페드로 알모도바르의 <내가 사는 피부>를 통해 본 주체의 문제

Abstract

The current study investigates the problems of subject observed in The Skin I Live In, directed by Pedro Almodovar in 2011. One of the oldest philosophical questions held by people is: “Who am I?” or “What is the essence of humanity?” Breaking away from traditional Western philosophy that identified humans as rational beings, the contemporary philosophy since the advent of phenomenology views humans as beings of corporeal and generative beings. Among such discourse about the corporeal taking place, the issue of sexuality constitutes the most central and sensitive issue of the subject. In The Skin I Live In, Almodovar tells the story of a world-renowned plastic surgeon who kidnaps a young man who raped his daughter and drove her to commit suicide, to force a sex change operation that turned this perpetrator into a woman. The story also depicts the love, hatred, and vengeance of this person who was turned into a woman and tamed by the surgeon. The protagonist, the man who had the sex change operation forced on him as a sort of private revenge, attempts to accept his (or her) changed body and reality, but the misalignment between the body and the subject drives the collapse of the self at the end. Through the issue of sexual identity, a favorite motif of Almodovar, the director approaches the question of “Who am I?” The current study analyzes the symbolism in the names of the characters in the film to understand their significance. It further delves into the comparison of this film and Le Mygale, the original book by Thierry Jonquet upon which the film was based, to identify the unique perspective adopted by Pedro Almodovar as a film director. Based on the analysis, the current study explores the complexity and variability of the personalities and relationships among the characters, in addition to describing the intentional meaning of the relationship between the body and the self that Almodovar seeks to show. The current study expands the understanding about the modern project of viewing the human subjecthood and sexual identify as uniform substances or properties to tame them, as well as the knowledge about the perspective held by Almodovar, which is to escape from the tameness to seek the more comprehensive and fundamental subject while floating around to find the true self.