아더 신화속의 여성과 21세기 여성관객:젠더 마케팅 전략 어디까지 왔나?

Abstract

Our time is particularly heavy in remakes. There is a film and it is remade at a later date. As Leo Braudy claims, the remade film is less frequently an homage or revival than an effort to supplant its predecessor partially or entirely. I can find this desire to supplant the previous version in contemporary films about Arthur. In particular I can detect a will to supplant a patriarchical bias in such films as "Guinevere"(1994), "The First Knight"(1995), "The Mists of Avalon"(2001) and "King Arthur"(2004). In fact, Arthurian films have long been blamed because of their patriarchical nature: from "Knights of the Round Table"(1954) to "Excalibur"(1981), female characters have been featured as either helpless maiden or femme fatale. The late 1980s and early 1990s, however, brought signs of trouble on many fronts : "Thelma and Louise"(1991) burst onto theater screens; Murphy Brown and Hillary Clinton were omnipresent on home screens and the front pages of national publications; record number of white women and women of color fought for and won congressional seats in the 1992 elections. The unsettling signals from on-screen and real life women spelled trouble for the categories woman, women and femininity. Directors and producers working in commercial media industry are cultural collectors. Their job is to detect a cultural current and to reflect it even superficially. Seen from this perspective, it is quite natural to find more promising representation of women in contemporary Arthurian films. As a feminist critic, I want to analyze the way women are represented in television and theater movies. Interestingly enough, each medium pays a tribute to the idea of 'female empowerment' quite differently. Bringing each medium's gender-sensitive marketing strategy into the forefront, I want to discuss both the limit and the possibility of 'gender marketing strategy.'