1960년대 단카이 세대의 '반란'과 미디어로서의 만화 - 만화 『내일의 조』를 중심으로

Abstract

This paper seeks to analyze the characteristics of the youth culture of the “DANKAI” generation (also known as the "Baby Boomers") based on the widespread culture of popular comics at the time. The political "uprising" in the 1960s simultaneously possessed traits of a cultural "uprising" as well. The significance lies in the initiation of comics coming to the fore as alternative media to express the destructive and violent desires. Comics had previously been forbidden as a medium through which to make a public statements. Comic media differs from that of dominant culture for the “DANKAI generation” and it was a rather heterogeneous form of media granting the right to public expression. This is illustrated in the following two ways. First, because the content cannot vary much from that of dominant culture, alternative media cannot help but express hostility, bordering on revolutionaryzeal, towards dominant culture to convey various cultural desires. Of course, television and other types of dominant media have planned various programs aimed at the “DANKAI generation”. However, these efforts, having focused on the quantity of Baby Boomers, have only resulted in a cultural ‘uprising’ of transient deviance among adolescents facing imminent admittance into adulthood. Second, the image media form of comics began a rival form of media against the type-centered dominant media. This signaled the start of the image generation, a consumer group of image media (i.e. television or cartoons) The youth express their individuality through this media, appearing as a separate class in society. For this reason, the content and form of comic media inevitably displays an oppositional character towards dominant media. However, the comic media’s oppositional nature has deep connections to the fact that it is a by product of the consumer society. We know the DANKAI generation identifies with comic media through their purchases in the market, as the comic media possesses consumerism traits non-existent in other forms of media. Therefore, in light of the juxtaposition of consumerist traits and the desire for anti-systemic violence and destruction in image format, comic media is ultimately a counteracting form of media. Nevertheless, by the full-blown advent of the consumer society, the consumer culture was subsumed and ranked as a sub-culture by the dominant culture. This inevitably brought about the gradual fade of the oppositional personality of comic media. It is within this process that a conflict between anti-systemic asceticism and consumer culture began to transpire. The aforementioned reference to the incident which purged the Red Army Faction was the symbolic and final "rupture" between the anti-systemic asceticism and consumer culture which had coexisted in the 1960s. Moreover, the death of Yabuki Joe in “Ashita no Joe(Tomorrow’s Joe)” is also symbolic of the end of anti-systemic asceticism. Accordingly, by this the cartoon “Kamuiden(The Legend of Kamui)” depicts the sudden decline of student demonstrations in 1971, and words such as “struggle” ceased to inspire students throughout the 1970s. This is the reason behind the transformation of “Ashita no Joe” from a tragic prologue of the violent revolution to a life story of a person from the slums. Subsequent to the 70s, while comics became a media genre in form and acquired popular among citizens, in content, it lost its sense of “revolution” and tooks its place as a sub-culture beneath dominant culture. Consequently, the cultural “uprising” of the “DANKAI generation” centered on comics was perceived to be an uprising in the form of image culture rather than the content itself.