White Canadian Simon and Martina Stawski's Eat Your Kimchi vlog complicates the interpret... more White Canadian Simon and Martina Stawski's Eat Your Kimchi vlog complicates the interpretation of YouTube fandom as counterhegemonic. Combining performance studies and media studies, we suggest "white-expat-fans" to explicate their racialized, spatialized and fannish negotiation and (dis)identification with Kpop. As fans, they identify with K-pop and subordinate themselves to its singers. As expatriates lived in South Korea and fulltime bloggers, they are responsive to local culture and financially rely on K-pop fans locally and globally. As whites, they parody, mock, and pathologize K-pop as a feminized Oriental Other and reclaim racial privilege, compensating their feeling of marginalization from spatial and fannish orientations.
ABSTRACT This article analyzes my six-year autoethnographic work in response to From Silence to P... more ABSTRACT This article analyzes my six-year autoethnographic work in response to From Silence to Power in Austin, TX from 2013 to 2019. Performed by survivors of sexual abuse, the performance externalized trauma, recognized time via repetition, re-contextualized their minded-bodies and transformed from silenced victims to survivors. Kinesthetic empathy moved me to work through my trauma as a co-performer. I have written performance reviews, given three conference presentations and performed an autoethnography Dancethnography in TX, NY, MD, PA, and CA. This project evolved from ethnography on others, to autoethnography and to reverse ethnography through which I witness (im)possibilities of dance in speaking trauma due to decorative virtuosity.
Focusing on K-pop male singers’ dance practice videos on YouTube and fans’ comments, Oh provides ... more Focusing on K-pop male singers’ dance practice videos on YouTube and fans’ comments, Oh provides a lively and insightful analysis on the intersection of female spectatorship and male sexuality. Examining the bodily labor of the male dancers and their harsh working conditions displayed in the videos, Oh explores why female viewers are drawn to these low-budget dance practice videos. Oh highlights the female desire that eroticizes sympathetically the physical and economic circumstances of the male dancers, which the author calls the Cinderella complex in reverse. The chapter guides readers on alternative ways of reading Asian masculinity and demystifying male sexuality in relation to issues of the body, class, and female spectatorship.
This article examines the practice of the Danish K-pop (Korean pop) cover dance crew CODE9 as an ... more This article examines the practice of the Danish K-pop (Korean pop) cover dance crew CODE9 as an example of the rapid cultural exchange on the Internet that reshapes the diffusion of dance styles and ideas. CODE9 demonstrates K-pop as a “migratory dance practice,” forming a transnational dancing community with modern technology at its center. By adapting and embodying K-pop, CODE9 creates a “Thirdspace” in between reality and fantasy, between being oneself and being a Korean idol. With CODE9, K-pop moves in and out of Denmark, through the practice of watching, learning, performing, and then circulating dance online.
Over several years, the YouTube channel Eat Your Kimchi, a White expatriate video log about South... more Over several years, the YouTube channel Eat Your Kimchi, a White expatriate video log about South Korea, generated a sizeable audience. In the videos, Martina and Simon Stawski draw upon discourses that empower their identities as a privileged group of cultural outsiders—valued and othered for their White difference. To benefit from their global advantage, they essentialize differences between the West/themselves and Korea/ns in order to emphasize White and Western superiority. As a consequence, they reject hybridity by both mocking Korea/ns as an exotic other and by consuming it as an exotic delight. Their strategies reflect colonial-era discourses seen in the travel logs of White “adventurers” that are transformed to the current social, global, and technological conjuncture.
