REPETITION IN KOREAN TELEVISION DRAMAS: AN ANALYSIS OF THE TEMPORALITY IN THE NARRATIVE STRUCTURES OF SIGNAL AND W: TWO WORLDS

Abstract

This thesis considers the growing complexity of Korean television dramas like Signal (TvN 2016) and W: Two Worlds (MBC 2016). Through the theoretical framework offered by Gilles Deleuze in his Difference and Repetition, I attempt an analysis of the use of repetition in the dramas and its implications on the temporality of character experiences and the dramas’ narrative structures. Deleuze’s argument for an affirmative difference and a repetition that is concerned with difference in itself will provide the philosophical lens through which I can study the temporality of the narratives. The difference found in the sameness of repetitions enforces a positivity that encourages speculative reciprocal determinations and interactions between the virtual and the actual potentialities of all events and characters involved. Hence, the fictional devices that create conditions for difference and repetition to occur suggest a movement towards demonstrating the ‘n-power’ of the repeatable in the new type of K-drama.