From factory girls to K-pop idol girls : cultural politics of developmentalism, patriarchy, and neoliberalism in South Korea's popular music industry / Gooyong Kim.
The 90s, the Most Stunning Days of Our Lives: Cultural Politics of Retro K-pop Music, Nostalgia, and Positive Psychology in Contemporary Korea. K-pop Idol Girl Groups as Cultural Genre of Neoliberalism: Patriarchy, Developmentalism, and Structure of Feeling/ Experience in K-pop -- Between Hybridity and Hegemony in K-Pop’s Global Popularity: A Case of Girls’ Generation’s American Debut -- Genealogy and Affective Economy of K-pop Female Idols: From Cute and Innocent to Ambiguous Femininity, to Explicit Sexualization -- Elusive Subjectivity of K-pop Female Idols: Split-personality, Narcissism, and Neo-Confucian Body Techniques in Suzy of MissA -- Resilience, Positive Psychology, and Subjectivity in K-pop Female Idols: Evolution of Girls’ Generation from "Into the New World" (2007) to "All Night" (2017) -- The 90s, the Most Stunning Days of Our Lives: Cultural Politics of Retro K-pop Music, Nostalgia, and Positive Psychology in Contemporary Korea.
Summary:
Focusing on female idols' proliferation in the South Korean popular music (K-pop) industry since the late 1990s, Gooyong Kim critically analyzes structural conditions of possibilities in contemporary popular music from production to consumption. Kim contextualizes the success of K-pop within Korea's development trajectories, scrutinizing how a formula of developments from the country' rapid industrial modernization (1960s-1980s) was updated and re-applied in the K-pop industry when the state had to implement a series of neoliberal reformations mandated by the IMF. To that end, applying Michel Foucault's discussion on governmentality, a biopolitical dimension of neoliberalism, Kim argues how the regime of free market capitalism updates and reproduces itself by 1) forming a strategic alliance of interests with the state, and 2) using popular culture to facilitate individuals' subjectification and subjectivation processes to become neoliberal agents. As to an importance of K-pop female idols, Kim indicates a sustained utility/legacy of the nation's century-long patriarchy in a neoliberal development agenda. Young female talents have been mobilized and deployed in the neoliberal culture industry in a similar way to how un-wed, obedient female workers were exploited and disposed on the sweatshop factory floors to sustain the state's export-oriented, labor-intensive manufacturing industry policy during its rapid developmental stage decades ago.
Series:
For the record: Lexington studies in rock and popular music
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