Korean pop (hereinafter K-pop) singers have become viral in East Asia recently as part of the “Ko... more Korean pop (hereinafter K-pop) singers have become viral in East Asia recently as part of the “Korean Wave” or Hallyu. The term “Korean Wave” was coined in China to refer to the popularity of Korean drama in the 1990s and now refers to the regional popularity of Korean products such as drama, film, music, and fashion within Asia and visible in Western countries, including France, Canada, and United States. Currently, K-pop idols lead the global circulation of Korean pop culture, called “Second Wave,” which is often characterized as group performances driven by dance music and groomed by conglomerate music agents like S.M. Entertainment, YG Entertainment, and JYP Entertainment.1
Congress on Research in Dance Conference Proceedings, 2014
Drawing on theories from performance studies, dance studies, and critical race studies, this pape... more Drawing on theories from performance studies, dance studies, and critical race studies, this paper explores the ways in which Korean pop (K-pop)'s appropriation of hip-hop reveals a complex moment of global cultural flow. Western audience reception of K-pop is likely limited to framing K-pop either as a form of contemporary minstrelsy or a postcolonial mimicry, e.g., making fun of African American culture or a bad copy of American pop. This perspective, however, understands K-pop through the lens of American culture and only considers external signs of the performances. It fails to capture the local context in Korea, such as how and why the performers appropriate hip-hop, such as the process of embodiment and training process to learn hip-hop movement, rhythm, and styles, etc. By analyzing K-pop singer G-Dragon's (GD) music videos, this paper argues that Koreans' appropriation of American culture is neither minstrelsy nor postcolonial mimicry. K-pop's chameleonic rac...
This article analyzes my six-year autoethnographic work in response to From Silence to Power in A... more This article analyzes my six-year autoethnographic work in response to From Silence to Power in Austin, TX from 2013 to 2019. Performed by survivors of sexual abuse, the performance externalized trauma, recognized time via repetition, recontextualized their minded-bodies and transformed from silenced victims to survivors. Kinesthetic empathy moved me to work through my trauma as a co-performer. I have written performance reviews, given three conference presentations and performed an autoethnography Dancethnography in TX, NY, MD, PA, and CA. This project evolved from ethnography on others, to autoethnography and to reverse ethnography through which I witness (im)possibilities of dance in speaking trauma due to decorative virtuosity.
White Canadian Simon and Martina Stawski's Eat Your Kimchi vlog complicates the interpret... more White Canadian Simon and Martina Stawski's Eat Your Kimchi vlog complicates the interpretation of YouTube fandom as counterhegemonic. Combining performance studies and media studies, we suggest "white-expat-fans" to explicate their racialized, spatialized and fannish negotiation and (dis)identification with Kpop. As fans, they identify with K-pop and subordinate themselves to its singers. As expatriates lived in South Korea and fulltime bloggers, they are responsive to local culture and financially rely on K-pop fans locally and globally. As whites, they parody, mock, and pathologize K-pop as a feminized Oriental Other and reclaim racial privilege, compensating their feeling of marginalization from spatial and fannish orientations.
ABSTRACT This article analyzes my six-year autoethnographic work in response to From Silence to P... more ABSTRACT This article analyzes my six-year autoethnographic work in response to From Silence to Power in Austin, TX from 2013 to 2019. Performed by survivors of sexual abuse, the performance externalized trauma, recognized time via repetition, re-contextualized their minded-bodies and transformed from silenced victims to survivors. Kinesthetic empathy moved me to work through my trauma as a co-performer. I have written performance reviews, given three conference presentations and performed an autoethnography Dancethnography in TX, NY, MD, PA, and CA. This project evolved from ethnography on others, to autoethnography and to reverse ethnography through which I witness (im)possibilities of dance in speaking trauma due to decorative virtuosity.
Focusing on K-pop male singers’ dance practice videos on YouTube and fans’ comments, Oh provides ... more Focusing on K-pop male singers’ dance practice videos on YouTube and fans’ comments, Oh provides a lively and insightful analysis on the intersection of female spectatorship and male sexuality. Examining the bodily labor of the male dancers and their harsh working conditions displayed in the videos, Oh explores why female viewers are drawn to these low-budget dance practice videos. Oh highlights the female desire that eroticizes sympathetically the physical and economic circumstances of the male dancers, which the author calls the Cinderella complex in reverse. The chapter guides readers on alternative ways of reading Asian masculinity and demystifying male sexuality in relation to issues of the body, class, and female spectatorship.
