할리퀸 소설의 만화화와 오리엔탈리즘 젠더 담론의 재구성

Abstract

A cliché of romantic relationship of a Western woman and a Orient man in Harlequin romance novel which is reveals a different discourse of gender, colonialism, and Orientalism in its Japanese adaptation in comic books. In contrast to the conventional gender positioning of male-West and female-East, the lovers in this kind of narrative represent their own race and culture in reversed gender from Orientalism discourse. However the pieces only expose the Western anxiety for losing its cultural and economical hegemony through the gender reversion, and more fundamentally stabilize recent cultural imperialism. Moreover, Japanese adaptation of them to comic books inherits Japanese imperialism in which the Orient is simultaneously imagined as persecuted Asia to be liberated by Japan and ignored barbarian region. The adaptation of comic books almost directly duplicates the discourse of isolation and misrepresentation of the Orient in Japanese imperialism. By describing the romantic relationship as a fantasy of Orientalism and Occidentalism, the Japanese comic books adapting the narrative of the 21st century cultural imperialism of the West also betrays its own failure of self-reflection to the imperial discourse and past.