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Extensibility and Sexuality of Human Body

SooJin Na 1

1이화여자대학교

Accredited

ABSTRACT

This article aims to figure out what roles the body plays in generating and interpreting sexual images and what the characteristics of the body are in the intervention to it. However, unlike the reality that sexual images are excessive, theoretical approaches to the proper understanding of sexuality or the expressive methods of it still lack, and particularly, the study on ‘the body’ centering around sexual images is very rare; thus, this study not only analyzes actual works but conducts theoretical tasks, too. Therefore, this study largely consists of theoretical discussion about what the sexuality is and how it works and the analytic process to figure out the body’s roles in the process of generating sexual images and acquiring meaning through movies and dance works. In the theoretical discussion, this paper introduces the concept and theory of sexuality. Based on that, this study divides sexuality by its functions into the common sexuality which extends and reproduces the ruling discourse of the society, evolving sexuality which expresses resistant discourse, and the mixed sexuality which either coexists or is interpreted totally differently. These are adopted as the actual criteria to analyze the works. In the analysis process, this paper analyzes three movies, 「Original Sin」, 「Tomb Raider」, and 「Girls' Night Out」, and three dance works, 「Romeo and Juliet」, 「Carmen」, and「Groosland」 to figure out how they produce the diverse sexual images expressed in them and how they take meaning in the association with the body. In this process, it was found that sexual images are generated not just by the actor’s or the actress’ body and the dancer’s body but by organic harmony with various objets appearing on the screen or stage such as costume or props, too. This study views the characteristics of the body organically harmonized with surrounding environment as ‘extensibility’. Also, the fact that as the objects of expansion are more, it is easier to interpret the images and as it gets fewer, the symbolic meaning becomes stronger and it is harder to interpret them means that the body’s extensibility is not just the source of sexual images but the passage of interpretation as well. Thus, it can be said that the fact that sexual images are generated and interpreted around the ‘extensibility’ of the body provides constant directivity to the creator’s position about how to realize sexual images and also provides information to the receptor’s position about how to interpret the sexual image. In other words, it can be said that the body’s extensibility provides ways for dance art centering around the body to communicate with people.

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

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