한국 법정영화의 젠더 보수성에 대한 역사적 고찰

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to investigate the relationship between law and women in a diachronic way with a focus on the representation of women in South Korean courtroom drama films, thus figuring out the genre characteristics of courtroom dramas as the basis of representation in films and the perceptions of law and women among the public. "Courtroom drama" refer to a genre of film in which a trial process plays decisive roles in the story narrative. Since they usually deal with matters related to the legal system that rules society, they are sensitive to social changes and show the dynamics of social flows in a structurally well-organized manner. They are sometimes considered a genre oriented toward social reform as they induce changes by playing a leading role in making something an issue and then disclose and criticize contradictions and irrationality in the society. In the aspect of gender, however, courtroom dramas display rather conventional and conservative patterns. They have a strong tendency of being still bound by the dichotomy between "public law" and "private women" and fixed onto the simple stereotyping of female judges. The present study began by raising a question about this paradox. By trying to answer this question, the study examined the internal characteristics and developmental processes of the film genre that kept this conventional stereotyping intact and reviewed historically the process of the public's expectation horizon and legal awareness reaching the present state. As a basic operation to examine South Korean courtroom drama films in a diachronic way, Chapter 2 looked into their topography and uniqueness based on the concepts and categories of courtroom drama films in Hollywood. Chapter 3 traced women representations in South Korean courtroom dramas from legal melodramas based on the soap opera format that proved their persistence life since the Liberation to courtroom comedies in the 1990s, finding that the conservative idea that law was solely possessed by men went on even though the dichotomy of private women and public law continued to have antagonism in South Korean courtroom dramas. Finally, Chapter 4 demonstrated that the conservative nature of courtroom dramas in terms of women's representation derived from the nature of law that could not avoid the dichotomous logical structure, the public's belief in law as universal social norms even though they could not believe in law in reality, the reality that all clashes and resistance regarding law would eventually converge into the supplementation of law, the dichotomous perceptions that law was a public and male-dominated domain while women were private and emotional beings opposite them, and the deep-rooted resistance against the placement of women in the same status as men in the courtroom due to public support for the patriarchal order.