『웰컴투 동막골』에 나타나는 민족공동체

Abstract

The Formation of National Identity in the film “Welcome to Dongmakgol”

Boo Eung Koh (Chung-Ang University)

Comparative studies can be defined as a study of difference in that any comparison presupposes a difference between those compared objects. In general, any cognitive activity is a study of difference because a cognitive subject can see a cognized object only in its difference with others. Since comparative literature studies deal with the cultural product constructed in language and its culture in a broad sense, it can be said to be a study of cultural difference. The film “Welcome to Dongmakgol” is a good case for the consideration of cultural difference and national identity formation. While the rise of national consciousness and thereby nation-building in the 18th century was a product of print capitalism as presented in Benedict Anderson's Imagined Communities, the national identity as formed in the film is a product of film audience's identification with the Dongmakgol community, in which the key for the national building is the Korean language. However, since film language is constituted of images based analogon unlike the arbitrary sign as in the verbal language, the national community produced by the film is rather loose and open to the outside world. The nation in the film “Welcome to Dongmakgol” is a blurry nation which is one of the main features in the age of transnational globalization.