This article examines the practice of the Danish K-pop (Korean pop) cover dance crew CODE9 as an ... more This article examines the practice of the Danish K-pop (Korean pop) cover dance crew CODE9 as an example of the rapid cultural exchange on the Internet that reshapes the diffusion of dance styles and ideas. CODE9 demonstrates K-pop as a “migratory dance practice,” forming a transnational dancing community with modern technology at its center. By adapting and embodying K-pop, CODE9 creates a “Thirdspace” in between reality and fantasy, between being oneself and being a Korean idol. With CODE9, K-pop moves in and out of Denmark, through the practice of watching, learning, performing, and then circulating dance online.
Over several years, the YouTube channel Eat Your Kimchi, a White expatriate video log about South... more Over several years, the YouTube channel Eat Your Kimchi, a White expatriate video log about South Korea, generated a sizeable audience. In the videos, Martina and Simon Stawski draw upon discourses that empower their identities as a privileged group of cultural outsiders—valued and othered for their White difference. To benefit from their global advantage, they essentialize differences between the West/themselves and Korea/ns in order to emphasize White and Western superiority. As a consequence, they reject hybridity by both mocking Korea/ns as an exotic other and by consuming it as an exotic delight. Their strategies reflect colonial-era discourses seen in the travel logs of White “adventurers” that are transformed to the current social, global, and technological conjuncture.
Korean pop (hereinafter K-pop) singers have become viral in East Asia recently as part of the “Ko... more Korean pop (hereinafter K-pop) singers have become viral in East Asia recently as part of the “Korean Wave” or Hallyu. The term “Korean Wave” was coined in China to refer to the popularity of Korean drama in the 1990s and now refers to the regional popularity of Korean products such as drama, film, music, and fashion within Asia and visible in Western countries, including France, Canada, and United States. Currently, K-pop idols lead the global circulation of Korean pop culture, called “Second Wave,” which is often characterized as group performances driven by dance music and groomed by conglomerate music agents like S.M. Entertainment, YG Entertainment, and JYP Entertainment.1
Congress on Research in Dance Conference Proceedings, 2014
Drawing on theories from performance studies, dance studies, and critical race studies, this pape... more Drawing on theories from performance studies, dance studies, and critical race studies, this paper explores the ways in which Korean pop (K-pop)'s appropriation of hip-hop reveals a complex moment of global cultural flow. Western audience reception of K-pop is likely limited to framing K-pop either as a form of contemporary minstrelsy or a postcolonial mimicry, e.g., making fun of African American culture or a bad copy of American pop. This perspective, however, understands K-pop through the lens of American culture and only considers external signs of the performances. It fails to capture the local context in Korea, such as how and why the performers appropriate hip-hop, such as the process of embodiment and training process to learn hip-hop movement, rhythm, and styles, etc. By analyzing K-pop singer G-Dragon's (GD) music videos, this paper argues that Koreans' appropriation of American culture is neither minstrelsy nor postcolonial mimicry. K-pop's chameleonic rac...
This article analyzes my six-year autoethnographic work in response to From Silence to Power in A... more This article analyzes my six-year autoethnographic work in response to From Silence to Power in Austin, TX from 2013 to 2019. Performed by survivors of sexual abuse, the performance externalized trauma, recognized time via repetition, recontextualized their minded-bodies and transformed from silenced victims to survivors. Kinesthetic empathy moved me to work through my trauma as a co-performer. I have written performance reviews, given three conference presentations and performed an autoethnography Dancethnography in TX, NY, MD, PA, and CA. This project evolved from ethnography on others, to autoethnography and to reverse ethnography through which I witness (im)possibilities of dance in speaking trauma due to decorative virtuosity.
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