자유부인, 블랑쉬를 만나다: 전후 한국여성의 정체성과 미국 드라마의 수용

Abstract

In the public/academic discourse on Americanization and modernization of Korea, which is dominated by male-centered socio-political metanarratives, women's experience has been largely ignored or marginalized. Questioning the "dominant reading" that posits women's Americanization as victim's history or negative side effect of modernization, this paper attempts to show how Korean women in the 1950s encountered, experienced, and translated American culture "differently" from nationalist male elites, and thereby call attention to "plurality" of Americanization in Korea.The study first discusses the crucial impact of American materialism and liberal ideas on the Korean women in the post-war era, and how the "Madame Freedom" syndrome/controversy, which was ignited by the hit novel/movie of the same title, epitomized the dilemma between nationalism and feminism, and ultimately the aporia of modernity. Then the paper, focusing on the case of Korean premiere of A Streetcar Named Desire in 1955, analyzes how American drama with its subtle position between high culture and popular culture, literature and entertainment, was received and viewed by women spectators and theatre artists who desperately looked for a new model in the American culture. Women spectators in the 1950s aspired to get beyond oppressive patriarchal nationalism and tried to form a new subjectivity through identifying with American(or Americanized) women in the popular culture, but at the same time, as viewed in the case of A Streetcar Named Desire, they could recognize the common fate as a "gendered other" and develop a sense of solidarity with other women beyond national borders. In that sense, literary and cultural translations of American drama helped Korean women to see themselves in a larger context of the world.