Suk-Young Kim

K-Pop Live

Fans, Idols, and Multimedia Performance

• Gebundenes Buch

Produktbeschreibung

Suk-Young Kim is Professor of Critical Studies and the Director of the Center for Performance Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles. She is also the author of the award-winning book DMZ Crossing: Performing Emotional Citizenship Along the Korean Border (2014). Her research and commentary have been featured on CNN and NPR.

Produktdetails

• Verlag: Stanford University Press
• Seitenzahl: 288
• Erscheinungstermin: 7. August 2018
• Englisch
• Abmessung: 231mm x 150mm x 25mm
• Gewicht: 567g
• ISBN-13: 9781503605039
• ISBN-10: 1503605035
• Artikelnr.: 48860149

Autorenporträt

Suk-Young Kim is Professor of Critical Studies and the Director of the Center for Performance Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles. She is also the author of the award-winning book DMZ Crossing: Performing Emotional Citizenship Along the Korean Border (2014). Her research and commentary have been featured on CNN and NPR.

Inhaltsangabe

Contents and Abstracts
1Historicizing K-pop
chapter abstract
Chapter 1 explores K-pop as an ideological and technological playing field
where the forces of a rapidly changing media environment, a neoliberal
marketplace, and the consequent desires to make and break various social
networks interact. As K-pop has become increasingly visible around the
world in the past ten years or so, the South Korean government has been
trying to forge a meaningful partnership with the K-pop industry. By
situating such a move in its historical trajectory, this chapter shows
K-pop as a dynamic force that has been shaped equally by top-down and
bottom-up movements, namely industry-led paradigm shifts in media
technology and users' creative ways of employing that technology.
2K-pop from Live Television to Social Media
chapter abstract
Chapter 2 presents the unique production and consumption modes of K-pop in
relation to the medium of television. The history of television reveals
this platform's inherent link to the format of live theater, especially the
live broadcasting model. Two examples of K-pop-related TV shows explored in
this chapter-the top-of-the-chart show Music Core and an English-language
live chat show, After School Club-encourage real-time participation by
viewers that opens a new dimension of TV liveness in the digital era.
Defining this dimension as simultaneous production and consumption of music
rather than improvised and unrehearsed performance, this chapter challenges
the purist notion of "live." The two case studies present contrapuntal
visions of how domestic and foreign fans exercise ownership over K-pop by
using various digital platforms and show how TV channels optimize their
visibility by transposing TV media content onto social networks.
3Simulating Liveness in K-pop Music Videos
chapter abstract
Chapter 3 examines K-pop music videos as a central medium articulating the
dynamics between liveness and mediatization. Music videos' primary
platforms, YouTube and Vevo, generally replay recorded performances and are
not conceived as primary venues for live performances. At most, music
videos can only simulate the vestiges of live performances that have
already happened. A comparative analysis of two examples of K-pop music
videos-"Twinkle" by TaeTiSeo, a subunit of the representative K-pop girl
group Girls' Generation, and "Who You?" by G-Dragon, leader of the boy band
BIGBANG-shows the tremendous investment in the notion of live performance
in K-pop as a way of forging the genre's artistic authenticity. Also
illuminated is the significance of invoking various performing arts
traditions, such as revues, Broadway-style musicals, Hollywood musicals,
and performance art, to make K-pop music videos more approachable for a
global audience.
4Hologram Stars Greet Live Audiences
chapter abstract
Chapter 4 explores the emerging interface between digital technology and
live performances. Two key players in the K-pop industry, YG Entertainment
and SM Entertainment, have invested heavily in creating infinitely
reproducible and exportable K-pop shows featuring their top stars in
holographic form. With a subsidy from and in partnership with the South
Korean Ministry of Science, ICT (Information and Communications
Technology), and Future Planning (Mirae changjo gwahakpu), a government
unit deeply committed to Korea's national branding campaign, both companies
have actively sought opportunities to present their hologram works in
foreign markets that the actual stars have difficulty reaching through
traditional live tours. By comparing YG Entertainment's hologram concert
with SM Entertainment's hologram musical, the chapter investigates how live
performance can be realized without live performers but only with live
spectators.
5Live K-pop Concerts and Their Digital Doubles
chapter abstract
Chapter 5 looks into live K-pop tours overseas, an increasingly common mode
of global circulation. While the case studies in this chapter exhibit the
most conventional and purest notion of liveness (copresence of performer
and spectator), they nonetheless provide examples of how live concerts
cannot exist without digitally augmented audiovisual effects. The chapter
also explores how live K-pop tours are promoted by digital campaigns
carried out on social media and in online music stores, making it
impossible to separate the live event from its digital counterpart. By
comparing and contrasting BIGBANG's Made tour in seventy cities across four
continents with CJ Entertainment and Music's KCON, a multiday K-pop
festival and convention hosted in Europe, Japan, the Middle East, and the
United States, I analyze these events' different strategies to attract
Korean and global audiences while incidentally participating in a campaign
to enhance the nation's soft power.
Conclusion
chapter abstract
By showcasing my ethnographic fieldwork at KCON Paris 2016, the Conclusion
reiterates how K-pop is a kaleidoscopic cultural scene whose ongoing
popularity is sustained not only by the calculating forces of neoliberalism
but also by the sincere desire to build a global community through shared
interest. It also points to the affective power of K-pop that transcends
the genre's commercialization.
Introduction
chapter abstract
The introduction presents multifaceted definitions of K-pop and raises the
question of why it is significant to investigate the liveness of K-pop. As
a multimedia performance, K-pop's authentic liveness emanates not only from
the performance of live music but also from the impactful bodily
presentation of its performers. The notion of liveness is explored from
technological, ideological, and affective angles with an eye toward
bringing out the uniquely Korean dimension of liveness-heung. Liveness here
is not limited to real-time broadcasting or the copresence of performers
and spectators; more profoundly, it is about the authentic rapport built
around various actors involved in the making of the K-pop scene.