Asian Pop Research Articles

Beyond Words

Beyond Words

Editorial introduction: East Asian pop culture in the era of China’s rise

Editorial introduction: East Asian pop culture in the era of China’s rise

Transnational Convergence of East Asian Pop Culture. Seok‐Kyeong Hong and Dal Yong Jin. Routledge, 2021. 248 pp. $128.00 hardcover.

The Journal of Popular CultureVolume 55, Issue 5 p. 1172-1174 Book Review Transnational Convergence of East Asian Pop Culture. Seok-Kyeong Hong and Dal Yong Jin. Routledge, 2021. 248 pp. $128.00 hardcover. Martin Lukanov, Martin LukanovSearch for more papers by this author Martin Lukanov, Martin LukanovSearch for more papers by this author First published: 21 January 2023 https://doi.org/10.1111/jpcu.13181Read the full textAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditWechat No abstract is available for this article. Volume55, Issue5October 2022Pages 1172-1174 RelatedInformation

Analysis of Bullet Chats in User-Generated Content Advertisement on Bilibili Website: The Success of Madoka Magica’s Mobile Game Promotion

This article explores the reasons behind the success of user-generated content (UGC) advertisements on Bilibili, which is one of China’s most significant video-sharing social media sites, with a core focus on East Asian pop culture. Additionally, Madoka Magica is a well-known Japanese animation about magical girls. There are two derivative games based on it. By using diffusion of innovation theory and content analysis method, this article takes UGC advertisements of Madoka Magica’s mobile games as windows to investigate how early adopters (influencers) motivate early majority adopters (their followers) to play the game. Moreover, this paper also addresses three types of bullet chats in this kind of video to further explore followers’ interaction with the influencers and reasons for the success of its marketing method. Bullet chats are a unique way to observe target consumers’ reaction to the advertisements. The author found that word-of-mouth marketing, the right audience and influential people are important factors for the success of UGC advertising. Besides, this marketing strategy is not limited to the marketing of mobile game advertisements, but can also be used for the marketing of other products. However, the prerequisite for this marketing method to be effective is that the advertised product or service has good quality

The Korean wave in Indonesia: from Asian pop culture to Korean pop culture

The Korean wave in Indonesia: from Asian pop culture to Korean pop culture

Bullet chats in China: Bilibili, language, and interaction

Bullet chats have grown in popularity in East Asia since 2006, when the Japanese animation website Niconico originated overlaying flying texts on video displays and synchronizing them to the video timeline. This bullet chat function has now gained popularity on Bilibili, a popular Chinese video-sharing social media site with a focus on East Asian pop culture. Bilibili users mix Chinese with foreign languages to create a cyberpidgin vocabulary, adding visual language to express their feelings in a mode that reflects the social norms learned from other East Asian fandoms. Analysis of Bilibili bullet chats provides insight into how social media and online platforms influence user interactions from both linguistic and visual perspectives.

Introduction: global queer fandoms of Asian media and celebrities

ABSTRACT In this introductory essay to the special issue “Global Queer Fandoms of Asian Media and Celebrities,” I reflect on key issues in existing scholarship and the fresh contributions and connections made by the commentary pieces. I also discuss the history of, current trends related to, and promising research directions for global queer fan studies. I show that examinations of global queer fandom require an urgent recentering of twenty-first-century Asian media and pop culture. By doing so, I propose the concept of a “globalist queer discourse,” which highlights both the norm-disrupting power of globally networked affective communities formed by gender, sexual, ethnic, and geocultural-linguistic minorities and the queer potential and problems of Asian media and celebrity industries during a drastically changing time of globalization and digitization.

