The purpose of this study is to investigate how a movie actualizes and fictionalizes pansori and how the process is formed by comparing the pansori environment of 1930~60’s as the background of Sopyeonje and the environment at the time. It thereby attempts to redefine the phase of Sopyonje as a pansori movie and to review the meaning of a ‘Korean thing’ that Sopyonje has pursued in the cultural environment of the early of the 1990’s.
Sopyonje realistically describes the pansori culture of 1930~60’s as the background of the movie through pansori singer Yoobong. The universal self-portrait of the contemporary pansori singers includes not only the life of Yoobong wandering from place to place but also various activities [(Changgeuk, group activities of Gukgeuk, singing activities at the birthday party and the restaurant, singing activities at the then peddler’s medicine-selling site commonly called “nylon theater (temporary theater)” that pansori singers do to bring in income. The reality of the pansori pushed out by western sounds, which did not enthrall the public realistically, shows the aspect of the gloomy pansori history after KoreanWar. The harmony between the pansori and the drum, emphasized through Yoobong’s lines and movie scenes, and the background of pansaori are the aesthetic factors that are covered critically. Songhwa’s and Yoobong’s pansori learning processes and the poverty-stricken pansori singers’ life adversity do not reflect the reality of the movie made fictionally. They are the actual situation that every contemporary pansori singer may have experienced. Nevertheless, the movie Sopyonje excessively idealizes the aesthetics of pansori singers and pansori itself. Yoobong, newly born through the movie Sopyonje, is described as an artist pursuing only the pansori, not being swayed by reality and capital. Pansori is the world that such an artist as him pursues, and ‘teuk-eum’ through pansori is expressed as an ultimate value that one should obtain no matter how he/she sacrifices. It is only through the pansori as an art that Yoobong, Songhwa, and Dongho all understand each other centering around ‘han’ and that they overcome it. Yoobong’s behavior to blind Songhwa to cultivate her ‘han’ as the final stage for teuk-eum’ and the narrative between Songhwa and Donghwa finally breaking up without any words even though they missed each other to keep ‘han’ extremely consecrate pansori as an art.
The reality and idea of Sopyonje are obtained through playwrighter KimMyung-gon and the cultural reality of pansori since 1970’s. Kim, Myung-gon is a professional pansori singer, who has himself learned the pansori for 10 years, and a scenario writer and a director. He is also a writer who has published Gandaeyeoljeon(1988) in his effort after meeting a number of pansori masters and well-known pansori singers. Yoobong that he created in the movie is an aggregator of the well-known pansori singers that he met and himself. Much of reality of Sopyonje has been obtained by him as a professional pansori singer. Meanwhile, the idealization of Sopyonje has been done in the process of accepting the end of the novel and defining it as an art as pansori became an intangible cultural heritage in 1964. Pansori ironically became the tradition to be kept and informed to be prevent from disappearing and at the same time an unique art that should not be damaged carelessly. Well-known pansori singers designated as a cultural heritage though their dark days and regarded a pansori singer focuses on the pansori’ alone as ideal and did not want the pansori to lightly get along with ‘pansori sound.’ KimMyung-gon, who wanted to faithfully express his experience as a pansori singer and the look of various pansori singers’ life, summoned the sound that goes beyond ‘han’ pursued by Lee Cheong-joon into ’pansori, an art pursuing absolute aesthetics.
Interestingly, the cultural environment in the early of 1990’s was more explosively cheered on pansori as an art. A Korean traditional thing in the era of globalization became a national pride to people and an urgently-needed slogan for them to establish their identity. However, a ‘Korea traditional thing’ in the early 1990’s had a more axiological and moral meaning. It also meant a solution under an influence of the new generation-orange culture, which is decadent and pleasure-oriented and puts an emphasis on one- time events only in the opposite direction of the current of the times when one gradually becomes to be faithful to materials and capital, as the consumption-oriented society is deepened.
‘Tradition’ did not simply mean a ‘Korean traditional thing’ alone. It had internally a more pure, simple, permanent, and moral implication. Pansori realized the meaning of a ‘Korean traditional thing’ more clearly in terms of values as an art beyond the ‘han’ and sorrow of all the characters, including Yoobong who pursues the finished art world only, Songhwa who follows pansori, not money and a fame as a well-known pansori singer, and Dongho who does not forget his father and elder sister and runs after their trace even after leaving because of the poverty he suffered. Pansori as a vanishing art world was a sacred tradition to keep.