-Soon, she was, finally, inevitable to be assimilated to the society through the “recipient’s adaptation”The focus of this analysis is on the dance performance being set as ideal to the modern woman Ae-Soon in the movie. This reflects that the status of dance at the time was quite high, and showing dance performance of CHO Taek Won in the movie indicates that dance performance at the time was a popular mean to take a look at the foreign culture. Also, casting a real dancer CHO Taek Won for the fictitious story shows his popularity at the time, and showing full-screen dance performance in the movie seems intentional to promote the dancer CHO Taek Won, which forced the movie audience to be the audience of the dance performance as well. Contrary to these days, there were only a few of western style dance theaters in the 1930s. Therefore, regardless the genre, performing arts were all performed at same places. It indicates that the general public was equally accessible to whatever kind of performing arts at the time, which is very different from these days where the development of media tools makes people not to bother themselves to trip all the way to theaters to watch theater-origin dance performance. In conclusion, it could be said that dancers’ status or popularity in the modern society has been lowered than in the 1930s.

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