판타지 학원물에 나타난 ‘청소년 능력주의’ 연구 –2020년대 한국 OTT 오리지널 드라마를 중심으로-

Abstract

This paper analyzes fantasy school dramas among the original Korean OTT dramas in the 2020s that deal with adolescents' entrance exams, competition, survival, and struggles. Exploring the “youth meritocracy” in these dramas. Originally, the meritocracy was considered the opposite of aristocracy, affirming that intelligence and hard work are the forces that create class mobility. However, over time, it has transformed into a meritocracy based on education and exams. Especially in Korea, it reinforces the obsession with prestigious universities and eventually becomes a way to justify endless competition and winner-takes-all thinking. However, in fantasy school dramas, young people don't just accept the distorted meritocracy as it is; they shape their own lives by exhibiting a variety of attitudes toward the meritocracy in schools which have become battlegrounds for life and death. Chapter 2 examines "High Cookie" a film about high school seniors at a prestigious school who are willing to use drugs to get to the top of the class, while Chapter 3 analyzes "After-School War Activities" a film about high school students who join the military as student soldiers to earn extra credit for the SAT and their unstable inner lives. Chapter 4 examines "All of Are Dead" explores the implications of teenagers choosing cooperation and solidarity over competition, albeit temporarily, in a zombie apocalypse. Chapter 5 focuses on the drama "Superior Shaman Gadusim" to examine the self-affirmation of adolescents who voluntarily sacrifice themselves to save their friends. In doing so, I argue that these dramas expose the absurdity of Korean society and youth meritocracy, but also reveal that they talk about the values that we need to recover beyond meritocracy, such as self-affirmation, friendship and love, cooperation and solidarity.