미시, 거시 영화텍스트 분석의 통합가능성 연구

A Study of Cultural Interpretation For the Integration of the Micro into the Macro Analysis

This paper, with various examples of films about devided Korea, presents an argument for cultural interpretation. Through an interpretation of such films as Shiri, JSA, Taegukgi and Welcome to Dongmakgol, it attempts to demonstrate the value of conjunctural interpretive analysis. Such an analysis is multi-level(ranging from micro-practices to macro- structures), multimodal(encompassing texts, practices, organizations and policy), and highly theoretical and political. The paper works with two interlinked definitions of culture: “a whole way of life” and the production and social circulation of meanings, “pleasures and values”. Its argument is framed by and helps to define critical-structural theory as a way of engaging in a materialist cultural studies. Within this perspective it addresses the related questions of what it is that the cultural analyst should study and how the process of interpretation might validated. The case study upon which the argument is hung is an attempt to understand which meanings of films on divided Korea are currently in circulation, how and what is involved in interpreting and evaluating them. The movement of the essay is from the micro to the macro, from practice to structure.