‘이중섭 신화’의 또 다른 경로(매체)들 - 1970년대의 이중섭 평전과 영화를 중심으로

In this literature, I intended to review some aspects of ‘Lee Jung Seob’s Myth’ beyond the area of fine art. The myth was forcefully created in the 1970s not only in fine art areas but also in some commercial and mass-oriented genres of art such as literature, film, play, TV drama. Until now, in spite of the popularities and influential powers of such mass-oriented artworks about Lee, all but academic researches and art criticisms on ‘Lee Jung Seob’s Myth’ have just referred on the myth concerning art market or within the genre of fine art, and have had little interest in those mass-oriented artworks.
I focused on the critical biography about Lee, written by Korean famous poet Go Eun in 1973, and the feature film ‘Lee Jung Seob’ produced in 1974, based on Go’s critical biography. Go’s literature became the origin and canon of commercialized myth of Lee because of its great popularity. Go wrote the literature for the purpose of demythifying Lee, but paradoxically contributed to construct more forceful myth of Lee, with critical rhetoric of pseudopsychoanalysis and nationalistic aesthetics based on natural characteristics. The film ‘Lee Jung Seob’ was produced by one of the largest film company in the 1970s and its director was Gwak Jeong Hwan, head of the film company who believed that film was an industrial one. In the 1970s, Korean film industry was controlled by the film policy of the Yushin regime and its administrative censorship was deeply rooted in the process of film production. Therefore, the film industry and its policy in the period of Yushin regime, participated in arranging and standardizing the myth of artist Lee, with making various subjects such like Lee’s families, friends, mass media, and the public get involved in it.
These mass-oriented genres cast the desire of mass in a way that the public concentrated on the personage and life of Lee by reificating his materialized and typified images repeatedly. Thus, we can find that a series of border-crossing of genres from critical biography to film, poetry, play, TV drama, etc. in the 1970s was an influential process materializing the myth of Lee Jung Seob.