역사 코미디 영화로서의 <황산벌>과 <평양성>

'Hwang San Beol' and 'Battlefield Heroes' as historical comedy films

This study examines the feature of Lee Joon-ik’s <Hwang San Beol> and <Battlefield Heroes> as new historical dramas through the analysis of how two films hybridize different genres and appropriate new mode of expression. Being different from other historical dramas, <Hwang San Beol> and <Battlefield Heroes> deal with their themes unseriously and present various positions with comic mood. Two films make audience approach history with no burden and represent history from the contemorary perspective through discussion between past and present. <Hwang San Beol> and <Battlefield Heroes> satirize dominant class through historical subjects and recount ordinary people’s lives, which includes the feature of Bakhtinian Carnivalesque in common. Through the category of ‘familiarity’, two films satirize the authority of vested groups. However, two films adopt different rhetorical strategies: characters in <Hwang San Beol> use lewd language in the category of ‘vulgarity’ whereas ones in <Battlefield Heroes> are engaged in ‘the festive marriage with lower social rank’. <Hwang San Beol> and <Battlefield Heroes> use historical subjects, recount ‘lives of low class’ and satirize contemporary politico-social situations. They create a custom with which viewers can be familiar. While other historical dramas have focused on the serious representation of history through typical characters, <Hwang San Beol> and <Battlefield Heroes> are new types of historical drama that deploy comic elements and lighten historical seriousness. Two things distinguish one genre from other: the attitude of main characters and the mode of solution which results from their actitivies. The most significant feature of narratives in genre films is a solution, that is, an effort to solve the trouble that disturbes the order of a community. In addition to the genre hybrid between comedy and historical drama, <Hwang San Beol> and <Battlefield Heroes> are engaged in Robert Rosenstone’s three categories of historical dramas: contesting history, visioning history and revisioning history. In the context, <Hwang San Beol> and <Battlefield Heroes> reconsider history and adopt comic elements to try the discussion between past and present which constructs the genre of ‘historical comedy’.