The Perfect Man: The Ideal Imaginary Beauty of K-pop Idols for Chilean Fans

This paper aims to determine why Chilean fans of K-pop enjoy the incompatible aesthetics of K-pop idols. It will analyze the variation of the ideal of beauty according to socioeconomic level in Chile and fans’ perception of the beauty canons of K-pop. Hypothesizing that the relationship between race (rather skin color) and class in Chile affects K-pop consumption, this study will delve into why the canon of beauty attracts Chilean fans, despite the contrast that exists with the Chilean canon of male beauty. Latin American culture is constituted by sexual roles marked and determined by gender (Cristian Valenzuela 2015); these roles perpetuate male superiority based on the figure of the male. Specifically, the hegemonic masculinity present in the region stands out for having such characteristics as strength, rationality, seriousness, domination, heterosexuality, and sexual activity. Asians are often called Chino, and K-pop fans are considered strange. Though Chileans tend to conflate all Asian pop cultures, they are particularly suspicious of the sexual identity of K-pop fans. Based on a qualitative analysis of semi-structured interviews with sixteen upper-class and twenty middle-lower-class Chileans, this paper investigates how Chilean K-pop fans consume and negotiate with the aesthetics of K-pop in a conservative, European-oriented, oligarchic society.

Transnational Koreans in Asian Pop Culture in the Pre-Korean Wave Era

Transnational Koreans in Asian Pop Culture in the Pre-Korean Wave Era

〈꽃보다 남자〉를 통해 본 동아시아 대중문화의 허와 실

〈꽃보다 남자〉를 통해 본 동아시아 대중문화의 허와 실

East Asian pop music idol production and the emergence of data fandom in China

This article traces the formation of popular music idol industries in China and the emergence of data fandom. It charts the growth of digital platforms and historicizes the commercial and geopolitical itinerations linking cultural production in Japan, South Korea, and China. It locates data fandom as an integral part of the popular music industries reconfigured by digital social media platforms; a structural change from the production-to-consumption ‘supply chain’ model of the recording era towards emergent circuits of content that integrate industries and audiences. Data fans understand how their online activities are tracked, and adopt individual and collective strategies to influence metric and semantic information reported on digital platforms and social media. This article analyses how the practices of data fans impact upon charts, media and content traffic, illustrating how this activity benefits the idols they are following, and enhances a fan’s sense of achievement and agency.

Investigating film-induced tourism potential: The influence of Korean TV dramas on Hong Kong young adults

ABSTRACTMore and more tourism destinations have begun to utilize the increasing influence of Asian pop entertainment media, in an attempt to diversify their products and tourists’ experiences. This paper investigates Korean TV dramas as the determinant of film-induced tourism using a survey of a sample of Hong Kong young adults (n = 220). The study confirms a moderate correlation between the characteristics of Korean TV drama and the behavioral intention to travel to these film destinations. The results show a moderate level of interest and a small potential market among the respondents only, which is not sufficiently strong according to the relatively low ratings, and the respondents show less inclination to realize their motivations to be a “travel action.” Two motivational factors are identified, namely inner conception and outer attributes, to mobilize the respondents to film-induced travel. Specifically, the respondents consider character fantasy, relaxation and romance, and vicarious experience as the strongest determinants in inducing more travel to film destinations in Korea. More respondents perceive themselves to be general or serendipitous film tourists, who regard filming site visitation to only constitute one part of their entire trip’s activities and travel experiences, and novelty and prestige as the main motivators. A relatively small group of specific film tourists focus on vicarious experiences, along with the romantic feelings of film characters and scenes. These results provide film destination planners and marketers with useful information about product and experience diversification, as well as an opportunity for market segmentation.

Screen Connections between Malaysia, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and China

To date Malaysia has occupied a peripheral position in studies of Chinese cinemas and East Asian pop culture, often overlooked in favor of the more productive centers in Hong Kong, Taiwan, and increasingly China. By engaging with the field of Chinese transnationalism as developed by Aihwa Ong and others, this paper reconsiders Malaysia’s place in the broader Chinese media landscape and the role of Chinese Malaysians as agents driving Malaysia’s engagement with Taiwan, Hong Kong, and China. Focusing on Malaysia, this paper explores Malaysia’s screen connections to China through the two vectors of Malaysian migration and Chinese co-productions entering Malaysia. Increasingly, Malaysian creative workers who are already quite mobile are moving in increasing numbers to Mainland China and working on Chinese entertainment projects. Primarily, they take on intermediary roles within China’s growing entertainment industries which need cosmopolitan, multi-lingual creative labor as it increasingly globalizes and seeks foreign partners. Conversely, as China’s industry expands outwards, it seeks co-production partners and locations and has found Malaysia to be conducive. In outlining this new screen industry relationship, this paper suggests cultural and economic implications and futures for Chinese cinemas in Southeast Asia and the role of Malaysia’s ethnic Chinese population.

