영화 <박쥐>에 나타난 모호성의 전략 고찰

Abstract

The problem which this paper addressed was the method with which the South Korean film Thirst portrayed the relationship between man and vampires. From a homocentric perspective, vampire indicated the value of evil, victimizer and abnormality within a dichotomous and hierarchical order, but Thirst attracted attention by deconstructing this binary relationship through a strategy of ambiguity. In Western culture, the term vampire appeared as an imaginary entity on which to displace the responsibility for the catastrophe of the plague, and this process of emergence clearly demonstrates the Otherness of the epistemological object whom man averts and regards with revulsion. The strategy of ambiguity utilized by the film subverted and deconstructed the binary and hierarchical relation between man and vampires. This strategy was largely categorized into two components. The first consisted of the ambiguous character demonstrated by Sang-Hyeon. Though Sang-Hyeon is a Catholic priest and as such is invested with the potential to fulfill the logos of good which defeats evil from the perspective of the Western cultural tradition, he fails to realize the logos of good while living as a Catholic priest and while in the process of transforming into a vampire. Secondly, the portrayal of Tae-Joo and Madame La also illustrated the strategy of ambiguity which unsettles the binary boundary between humans and vampires. As discussed above, the South Korean film Thirst has momentous significance in that the film subverted and deconstructed the binaries established hitherto within Western culture with the oppositions between man/vampire = good/evil = victim/victimizer = normal/abnormal = center/periphery, by drawing upon a strategy of ambiguity.