Culture is called different names like histories, religions, national flags, national characters, literatures, ideologies and so on. They are contained within the culture category and called culture instead of the names. Like this, the concept and cat...
Culture is called different names like histories, religions, national flags, national characters, literatures, ideologies and so on. They are contained within the culture category and called culture instead of the names. Like this, the concept and category of culture is ambiguous, but also comprehensive. In modern society, culture got a new name called pop culture which includes character, animation, game, movie, comic book, musical, and so forth, in addition it even have popularity. Moreover, it doesn’t stay in the county or group and it spreads to unspecified individuals and influences their ideas or thoughts. There is a cultural industry in the process and this create added value, so it has high value as a way of economic profit and revenue source of the group.
Among them, the characters have wide consumers and customers all over the people’s daily life. The usefulness of characters in many areas such as stationary, brand identity and daily supply has led to the creation of various business strategies that use character. These business strategies are called ‘One Source Multi Use’ and is becoming a cultural business that is highly influential in earning profit not only to business but also to governments.
Therefore, this paper paid attention to the character’s utilization and value. This study focused particularly on the fact that character is being used as a useful measure in culture meaning, cultural symbols and culture diffusion. This study aimed to prove a topic that is “Every country has an icon that represents them. In the 20th century, their own cartoon contents started to occur in each country with advances in cartoons. The USA has <Superman>, Japan has <Astro Boy> and France has <Asterix>” and propose to develop ‘the Korean character’ with deduced similarities from above characters. In other words, this article would like to draw common attributes by analyzing the characters of <Superman>, <Astro Boy> and <Asterix> and suggest developing a culture character which represents Korea by applying the common attributes to original Korean character. The process and the conclusion of this study are as follows.
First of all, this paper examined character's significance as culture contents, cultural industry, OSMU in theoretical background. The character start with an original media and the originals exist in various media contents like cartoons, animations, movies, games and so on. The three countries’ characters which were studied as native cultural symbols showed that they started from the original comic series and spun off as animations, movies and others. This article also pointed out that the cartoon and animation have unrealistic feature and the converted movie from comic book is recreated with realism into expression of unreality.
Second, this study set an analytic frame to analyze the cultural expressive elements of the American <Superman>, the Japanese <Astro Boy> and the French <Asterix>. And this paper tried to take an in-depth approach to the analysis target based on description of the character’s birth background and analysis of narrative structure. The analytic frame drawn from above procedure proceeded through three stages of ‘Narrative Structure Analysis’, ‘Character Analysis’, ‘Utilization of OSMU and Influence Analysis’.
Third, the result of the analysis of three country characters showed that they all expressed and involved their own culture with narration and visibility. The most noticeable things were the reflection of their history, ideology, patriotism and ethnicity, also ultimately the exposure of their own superiority based on otherness. In addition, they simplified the aspect of delivering and receiving culture by planting the intentions in the character and narrative structure. The characters by joining comics, animations and movies represented a culture by organizing the narration and visibility. On the other side of that, it has some hidden intentions to reveal their own superiority like cultural imperialism and dominant ideology. The lists are ‘myth, hero, villain, costume, physical character, supernatural power, time period, social aspect, history, ideology, patriotism, ethnicity, unreality, realism and otherness. Overall, the characters as a visual culture can be interpreted as a culture only when accompanied by the original story. Namely, implicit cultural meanings in the character will dissipate or rarify, once the character is separated from the story since a character and a narrative is in a complementary relationship. So, the characters of fancy goods such as Hello Kitty tend to be acceptable over the assumed stateless tendency without wariness. But it’s important to do not carry any meanings of national culture as it takes on stateless tendency. On the other hand, the analysis subject of this paper, the three countries’ character that represents national culture, is spread by the story. Thus they can be explored in culture, including ethnicity, time period, social aspect, popular sentiment, history, ideology and their intention. Character surfaced expressions about culture more than narration, thus showing feature that allows it to be easily perceived by recipients. While the narration is not externalized, it was internalized and implied means and contents. In conclusion, a story and character is in a complementary relationship and a character without a story has lesser value as a cultural symbolic meaning.
Lastly, the analysis results by cultural symbolic characters of three countries are applied to the narrative aspect of existing Korean Character. Because the story is a foundation of a character and the character works to expose the purpose or content of foundational story by implication. Thus, the narrative structure was checked whether it meet the common attributes of analysis for characters of three countries, after analyzing the narrative structure that shows Korean culture and idea by the categories of cultural elements such as time period, social aspect, history, ideology and others. So, the results of the narrative construct about five characters on ‘Dangun’, ‘Yi Sun-shin’, ‘Jeon Woo-chi’, ‘Ahn Jung-geun’, ‘Guardians of the Power Mask (Gaksi Tal)’ were showing to coincident with the common attributes of analysis for characters of three countries. Therefore, the survey asked about the proven five characters that carries cultural meanings. The survey was done in order to develop ‘the cultural symbol character’ and asked people to choose a character that has possibility based on awareness. This paper extracted five characters which reflect heroic life story, analyzed narrative to grasp the possibility and considered Korean culture's reflection
and the possibility of success as a internal and external character to conclude the paper by suggesting the most freely expressible fake character, ‘Jeon Woo-Chi’’s visual expression element.
Thus in creating Korean character, this paper focused on cultural symbolism, suggesting a character that can break away from the existing purpose for education and kids, and spread abroad embracing all ages and sexes. By suggesting visual expression based on story, ‘Jeon Woo-Chi’ is judged as a character with sufficient possibility of development. Furthermore, this study hopes that Korean character escape the stateless tendency from the past, and become a character that is loved constantly
like ‘Superman’, ‘Astro Boy’ and ‘Asterix & Obelix’.