Your Bodies are Our Future: Vietnamese Men’s Engagement with Korean Television Dramas as a Technology of the Self

Abstract

ABSTRACT In the 21st century Korean television dramas (K-dramas) have featured prominently in the Vietnamese menu of mass cultural consumption as part of Hallyu – the global popularisation of South Korean cultural products. Grounded in Michel Foucault’s notion of ‘technologies of the self’, which conceptualises humans’ use of various means to achieve personal ambitions, this article discusses how Vietnamese working-class men use K-dramas in their constructions of self. It explores these informants’ ‘forward-learning’ reception, manifested in how they draw lessons from two prominent themes in K-dramas: the pursuit of dreams and representations of soft masculinities, marked by upper- and middle-class male characters’ metrosexual lifestyles. Through a psychosocial exploration of these informants’ viewing experiences, the article examines how they construct a modern self that fits their desire for a metropolitan lifestyle and upward mobility in light of neoliberalism in modernising Vietnam. The article contributes to Hallyu research, audience research and contemporary Vietnamese studies.