Cultural Hybridity, or Hyperreality in K-Pop Female Idols?

Abstract

This chapter critically reconsiders the current discourse of cultural hybridity in its effort to examine the most recent, global success of a local popular culture from a periphery nation, South Korea (hereafter Korea). Indicating the discourse is merely descriptive without retaining any explanatory merit, I propose an alternative perspective based on Baudrillard’s notion of hyperreality, while focusing on the political economy of hybridization in Korea’s recent popular culture boom along with its roles in socio-cultural reproduction. Examining how Korean popular music (K-pop) industry avidly mixes various cultural elements, I argue cultural hybridity in the music genre is not so much an autonomous, self-reflective cultural endeavor to express local, subjective sensibilities as an industrial means to maximize its profit. In its business practices of cultural assemblage, the industry further conditions the audience’s subjectivity in a way to extend and intensify consumerism. To be specific, I examine how and why the K-pop industry has created a hyper-real personality for K-pop female idols, to be specific Suzy of MissA who simultaneously sports contradictory characteristics, innocence and explicit sexuality. By doing, I redress a myopic, descriptive nature of the current scholarship on K-pop’s cultural hybridity by providing a critical and explanatory approach using Baudrillard’s notion of simulation and hyperreality.