| Melodramatic Code in Contemporary Culture - a curricular model for college students |
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Yuna Kang |
| 현대문화속 멜로드라마 코드 읽기 |
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강유나 |
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| Abstract |
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This study aims at reviewing present General Education programs in Korean universities and proposing a curricular model of “Melodramatic Code in Contemporary Culture”(MCCC) to improve critical cultural awareness and realize liberal education. The melodrama-ness is one of the most representative characteristics in modern mass culture through media, but it is still regarded as a “low culture” in a pejorative sense. An MCCC model is supposed to work through various literary/non literary works such as novels, plays, movies and musicals and help students to better understand modern culture and its structure of feeling in interdisciplinary and multimedia class. In this class, students will review Clarissa and critical articles. They will also study the outstanding current of melodrama-ness in the stream of Western musicals, silent movies, American drama and Hollywood movies in the 20th Century. The Mephistophelean power and potential of melodrama is vividly outstanding in 21st Century Korean society, reproducing and circulating itself. Students will participate actively in class with familiar works, thus improving more critical but sympathetic literacy through the class. This class is easily accessible to students because class materials are more familiar to them and make them more interested in the class and communicate about the works and world around them. An MCCC model can work well even for less communicatively-competent students to raise their awareness of the texts and its contexts, thus helping them develop higher level of cultural literacy with criticism and sympathy. This curricular model could be a meaningful examination of current liberal education in Korea. |
| Key Words:
cultural literacy, criticism and sympathy, interdisciplinary, melodrama, multimedia |
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