Imag(in)ing the post-national television fan: Counter-flows and hybrid ambivalence in Dramaworld

Korean–US hybridity and counter-flows

The concept of cultural hybridity first gained traction in the academy through the work of post-colonialist theorists who argued that colonized people used hybrid forms as a way to resist colonial domination (Bhabha, 1994; Mohanty, 1995). Rather than reading cultural production as ‘corrupted’ by colonial influences or as poor imitations of colonial models, they argued that the uptake of those forms made evident the contradictions of colonialism and could serve as a critique of colonial domination. Even as we might recognize the agency of colonized people, Halualani (2002) reminds us that the meaning of hybridity is never predetermined as either free of colonial domination or simply reproducing the ideology of the same. Indeed, Kraidy (2005) noted in his discussion of critical transculturalism that hybrid formations are unequally shaped by the West's institutional advantages and cultural imprint. Thus, we begin with the assumption that post-national television is necessarily hybrid and that what matters theoretically is the specific form that hybridity takes. The ways Dramaworld imagines its audience as hybrid provides insight into the changing relationship between Korean and US media.

In the Korean context of Japanese colonial domination and, later, in its neocolonial relation to the US, its media borrowed and hybridized media conventions (Klein, 2008). The nation's industrialization coincided with the creation of a modern media system that began as a hybrid formation (Joo, 2011; Jung, 2011), and these hybridizing tendencies have facilitated Korea's rise as a cultural exporter (Lee, 2004; Shim, 2006). Indeed, the various industries that make up Korea's cultural industries have become a major circuit in the global production of media, displacing Japanese popular culture as the leading East Asian cultural exporter (Jin and Yoon, 2017). Hybridizing familiar signs of the West, including storytelling conventions, the Korean Wave presents relatable difference (Shim, 2006). Its familiarity facilitates consumption, and its difference creates space to distinguish the nation's media for audiences. Although Korean media are more profoundly shaped by the West, especially the US (Jin and Ryoo, 2014), we argue the desiring gaze has weakened in relation to the nation's growing economic, geopolitical, and cultural power as it self-assuredly forges its own intra- and inter-regional flows (Wilson, 2007).

We ask how hybridity functions with its roots in a US media form (television drama), revised as a Korean national export (‘K-dramas’), and then repackaged as an English-language transnational web drama. Despite the robust literature on Korean popular cultural hybridity, especially the growing body of literature on inter-Asian cultural flows (see Jin and Yoon, 2017; Shim, 2006; Jung, 2011), it has not yet examined the Western hybridization of Korean texts in the encounter. Piecing together the available literature on counter-flows, Asian-Western co-productions, and global fandom provides an informed theoretical framework. The concept of counter-flows, or contra-flows, recognizes the multiplicity of global media centers and the multidirectionality of flows (Iwabuchi, 2007; Thussu, 2007). That said, flows are still unequal as the soft power of the West is backed by ‘…“hard” political and economic power’ (Thussu, 2007: 30). While we recognize that the criticism of counter-flows as a reductive binary split between domination and oppression has merit (Kavoori, 2007), we believe the term is useful, nonetheless, because it highlights the value-laden complexity and multiplicity of media flows. New movements, particularly of less powerful nations, into the cultural terrain of the West, have oppositional potential. At the very least, it requires a response, and this response is the context within which we situate Dramaworld. Thus, this essay moves away from previous studies of counter-flows, particularly of news media such as CCTV, RTV, and Al-Jazeera, that asked the normative question of whether counter-flows are effective (see Samuel-Azran, 2009; Xie and Boyd-Barrett, 2015). Instead, our interest is in the global co-production as a new, hybrid form that reflects the multiplicity of flows that inhabit its space.

Co-productions, which are conceptualized as media with mutual investment and cooperation (Rasmul and Proffitt, 2012), disrupt national boundaries through a shared text. Peng (2016), for instance, states that Chinese-Australian co-productions favorably represent both nations through the simultaneous creation of ‘positive’ space. In Indian-US co-productions, Hollywood producers have sought partnerships to capitalize on the regionally specific market at lowered risk (Rasmul and Proffitt, 2012). Dramaworld differs, however, because co-production was not pursued as a vehicle to enter a foreign market but to reach a deterritorialized Korean drama fan. Dramaworld, while a co-production, is also an adaptation of Korean dramas for the global (White) fan. Understanding how the show imagines that fan, then, can illuminate hybrid representation articulated within new forms of co-production. The appeal to international fans deterritorializes the text, in turn, creating more structural space for hybridity as an economic logic.