Chinese Dream, Cool Japan, and the Korean Wave: “Gangnam Style” and the Soft Power of East Asian Countries among Young Adults in the US Heartland

The present study examined the “soft” appeal of three East Asian countries rated by young adult Americans in their plain words, specifically young Americans’ impressions of East Asia in link to salient East Asian pop cultural products and brands (e.g., Gangnam Style [in Korean: 강남스타일] rocked the world in 2012). Two hundred and fourteen US students completed the survey in spring 2013. The respondents all in all had a difficulty in telling one East Asian country’s product from the others’. Of the countries scrutinized in the present study, a majority of young Americans held neutral attitudes toward China and Japan but negative attitudes toward South Korea. A sizable number of young Americans knew a few Japanese-turned-global, pop cultural brands but mistakenly believed they were Made in China, although they could not recognize Chinese product names and brands. Among single pop cultural products, Gangnam Style was most salient in young Americans’ memory. Finally, pop culture-induced soft power appeals were somewhat linked to the amount of knowledge the respondents believed they had about a certain country as well as the degree of their liking of the country. Still, the present study indicated that a country’s soft power is not entirely independent of her hard power. The theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed.

East Asian pop culture and the trajectory of Asian consumption

ABSTRACTThis article focuses on Chua Beng Huat’s work on the East Asian pop culture that became more prominent in East and Southeast Asia from the 1990s, when the circulation of multilingual and multi-format pop culture started to exceed linguistic, ethnic and national boundaries. It argues that Chua’s work indicates that the pop-cultural production and innovation that support the globalisation and regionalisation processes in East Asia need not be national in origin but can hail from different national origins – and this despite the existing political realities of the region and its history of political fractures. Chua Beng Huat cautions, though, that the national popular can also be marshalled to defeat the border-crossing potential of an inter-Asian pop culture. What is the “Asia” imagined or being represented in such cultural production? Chua’s work is also distinctive in that it deals with the political and economic conditions that underpin mainstream pop consumption as a socio-cultural phenomenon, instead of examining consumption as identity politics. The article concludes by noting the significance that Chua as an institutional builder has played in enabling the study of East Asian pop culture in the region.

Nissim Otmazgin and Eyal Ben-Ari. Popular Culture Co-productions and Collaborations in East and Southeast Asia. Singapore and Kyoto: NUS Press in association with Kyoto University Press, 2013, x+276p.

