2015, Vol.28, No.3

War, Music, and Garden: Three Key Words in Quiara Alegría Hudes’ Elliot, A Soldier’s Fugue

Hye-Gyong Kwon | 2015, 28(3) | pp.5~27 | number of Cited : 0

Connecting Differences Through Performance: Anna Deavere Smith's Fires in the Mirror

Hyun-joo Ki | 2015, 28(3) | pp.29~51 | number of Cited : 0

Representation of British Muslims and Multiculturalism in Ayub Khan-Din’s East is East

KIM, YOO | 2015, 28(3) | pp.53~78 | number of Cited : 1

Topography of Dramatic Political Satire, as Reflected in Robert Monford's The Candidates

Jungman Park | 2015, 28(3) | pp.79~102 | number of Cited : 0

The Coast of Utopia Trilogy: Stoppard’s Engagement with Ethical and Political Issues

Heebon Park-Finch | 2015, 28(3) | pp.103~134 | number of Cited : 0

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The Apple Cart & On the Rocks: Criticism of Representative Democracy and Aspirations of Political Reformation by Bernard Shaw

Eom Tae-yong | 2015, 28(3) | pp.136~169 | number of Cited : 0

After examining George Bernard Shaw’s principal political stance and changed opinions with regard to adult suffrage and democracy through his political-economic essays and books, this study aims to investigate the problems of representative democracy staged by his two political comedies The Apple Cart (1929) and On the Rocks (1933). Also, it will explore how intense Show’s will is for a new system and the social reformation. Shaw’s attitude towards representative democracy differs from his early years to later. He insisted in his early Fabian tracts that the parliamentary politics can advance the socialist reformation by the expansion of adult suffrage. But he later gave an address upon the possibility of aristocratic-elite government while denying the governing ability of labor classes or common people in Ruskin’s Politics (1919). Shaw’s modified views appear as a suggestion for a new parliamentary system, with expressing the skepticism about adult suffrage and representative democracy, in The Intelligent Women’s Guide to Socialism and Capitalism (1928). The Apple Cart highlights the political indifference and ignorance of common people enjoying well-off lives in a virtual society in the late 20th century. It leads to the populism of politicians and the irresponsibility of the cabinet, which is consequently at the mercy of the plutocracy of huge conglomerates. The King Magnus tries to run for the House of Commons in order to reestablish democracy and fight the plutocracy, but his attempt is blocked by the sturdy parliamentarism. On the Rocks is staged in the situation where representative democracy can’t find any solution to the extreme unemployment rate. After his long helplessness, Sir Arthur, the Prime Minister, presents a reformation plan including the nationalization of the means of productions to resolve the economic crisis. But he feels frustrated from the strong opposition of the labor deputation as well as the conservative members. When labor classes and people become not the axis of reformation but rather its disturbance, representative democracy only drifts around without playing any role. As Shaw believes the reformative aspiration of King Magnus and Sir Arthur is what can never be abandoned, so he implies that their successors or descendants may inherit its cause. While the improvement of human beings by eugenic marriages may be nothing but a Shavian symbolic alternative for the development of life-force, there is no doubt Shaw looks forward to the reality in which the revolutionary Strong Man can come from a variety of classes.

Songs of Sexuality, Love and Violence in M. Butterfly

So Young Yoon | 2015, 28(3) | pp.171~195 | number of Cited : 1

As well-known, David Henry Hwang’s M. Butterfly is based on a true story of Bernard Boursicot. On top of that, this play owes Puccini’s opera Madame Butterfly. The binary opposition between West/men and East/women and Imperialistic domination are recurring themes to investigate this text and its performance. This play has mainly been analyzed with a view to Edward Said’s Orientalism, Imperialistic power relationships between West and East, reversal of sexual roles as well. Previous studies are inclined to focus on various performances on stage, not the text itself. The main focus of this paper is on three pivotal elements of the play: sexuality, love and violence. So this study examines how three key words based on the text operate with body by adopting Bataille, Kristeva and Girard. This paper examines the function of Rene Gallimard’s love, which is narcissistic and self-contradictory, creating the helpless image of an Oriental woman. What is noteworthy is that protagonist Gallimard seeks for his genuine identity by completing and displaying his own manhood through his perfect woman, Song Liling. Gallimard with Song could be a masculine character in Peking while he was incapable in Paris. Although he displayed his ability as a consul thanks to Song’s help, he quit his job and returned to Paris due to his misinformation about the reality in Viet Nam, which Song as a spy gave. What is significant is that Gallimard cannot redeem his genuine identity as a (white) man. Finally, indicted of passing classified information, Gallimard was sent to prison. Performing the opera “Madame Butterfly” on prison stage, he committed suicide for his blindness on perfect woman of the Orient, and vision of the Orient. This shows what Gallimard’s narcissistic love is and how it leads to ruin. In conclusion, love for his perfect woman made him totally blind to Song’s sex and identity in that Song’s disguise implied one of the most violent intentions that ridiculed Gallimard’s imperialistic blindness and confidence of the West.

