Earticle

In this article, the author contemplated comic genre in colonial Chosun, especially tales and gags published in Samcheolli a representative general magazine of the 1930’s. The purpose of this article was to understand comedies and ‘laugh’ in the colonial pop culture. Samcheolli as a well-liked popular magazine at the time followed the custom of putting comic materials in the magazine. Humorous stories published in Samcheolli are classified into three categories. First category contains funny stories about love, marriage and family. As a private individual appeared and the related relation and space is newly emerged, love, marriage and family became a new possible background of ‘laugh’. The other is a kind of political humor. Samcheolli deeply concerned with international political situations and ‘characters’ of Chosun society and these concerns corresponded with political humor. However, humorous stories of Samcheolli could not directly deal with politics. Last one is reporting gags of Shin Bul-Chul, a popular gagman at the time. In the thirties, gag had positioned as a representative of comic genre, and ‘funny baldhead’ was Shin Bul-Chul’s well-known repertory. Shin Bul Chul was an outstanding gagman who played an active role even after the liberation of Korea; the aesthetics of his comedy embodied an aggressive satire.

Matsuri祭り is local commu nity’s festival, representing Japanese traditional culture. Annually, on average, more than 2,400 Matsuri are held across the nation, which implicates that these festivals are deeply rooted in Japanese people’s life. Originally, the Maturi was the ritual during which people worshiped the ancestors and prayed for good harvest and good health. “Matsurahuまつらふ”, the origin of the word of Matsuri, meaning of which is the obeying the God’s mighty force, is normally associated with solemn ritual. However, real Matsuri is the opposite, not at all solemn. That’s because the festivals primarily represent the world of “Chaos”, deviation from the reality, accordingly the Japanese people give vent to their feelings during the festivals. By the way, there exist particularly some festivals emphasizing the laughter, in which the laughter has some other meaning. In reality these Matusri are called “Matsuri of Laughter” as a whole. During these Matsuri, the laughter is for consoling the God and praying for the happiness of the community. Seemingly exaggerative laughter of Matsuri has holy aspect related to praying for the peace of community. We can find a number of the Matsuri of laughter especially in Kansai Region, for example, Yamanokami Matsuri, Warai Matsuri, Waraikô, Suishôjin Shinji. Historically equal social atmosphere in Osaka region seems to have made possible the laughers in Matsuri. It would be difficult to find this kind of collective laughter in unequal society. But the holy “Matsuri of laughter” in Japan is on the way of disappearing and barely keeps itself in existence as local event for tourism. Probably the reason is that this kind of collective laughter is no longer necessary for people’s life.

This paper has an intention to re-read a most famous picture of Leonardo da Vinci, Mona Lisa. According to the first critic, G. Vasari, her smile should be a pleasing one, and his pleasing smile discours is until now wildly accepted, and it is by no means easy to be disproved. But E. H. Gombrich proposed not long time ago that da Vinci’s picture Mona Lisa should be re-readed on the whole, and he expressed his sentiments that her smiling should have even a sad look. It can be highly evaluated that he revealed at last that a discours of G. Vasari could be a myth. At this point my critical question begins: Even though E. H. Gombrich was right to find out the new meaning of her smile, his evidence for that assertion has to be retrospective. In other words, what is the evidence that is necessary enough to prove the sad smile of Mona Lisa? In order to answer this question, I shall suggest three important points. First, I think that the critic of G. Vasari has only the half truth. His detailed descriptions are very helpful to interpret the aura of the masterpiece, but those have vulnerable points. Then he explained even about her eyebrows, although there was no eyebrow in her face. It has raised the question that he had never seen the picture, and from then on his appreciation has been considered as a myth. At this very point a new reading of Mona Lisa begins as the art historian E. H. Gombrich suggested it. According to him, her smile could be interpreted even as a sad one. Second, the reason why her countenance could be red as sad is to be analysed at three points as follows―contraposto, sfumato, and the natural background. Of these points the most important thing is the natural background. To perceive that da Vinci painted two faces of the nature at the both sides of Mona Lisa, it is the point of the view. The two natures hold respectively three factors in common―the road, the water, and the mountain. The road at the left is curve, the road at the right is straight. The lake at the left is placid, the lake at the right is dangerous. The mountain at the left is tender, the mountain at the right is rough. On the whole, the nature at the left is masculine, and the nature at the right is feminine. It is natural that Mona Lisa looks ambiguous around this double environment. Lastly, the sad smile of Mona Lisa is in connection with the sad memories of the painter and the model. Da Vinci was born as an illegitimate child, and at five he had to be separated from his own mother, who married again to another man. This sad life during his childhood remained in his unconsciousness as a trauma. This trauma revived again when he met Mona Lisa. On the other hand, Mona Lisa had also the same trauma. When she was seated as a model in front of the famous painter, she was really happy because her husband’s business was flourishing, settled rightly in a new house, and gave birth to a another child. But at this very happy instance she remembered her child’s death three years ago. In this meaning it is said that Mona Lisa’s sad smile means ‘the aesthetic of sadness and downfall.’

This paper attempts to resurrect the political and social circumstances of Stalin’s regime through the examination of political humors circulated among the people in the 1930s of Russia. Political humors were very effective means to express indirectly people’s reaction to the repressive power like Stalin’s. People in the 1930s of Russia contrived to develop their own ways of evaluating the policies and propaganda of the government. The political humors in the Stalin’s time first conveyed the images of the leader. Contrary to the official images like Lenin’s true heir and a great contributor to the foundation of the socialist economy, Stalin in the political humors was portrayed as a betrayer to the ideals of Leninism. Furthermore, the political humors had implicitly the critical understandings on the policies and propaganda of Stalin’s government. We can find through the contents of the political humor that the peasants tried to employ various menas of escape to the campaign of collectivization of agriculture. Also workers in the factory did not fully accept the industrializing plan of the Soviet Russia, the result of which led to the struggle against the goals of production plan imposed from above. And lastly, the political humors had provided some clues to the apprehension of Stalin’s terror. From the perspectives of the government, the terror was said to be targeted against “the enemy of people,” but the humors at the time pointedly grasped the mechanism of creating arbitrarily the enemy. The political humors in Stalin’s Russia were one of means of discharging the people’s emotion and attitudes to the government which did not allow the dynamic exchange of opinions between the two.

Hysteria has been defined as a disease caused in certain women, who couldn’t have sexual intercourses regularly with men or not at all and as a disorder accompanying fits, paralysis and so on. Due to this definition, hysteria has developed as the discourse of defining others, especially women. In seventeenth century, however, a few physicians who asserted the possibility of male hysteria appeared, and in the mid and late nineteenth century, the discourse on male hysteria began to be on everyone's lips more frequently than before. In this thesis, analyzing the discourse on male hysteria in British periodicals from 1830 to 1900, I argue that male hysteria was compared with female hysteria, being regarded the same as and simultaneously distinguished from female hysteria. In each chapter, I show with more detail and delicacy that male hysteria was crossed over the categories of gender, class, and race and excluded the others in these categories. In male hysteria discourse, others in gender, class and race intersected in the middle of the categories, while their images were intensified as being much inferior and were used to strengthen the superiority of British white middle class men. I, above all, will point out and prove that not only could male hysteria be defined as the cultural disease which excluded the others of gender, class and race and made them inferior and but also it reflected the superiority of British white middle class men to the others.