블록버스터 드라마의 식민주의적 욕망-드라마 <아이리스>를 중심으로-

Abstract

The Korean blockbuster is a genre which articulates Hollywood's stable codes and convention with Korean contextual speciality, so called, Korean cultural code. Hence, it reveals a hybrid characteristic which constructs ethnic narrative in its content but follows Hollywood's universality in methods of expression and production by taking Hollywood prototype. This study explored the difference of ethnic narrative of a recent Korean drama from the one underlying the existing Korean blockbusters. This study conducted narrative analysis of Iris, the recent spy blockbuster drama series broadcast on KBS2 TV, which lies in line with the Korean blockbuster movies grounded on division ideology and nationalism. The existing Korean blockbusters have presented masochistic symptom and tragic emotion by adopting ethnic materials and themes. It is because the Korean blockbusters have displayed with melodramatic plethora the paucity of others and the subsequent masochistic suffering resulted from defining North Korea as an external enemy. Iris expresses an aspect of offensive nationalism, which differs from the existing blockbusters. It ties South and North Korean people into an 'imaginary community' and replaces North Korea with the inside who faces with the force of transnational neoliberalism. This provides circumstantial evidence that the drama reflects the collective unconsciousness of the Korean society which aims for the revival from semi-periphery to the center of the world after the IMF period, the so-called colonial desire which has been suppressed by colonized experience and history of territorial division.