한국의 테마파크와 아도르노의 문화 산업론

Theme Parks in Korea and Adorno"s Culture Industry

  The aim of this paper is to expose the fascism of the typical theme parks in South Korea, Lotteworld and Everland through T. W. Adorno"s criticism on the "Culture Industry." Adorno insists that the mass culture is already determined and dominated by a few powerful manipulators of the culture industry. And he tries to reveal the mechanism of the way how the mass consumes the cultural commodities and contributes to the continuation of the monopolistic system of the culture industry. This paper argues that such strategies of culture industry operate in Korea"s most famous theme parks, Lotteworld and Everland. Both theme parks owned by large corporations, Lotte and Samsung, reduce all persons to the inferior and innocent consumers. In Lotteworld and Everland, the mass as a subject in the system of theme parks, continuously consumes the copies or imitations that are produced under the same standards or criteria. Such subjugation of the mass is accelerated by postponement of satisfaction, and the power does not leave the customer alone. Furthermore, the theme parks display diverse violences in amusing and comic shows in order that the customer of the theme parks laugh observing the violence. In laughing, the customers forget that they are actually mutilated and fragmented themselves by the violence. Therefore, Lotteworld and Everland are the condensed and concrete model of subjugation of the mass in the late capitalism.