일상의 문화적 기억과 헤테로토피아 공간의 구성 방식에 관한 연구: 고레에다 히로카즈의 <원더풀 라이프>를 중심으로

Abstract

The unprecedented COVID-19 pandemic epidemic that occurred more than two years ago has made everyday life, which was taken for granted, not for granted. As dailiness such as familiarity, wontedness, and banality are transformed into unfamiliarity, awkwardness, and unfamiliarity and the binary-oppositions between life and death, reality and unreality are even more extreme. The socio-cultural (re)construction way of memory is changed, and a new domain of (time) space such as heterotopia is created. In this regard, this paper explores the construction way of cultural memory and heterotopia space of <After Life> (Hirokazu Koreeda, 1998). According to the research results, <After Life> begins by giving the cinematic premise of ‘Choose one of the most precious memory in life’ to 22 dead people gathered in a ‘place’ where life and death meet. In the daily routine of ‘another’ life that is repeated even after death, the dead displace the reality inside and outside the ‘gate’, the boundary between this life and afterlife, and reflect on the daily life that crosses life and death. As a result, their cultural memories are fragmented due to the ‘uneasy disquiet’ caused by daily routines that are repeated even after death. In addition, the reconstruction of cultural memory reproduced like an interview scene metaphorizes that life and death are complementary. The entrance (front door), which serves as a boundary between life and death, this life and afterlife, everyday and non-routine, and reality and unreality, is a representative heterotopia space. The deceased reconstruct their cultural memory in the interview room, hallway (skylight), yard, garden, bench, and studio. These heterotopia spaces repeatedly reconstruct the unrealistic daily life of death, allowing the dead to escape from their past lives. In particular, the bathroom (bathtub) and the street of this life can be said to be an alternative heterotopia space that enables the reconstruction of cultural counter-memory that death is not the eternal end by reversing the relationships between life and death, everyday and non-routine, and reality and unreality. This paper selects <After Life> as an research object and explores the relationship between daily life and memory, cultural memory and heterotopia space. I would like to place the significance of this study on the fact that it reflected on the importance of daily life and memory. Nevertheless, it can be said that the limitations of qualitative research that performed text analysis with only one film are also clear. Therefore, it will be necessary to conduct follow-up research by examining the esearch object in various ways and designing the research methodology more elaborately.