Re-imagined Nora and Hedda in The Wash and Wind Cries Mary

Yi,Jihoon | 2015, 28(3) | pp.197~230 | number of Cited : 1

In The Wash (1987) and The Wind Cries Mary (2002), Philip Kan Gotanda repeats obsessively his themes: the camp experience during World War II, racial discrimination, hybrid (racial) marriages, conflicts among generations, and preservation of Japanese cultural traditions in America. In these two works, however, unlike his former plays such as A Song For A Nisei Fisherman (1980), Yankee Dawg You Die (1988), and Fish Head Soup (1991), he presents female protagonists in dealing with his favorite themes. This paper argues that Gotanda reimagines Ibsen’s Nora Helmer and Hedda Gabler in creating his female protagonists Mashi and Eiko. Nora is a female prototype who ‘leaves her house’ to be a human being, refusing to be a doll. Mashi, a 67-year-old Issei Japanese immigrant, also leaves her house and her patriarchal husband, Nobu Matsumoto, to be a human. A Doll’s House ends as Nora leaves, slamming a door behind her, while Mashi leaves the house quietly with her hands empty. Mashi’s independence is achieved by ceasing to wash Nobu’s laundry. Being an independent individual, her real immigration to the New World (America) is complete. These two female protagonists reveal Gotanda’s self-conscious relation to Ibsen: he considers himself the first Asian-American dramatist, as Ibsen was the first playwright of the Western Modern Drama. Hedda, one of the most complicated female characters in modern Western drama, is a woman who failed to leave and remained ‘locked in her house,’ in contrast with Nora. Gotanda’s Eiko, a Japanese Issei married to a white man, is trapped in the house. As Hedda, in the 19th century suburban Europe, has no way out socially except a marriage, Eiko has no way out either, due to her race and gender, even though she is confronted with the revolutionary period of change in 1968 America. Eiko/Hedda has no choice but to kill (shoot) herself to be free. In The Wash, props such as the wash, fishing, and coffee are used metaphorically; in The Wind Cries Mary, as the title indicates, music (Rock’n’Roll) plays an important part, like the Greek Chorus, to portray characters’ inner minds and dramatic development.

Lost Opportunities: Japanese Internment in Japanese American Plays and Films

허지 , Hyung Shik Lee | 2015, 28(3) | pp.231~255 | number of Cited : 2

The internment of Japanese Americans during the World War II is one of the examples of truism that history is always written by the winners. Together with the massacre of Native Americans, Japanese relocation became one of the most shameful pages that have been forgotten in American history. American history books rarely included this incident until recently so that only after the Civil Liberties Act of 1988 some efforts were made to educate the public about the injustice of the internment. This traumatic experience of being uprooted from their homes, jobs, and farms and being forcibly transferred to barren “concentration camps” affected Japanese Americans so much that only after a few decades this nightmare began to be dramatized by their sansei children. This paper aims to compare and contrast Fish Head Soup(1991) and The Wash(1987), the plays written by Philip Kan Gotanda, a third generation Japanese-American playwright, with Snow Falling on Cedars(1999) and American Pastime(2007), the films which fictionalized the relocation experience. Through this comparative analysis, this paper attempts to explore how deep and lasting was the scar left by the experience and how different media represent the same experience in a different manner. ‘Lost opportunities’ is a dominant theme which recurs throughout the four texts that are analyzed in this paper. Abrupt relocation did not allow enough time for Japanese Americans to sell or dispose of their property and businesses. The Iwasaki family and Nobu in Gotanda’s plays as well as Kazuo in Snow Falling on Cedars lose their land because of the internment, while Lyle in American Pastime loses his opportunity to go to college on baseball scholarship. Even though the films provide authentic detail with images of camps in bleak desert, they tend to have happy endings owing to the formula of Hollywood genre film, thus diluting their original messages.

Race and Differentiated Geography in Anna Deavere Smith's Fires in the Mirror and Twilight

Jung,Byung-Eon | 2015, 28(3) | pp.257~277 | number of Cited : 1

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“That Ceaseless Revery About Life Which We Call Wisdom”: A Comparison of Yeats’s and Maeterlinck’s Dramaturgy

Ariane Murphy | 2015, 28(3) | pp.279~304 | number of Cited : 0

“That ceaseless revery about life which we call wisdom”: a comparison of Yeats’s and Maeterlinck’s dramaturgy Abstract ArianeMurphy William Butler Yeats read extensively the French Symbolists and the plays of the Belgian playwright, Maurice Maeterlinck, before there were widely known in the English and Irish literary world. However, Yeats made a point to distance himself from his increasingly famous contemporary playwright. A word returns repeatedly in Yeats’s criticism about Maeterlinck’s drama: his early plays lack “revery”. This paper examines how the concept of reverie drives the dramaturgy of two plays with similar stories, Deirdre by Yeats and Pelléas and Mélisande by Maeterlinck. On the one hand, in Yeats’s review of one of Maeterlinck’s plays, “revery” acquires the original meaning of a type of poetics that demands at the same time philosophical reflection and poetry. In Deirdre, deep thought expressed directly by the characters goes along with high language: at a time when the Irish stage represents Irish realist peasant drama, Yeats uses the same legends but in a poetic theatre. Maeterlinck’s characters do not express that type of “revery”: no philosophy, but pure emotions, no verse, but a language simplified to its core, leaving space for silence. On the other hand, reverie in its original definition, as a romantic state that lies between the unconsciousness of the dream and the consciousness of an awoken mind, plays an important part in both Pelléas and Deirdre. Maeterlinck’s characters do not act; they experience a ceaseless reverie that the spectator is made to experience with them at the sight of their reverie. Unlike Maeterlinck, Yeats does not show the moments of the reverie, but he explains the consequent thoughts of the characters’ reverie, the same way he does not represent the whole legend but he begins the action of Deirdre when the story is almost over. Yeats refuses both action and emotion: Yeats’s dramaturgy of reflection thus responds to Maeterlinck’s dramaturgy of experience.

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2015, Vol.28, No.3