Popular Culture Co-productions and Collaborations in East and Southeast Asia Nissim Otmazgin and Eyal Ben-Ari Singapore and Kyoto: NUS Press in association with Kyoto University Press, 2013, x+276p.The recent growth of Asian media markets coincides with emergence of an academic area which can be labelled as (inter-)Asian media and cultural studies. English-language academic publications such as Trajectories: Inter-Asian Cultural Studies (Chen 1998) and Recentering Globalization: Pop- ular Culture and Japanese Transnationalism (Iwabuchi 2002) may be given credit for launching this new academic field. Its further development was subsequently enabled by publication of a string of academic volumes, including Rogue Flows: Trans-Asian Cultural Traffic (Iwabuchi et al. 2004), Asian Media Studies (Erni and Chua 2005), and East Asian Pop Culture: Analyzing Korean Wave (Chua and Iwabuchi 2008), among many others.The publication of Popular Culture Co-productions and Collaborations in East and Southeast Asia constitutes an interesting contribution to this rapidly emerging field. In particular, this new edited volume distinguishes itself from previous titles in its focus on cultural production. While other volumes predominantly focus on international consumption and reception of media and cultural texts across Asian countries, this volume casts light on international dimensions of produc- tion. In this way, it extends primary thesis of field-namely, interconnectedness of media and cultural experiences in Asian societies-to realm of production, which is entwined with processes of transnational creation and construction, not only of cultural products but also of social values.Yoshiko Nakano's chapter in this volume is emblematic of such a perspective. It draws upon historical examples which reveal contributions made by other Asian personnel (Hong Kong and Thai) to localization (further development) of Japanese rice cookers-often recognized as a quintessential made-in-Japan electric product in Asia. Shin Hyunjoon's chapter elaborates how K-pop been developed in line with different agents' contingent strategies designed to infiltrate into different Asian markets. As a result, according to Shin, K- in K-pop has become more than abbreviation of 'Korean' (p. 146) and phenomenon indicates a trans-Asian version of pop cosmopolitanism (p. 147). Doobo Shim's chapter similarly associates recent develop- ment of Korean film industry with changing environment of Asian media industries and international cultural flows in region.The extension in scope of regional approach is also one of book's strengths. In com- mon with other volumes, it includes chapters which highlight roles of Japan, South Korea, and Hong Kong as main cultural producers in Asian region. However, such an emphasis is comple- mented by chapters covering cultural production (in connection with outer world) in Phil- ippines, Indonesia, and China. Rolando B. Tolentino's chapter presents a historical overview of international export and co-production of Philippine media texts. Abidin Kusno's chapter highlights appropriation of cultural forms and genres-Hong Kong comics and kung fu nov- els-in articulation and assertion of Chinese ethnicity in Indonesia under repressive Suharto regime.The volume does not avoid confronting colonial histories and Cold War era which shaped process of regional formation of Asia. In his chapter, Nissim Otmazgin underlines middle class-centered economic and consumerist characteristic of regionalization in Asia, in contrast with the slow progress in formation of regional political institutions (pp. …

ANNÄHERUNG DURCH POP

Since the reform and open policy was carried out in late 1970s, transnational cultural forms and products have constituted the most diverse and dynamic area of Chinese popular culture. This article offers an overview of contemporary Chinese reception of Japanese, Korean, and American popular cultures in an attempt to give readers a glimpse of the constantly evolving popular cultural trends, sensibilities, and products in China, as well as the underlying interplay between state regulation, corporate push, and grassroots agency. In addition to sketching a general pattern of reception and diffusion of cultural imports in China, the paper also reveals the potential conflict in values between East Asian pop culture and Western pop culture, and highlights the significance of Chinese popular culture as the site of an emerging global cultural commons. ---------- URN: urn:nbn:de:hbz:6:3-20140314174

Structure, Audience and Soft Power in East Asian Pop Culture

Structure, Audience and Soft Power in East Asian Pop Culture

DESPERATELY SEEKING EAST ASIA AMIDST THE POPULARITY OF SOUTH KOREAN POP CULTURE IN ASIA

This study questions the term ‘East Asia’ by investigating its usage in South Korean mass media and academic discourse about the Korean Wave and by reframing the Korean Wave as a source of new definitions of the cultural geography of East Asia and East Asian sensibilities instead of its current designations as either an empty signifier or a profitable market. Reframing the Korean Wave as a set of seminal iterations of East Asian pop culture includes its multiplicity and historicity, which enables the delineation of the cultural geography of East Asia as neither a unilateral nor fixed topography but rather something that is constantly re-imagined via pan-Asian pop cultures, materialized through actual encounters, and re-invented through shared historic pasts and modernizing desires. Examining East Asian pop culture also helps to illuminate current structures of feeling in East Asia (‘East Asian sensibilities’). The study concludes with suggestions for future collaborative works and theoretical endeavors, which are imperative for the establishment of East Asian pop culture as an object of analysis.

Engendering an East Asia pop culture research community

One of the offshoots of my work with the Inter‐Asia Cultural Studies project, and this journal in particular, is the development of interest in the field of East Asian Pop Culture. ‘Pop’ is used he...