영화 <늑대소년> 서사의 상호텍스트성 연구-<가위손>과 비교분석의 관점에서

Abstract

A Werewolf Boy, released in 2012, attracted 7 million audiences, marking the highest box office record among South Korean romantic films. This film, however, raised suspicion that its story is oddly familiar. Regarding this issue, this study explores the ‘intertextuality’ of A Werewolf Boy through comparative analysis with Tim Burton’s Edward Scissorhands (1990), a film with seemingly close affinity to the Korean film. ‘Intertextuality’ is a term first used by Julia Kristeva, meaning the relationship that a text has with another. Through intertextuality, each text affects each other, generating similarities and differences. The comparative analysis results revealed that the roles and personalities of the characters of the two films are completely identical in terms of ‘actant models’ suggested by Greimas. As for the narrative structures both films employ frame structures, giving us clear impression that the two films are similar. A Werewolf Boy is also similar to Edward Scissorhands in terms of event development, except for the ending. The main motifs that lead the stories of the two films also coincided in various aspects. To conclude, the story of A Werewolf Boy can hardly be called a new creation that is different from Edward Scissorhands in terms of its characters, narrative structure and event development. It would be more reasonable to view the former as a film built upon the foundation of the characters and narrative from the latter, with a number of local ingredients such as the rural atmosphere of South Korea in the 1960’s and the nostalgic mood. The clearest mark of intertextuality is repetition. And even when an existing is repeated, the text usually goes through certain alteration. A Werewolf Boy, When compared with Edward Scissorhands, almost no such alteration was found in A Werewolf Boy. Intertextuality is marked with traces from the preceding text that can be identified by anyone, and the readers or viewers are aware of the intertextuality. Plagiarized texts, however, try to hide the preceding texts, and the readers or viewers obviously are not aware of the fact. Regarding A Werewolf Boy, the fact that it borrowed certain elements from Edward Scissorhands was never made public, and the viewers are not aware of the fact before they actually see the film. In this respect, it seems that A Werewolf Boy cannot readily escape from the issue of plagiarism. The producer of A Werewolf Boy, through numerous interviews, implies that while the new film shares some similarities with the previous film, the former represents a form of creative imitation achieved through ‘koreanization’ of the subject matter of the previous film. What matters in determining similarities of texts, however, is their inherent, not superficial, similarities. A text is inherently similar to another when it neatly follows the story structure and event development of the original, but only changes some superficial expressions. A Werewolf Boy reused the familiar characters from Edward Scissorhands, and its narrative development imitates the formula of the previous film while borrowing the elements that made the latter so successful. Judging from the above, it seems difficult to regard A Werewolf Boy as an original creation. Substantial similarity may also constitute plagiarism in the legal sense. The producer’s mention about adding Korean sentimentality is not nearly enough to exonerate A Werewolf Boy from accusation of plagiarism. It is a popular opinion that the successfulness of a popular film can be judged only by its box office record. Such record, however, does not justify lack of creative integrity. Repetition constitutes plagiarism unless clearly expressed through citation, and plagiarism is morally unjust regardless of its legal status.