Performing Ero Guro: Erotic-Grotesque Bodies and Normativity in Post-WWII Japanese and Korean Theatre

<p>This dissertation investigates how portrayals of erotic and grotesque bodies in post-WWII Japanese and Korean theatre responded to each nation’s image of the ideal body. Those ideal bodily images were the product of haunting modernity as well as of the following historical circumstances after Japan’s loss in WWII—the Treaty of Mutual Cooperation and Security between the U.S. and Japan and the attendant<em> </em>protests (Japan) as well as the aftermath of Japanese colonial rule, the Korean war, and Korea’s military dictatorships. Instead of uncovering the historical legacy of the early 20^th-century cultural trend <em>Ero Guro Nansensu </em>(Erotic, Grotesque, Nonsense)<em> </em>during these postwar periods, this dissertation aims to adopt <em>ero guro </em>as a theoretical framework to understand the process by which nonnormative bodies were jettisoned from the limits of the ideal national body to create the very boundary that would ensure the population’s complicity in socio-economic progress, i.e., modernization.</p> <p>Instead of <em>ero guro </em>as a fixed, static, and temporary trend to be consumed in nostalgia, this dissertation posits the concept of <em>performing ero guro </em>to explore how artists invite erotic and grotesque bodies in postwar theatrical performances to navigate their positions, interests, fears, concerns, and identities within the dominant systems of power to which they belong. In other words, by recreating their own vision of <em>ero guro </em>bodies on and off stage, these artists redefine eroticism and grotesqueness—which the <em>ero guro </em>system of their time stigmatized and marginalized—and project the transgressive values upon those bodies in their work. In this sense, this dissertation argues that, by adopting the tactics behind the <em>ero guro </em>system, these artists recontextualize the <em>ero guro </em>body for their own political purposes, inviting the audience into a complicated conversation regarding the matrix of normativity that captures the nation’s bodies in a binary system for its delusional promise—the linear progress of the nation.</p>

Name thesis:degree_name

Doctor of Philosophy

Level thesis:degree_level

Doctoral

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Theatre and Performance

Grantor

The Graduate School and University Center of The City University of New York

Year dc:date.available

2024

Author dc:creator

• Shin, Dohyun

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Peter Eckersall

Committee members dc:contributor.committeemember

• Richard Calichman
• Kandice Chuh
• Miseong Woo

• Theatre and Performance Studies
• Terayama Shūji
• Kishida Rio
• Angura Theatre
• Korean Experimental Art
• Korean Musical
• Gyeongseong

Repository record dc:identifier

https://academicworks.cuny.edu/gc_etds/5849

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:academicworks.cuny.edu:gc_etds-6914