Men try to act freely through metamorphosis beyond the limited world. Metamorphosis has been used as an important motive in animations as it renews the recognition of the beings that men has dreamed in terms of their imagination. Transformational char...
Men try to act freely through metamorphosis beyond the limited world. Metamorphosis has been used as an important motive in animations as it renews the recognition of the beings that men has dreamed in terms of their imagination. Transformational characters in animations solve problems at stake or overcome limitations by transforming themselves into diverse figures including gods, humans, and natural things.
There is a critical moment in the course of metamorphosis whether its size is big or small. That is to say, one can achieve the desire for metamorphosis if he/she overcomes some limitations by going through a rite of passage. The ‘rite of passage’is a rite in which an individual carries out at the momentum in his/her life through which he/she must necessarily goes. It is based on the principle of creation and destruction for being in a novel state. The transformational characters in animations are changed into or grown up to other beings as they have gone through a death of the rite of passage. Such a process, as one through which those animation characters with the motive of metamorphosis, is related to the rite of passage.
Thus, this thesis is primarily aimed at examining forms of the characters’metamorphosis and systems and types of metamorphosis along with them. And, this thesis takes it as its secondary aim to look at the course and expressive features of rites of passage for the metamorphosis of animation characters, and to throw light on the possibility of the utility of the rite of passage in expression.
As for previous studies, we have reviewed those that discuss about metamorphosis and introduce the concept of the rite of passage. Before proceeding, we have investigated the relationship between folk tales and animations and their characteristics, and examined the concept, system, and types of the metamorphosis of characters that constitute the motive of metamorphosis which has been accommodated by animations. Also, based on van Gennep’s theory of the rite of passage, we have summarized the definition of the rite of passage and its course consisting of separation, transfer, and integration. And, based on Eliade’s theory of the sacred and the profane, we have examined the features of time and space where the process of the rite of passage occurs. Distinguishing between previous situations as the profane and situations different from previous ones as the sacred, Eliade has suggested that a situation can be included into the category of non-routineness from that of routineness in terms of unique experiences.
On the basis of the classification of metamorphosis and the understanding of the rite of passage considered earlier, we have analyzed the rites of passage held in the courses of characters’metamorphosis. The object of this study includes 10 pieces of animation with folk tales as materials because we can clearly grasp situations before and after metamorphosis as they specifically reveal the change of external shapes of subjects.
Consequently, the form of metamorphosis in accordance with subjects of metamorphosis in the animations varies through the analysis of them as they are based on the cultural mode and world view of the ethnicity. As a result of putting the course of the subjects of tmetamorphosis into van Gennep’s structure of the rite of passage on the basis of the diversity of metamorphosis, we can find out that it consists of a deep structure with three steps, separation-transfer-integration. As for the features of time and space for metamorphosis, the space of saints is a space where metamorphosis is done and saints appear, and which is related to another space that is seen in the structure of the rite of passage, while the time of metamorphosis is the time of creation—i.e. the transcendental time—which goes beyond the mundane time.
As such, the visual expression of the rite of passage is associated with the expressive characteristics of metamorphosis, and the primitive thoughts internal to metamorphosis can be reversely inferred to find its place as the motive of metamorphosis in folk tales and film arts. In metamorphosis, the rite of passage has a function in renewing the relationship between world and ego and entering them into specific places.
I hope with this study that the classification of metamorphosis as well as the discussion about the expression of the rite of passage in the course of the metamorphosis of characters can serve as a ground for the foundation of competitiveness in limitless competition with animations appearing in the digital culture.