정치적 메타포로서 뮤지컬: 「캣츠」에 대한 정치적 독해

초록

What is the relation of arts to politics? This article aims to show some degree of correlation between politics and arts at the same time through reviewing Cats the Musical(1981) made by Andrew Lloyd Webber, which has been appraised the one of the best musicals during the last 30 years. Distinctive characteristics of Cats would be summarized by a narrative structure of competition and salvation, touching and addictive melodies, and gigantic spectacles effectively combined by visual images and auditory impulses. It would be important that this narrative and artistic qualities of Cats have an isomorphic correlationship with the main political and social characteristics of the 1980s and 1990s in which Cats had been performed, especially in the US and UK, which are neoliberal worldview and policies, religionalization of politics based on the evil vs. good dichotomy, globalization working on the western universality, and the politics of spectacle in which images surpasses logical reasoning. In conclusion, it would be recognized that Cats shows as a political metaphor the neoliberal worldview of the 1980s and 1990s through the narrative structure and aesthetic expressions.

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