Abstract ▼ AI-Helper

Of all styles of arts, the drama has the closest relationship to human society. It does not only reflect social phenomena and represent another world, but also applies to fixing the formerly established order of a world. This thesis aims at making an observation on sexism through the scene "Yongkam-...

Of all styles of arts, the drama has the closest relationship to human society. It does not only reflect social phenomena and represent another world, but also applies to fixing the formerly established order of a world. This thesis aims at making an observation on sexism through the scene "Yongkam-Halmi" ("an old aristocrat and a granny," who is his old wife, in English) that is preformed in Korean traditional mask drama. The conclusions are as folLows; (1) Females, who come upon the mask drama, make an image of an enticer. Furthermore, both the granny and the concubine, who are the performers in the scene "Yongkam-Halmi," are represented at the stage of the drama as the passive figures who are forced, by the aristocrat, to get frustrated over and over again, and who are characterized to be the subordinate persons to struggle each other for a male. With such a point of view, Korean traditional mask drama does not only reflect the realistic order of society in the days of Chosen Dynasty that had a strict system to restrain females from positive activities, permitted only for males, but also affirm such an order artistically. What is more, the mask drama telLs us that the order justified the violence itself by males. Such a deniable image of females in those days is represented at death of the granny extremely. The death of the granny in the drama was at first established especially for confirming and strengthening the realistic discomfiture of females artistically not for criticizing the arrogance of males. (2) The struggle between the granny and the concubine in the drama does, in the result, reflect the happening that was the most usual one between aristocrats' wives and their concubines in the family system in the days of Chosen Dynasty. The priority of the concubine to the granny, in the struggle each other, was originally given from an idea which was delibarately to delineate an abnormal world that was an overturned order against an actual thing in the days of Chosen Dynasty. It can be said that the problem between an aristocrat's wife and his concubine was originally picked up to show an interest in sex and to satisfy the potential desire for it artistically. Such an idea was derived probably from the festivity of abundance. (3) The granny in another mask drama "Kasan Ogwangdae," that has long been preformed at the village of Kasan in the province of Kyongsangnam-do, Korea, is represented as a figure that is characterized to be an active and independent one. Moreover, the aristocrat in the drama "Kasan Ogwangdae" is designated to be dead instead of the granny. Such a death of an aristocrat is also shown in the drama that is performed usually in shamanistic society in Korea, so that the mask drama "Kasan Ogwangdae" may have long had an intimate relation to the shamanistic society. Therefore, it is clear that each aspect to resolve some trouble between both sexes show up respectively in accordance with each group of performer.

Keyword