Description

This presentation examines two recent Kdramas that fictionalize the Korean media and entertainment industries: Dream High (KBS, broadcast Jan-Feb 2011) and Answer Me 1997 (tvN, broadcast July-August 2012). My aim is to question the operation of metatextual, serial narrative television and the ways in which this kind of content highlights the relationship between public and commercial broadcasting, state and consumer culture, and media literacy and cultural citizenship. I examine the formal and narrative means by which the shows address concerns about the end of politics, generational divides, and youth disenfranchisement, while simultaneously shoring up the celebratory discourse of hallyu. My presentation thus analyzes the manner in which these dramas make visible the disjunctive consequences of the push to globalize as a national survival strategy, in the wake of the Asian financial crisis, and the incomplete transformation of state-controlled broadcast media into something like a mediatized public sphere.

Michelle Cho is a Korea Foundation Assistant Professor in East Asian Studies at McGill University. She is completing a book that analyzes South Korean genre cinemas in the “Sunshine Policy” decade, and her current research examines the relationship between popular culture and populism in South Korea with a focus on celebrity, fan labor, hallyu globalization, and media convergence. Forthcoming essays will appear in the Korean Popular Culture Reader (2014) and Cinema Journal.