Anjali Chauhan: The Creation of a Fandom

AnjaliChauhan

Korean wave, commonly known as Hallyu is the spread of Korean culture in the rest of the world. American political scientist, Joseph Nye (2009) interprets the Korean wave as “the growing popularity of all things Korean, from fashion and film to music and cuisine.” This spread of culture has also been attributed to the work of the government. In 1999 the South Korean government passed the ‘Basic Law for Promoting Cultural Industries’. This wave was initially limited only to the South East Asian region of the world. However, of late, one can see Korean music and drama entering even in the media consumption of the western countries. The second phase of this wave, also called Hallyu 2.0, has emerged with the improvements in the 21st century digital technologies and social media. In 2008, the South Korean government introduced the “creative content industry”, emphasising K-Pop and video games as important foreign exports.

In the first phase of its spread, Korean popular music and dramas got extremely popular in Taiwan. It began with the popularity of an idol group called CLON. That fact that Taiwanese couldn’t understand the lyrics was never a barrier as it was the ‘easy listening-danceable music’  that became popular and not the language. Secondly, it was cheaper to import Korean soap operas as compared to the Japanese or Hong Kong shows. They were also of a better quality.

Suddenly, Taiwan became the biggest importer of the Korean dramas, importing more than mainland China (Sang, 2010).

However, since Hallyu is a form of cultural exchange one also needs to look into the relationship that the two countries share. These two countries have been in a love-hate sort of a relationship throughout history. On one hand, they share some similar cultural background, on the other there is a rift. This rift has been created because in 1992 Korea broke off diplomatic relationships with Taiwan to have better relations with mainland China. Therefore, the question that one can now ask is why did Taiwan choose Korea?  One of the answers can be found in the masculinity that was projected by the Korean popular music at that time. It has been pointed out that performers who project exaggerated masculine and sexy attitudes are favoured in Taiwan. Korean music was also seen similarly by the Taiwanese. To them it seemed confident. Moreover, Taiwanese people were fascinated by South Korean nationalism as they believed nationalism is something they themselves needed.

Another country that was intensely impacted by the Korean wave was Japan. Again, Japan and South Korea’s relationships have not been cordial. South Korea was Japan’s colony for thirty five years and even now ethnic Koreans are discriminated against in Japan. On the top of all this, there is also a territorial conflict going on. Therefore, when in 2004, Korean soap opera Winter Sonata became popular in Japan, the media’s representation of the same phenomenon were very different. In both the countries media were promoting national narratives to serve their commercial interests. While in Japan, it was seen from an extremely gendered perspective, in Korea, gendered nature of it was completely ignored.

It has been shown by Hayashi Kaori and Eun Jeung Lee (2007) that the Japanese media, constructed an image of the audience that viewed the show. In doing so, they produced a ‘caricature of the female consumer’. Various articles were published in the news magazines, newspapers, and women’s magazines that cement the popularity of Winter Sonata, but that popularity was supposedly resting only on the “middle-aged female fans seeking male stars and gossip”. An audience hood of the soap opera was created and it was necessarily demeaning. However, in Korea the reception of Winter Sonata in Japan was seen in the light of nation’s pride. The fact that the phenomenon in Japan was led by women was not mentioned at all. Korea was fit into the discourse of economic nationalism, cultural nationalism, and “aspirations for making of an Asian community”. While the articles on the popularity of Winter Sonata were published mostly in the women’s magazine in Japan, In Korea they were in the the national dailies.

A similar sort of phenomenon is now being seen in the popularity of Bulletproof Boy Scouts, BTS an idol group from Korea. American music industry is not very open to the non western music, however BTS can be seen breaking that legacy. However, the rise of BTS is also being seen only in the context of the audience. The discourse is not around how talented they are but how popular they are and that popularity in turn rests on the young female fans. BTS fanbase which is called ARMY is considered as a group of “crazy”, “maniac”, “intense, “hysterical” fans (Varma, 2018). Just like in the early 2000s in Japan, the phenomenon of a rising popularity of something that is not traditional in a country, is seen from a gendered lens which is demeaning.

There is a popular perception of fandom that triggers the ‘othering’ of people who are considered fans (Kaori and Lee, 2007). They are then given a caricature and are stereotyped. Once the fandom is seen as the other, their activities are then considered as excessive and crass and is seen as deviant. All of this happens in a context like in the case of Taiwan the context is of nationalism; in America’s case it is racism.

References

Featured image credit

Published by AnjaliChauhan

Leave a comment