Brief narrative description of Dramaworld

Dramaworld centers on Claire Duncan, a college-aged student in California, who obsessively watches Korean television, referred to as ‘dramas,’ on her smartphone. While foiling a theft in her father's sandwich shop, she slips and magically falls into Dramaworld, where she enters her favorite drama A Taste of Love. Met by Seth Ko (Justin Chon), a long-time ‘facilitator’ in Dramaworld, he tells her that she has been ‘chosen’ to ensure Dramaworld follows its ‘laws.’ Claire believes her primary mission is to romantically connect Joon Park, the male lead and restaurateur, with his sweetly naïve sous chef Seo-yeon (Bae, Noo-Ri²). However, she fails miserably in her work because of her own inability and because unbeknownst to her, Seth has deviously plotted to have Seo-yeon fall in love with him. Her work is also complicated by the schemes of Ga-in (Kim, Sa Hee), Seo-yeon's rival love interest and the interference of Joon's mother Mrs Park (Kwon, Ki-sun). While contemplating suicide to resolve her failures, Claire remembers Mr Park (Lee, Ki-young) was murdered, and her work changes from the passive facilitation of the drama to an active investigation to find the murderer, who is later revealed as Seth. During her investigation, she breaks a cardinal rule of Dramaworld by revealing to Joon that he is merely a character, not a real person. Rather than calamity, her newfound agency leads to the successful restoration of Dramaworld, culminating in the romantic embrace of Claire and Joon and Seo-yeon and the secondary male lead (Woo Do-Hwan). Thus, Claire succeeds not by abiding by the laws of Dramaworld but by breaking them.

Producing the global White fan through ‘satirical parody’

Writing about Hollywood remakes, Aquilia (2006) notes, ‘The filmmaker and audience share a similar “cultural community” that is familiar with the tropes of Hollywood and Asian cinema’ (p. 442). Although the reference is to Singaporean film, it can be transposed across context to argue that Martin and Billig share a cultural community with Korean drama fans, familiar with the tropes of their shared fan interest and the values of the fan community. Importantly, these tropes are recognized and appreciated as cultural counter-flows that have traveled into fan imaginations. It is through the interaction with and representation of tropes that Dramaworld most visibly articulates hybridity in the subject position of the White American fan. Dramaworld’s first 2 minutes open with a preview of A Taste of Love, presenting a montage with tropes familiar to drama viewers, including a Cinderella narrative; a sophisticated leading man, who is the jaded son of a CEO of a business conglomerate (known as chaebol); a leading woman of modest means, whose morally purity is matched by her plucky determination; a love triangle with a worldly woman, who succeeds through cunning and deviousness; and an interfering mother, who seeks to control her son's professional and romantic life. For viewers unfamiliar with drama tropes, episode 2 presents several ‘laws’ as genre tropes:

Law #1: A drama ends with true love's kiss.

Law #2: The leading man must always embody the traits of a leading man. Confident, handsome, slightly arrogant but always with the leading lady's interest at heart. Everything is for her.

Law #3: The leading man will take a hot, steamy shower.

Law #4: There can be bumps and detours, but every twist is actually leading towards true love.

Laws 5 and 6 are not tropes but the conceit upon which the show rests. That is, failure to abide the laws results in the existential collapse of Dramaworld.

Parody, on the other hand, is ‘…an imitation which exaggerates the characteristics of a work or style for comic effect’ (Gross, 2010: xi). The goal, unlike satire, is to use exaggeration to compliment the original (Chatman, 2001). In the case of Dramaworld, the use of tropes does not return the gaze upon the global fan to challenge their ways of seeing because this would run counter to the show's commercial impulses and its character as a ‘love letter’ to fans (Doo, 2016). Rather, it works ambivalently through satire to situate the global (White) fan's cultural standpoint as superior to the excesses of dramas while situating the fan horizontally through its use of parody to validate fan interest in dramas. Because Dramaworld’s hybridity situates it in a third space where cultural flows converge, neither the language of satire nor parody is itself sufficient, so, instead, we use ‘satirical parody’ to reference its dialectical nature. To state the difference simply, ironic pleasure is gained through detachment from the specific text whereas satirical parody gains pleasure through simultaneous, paradoxical adoration of fan texts as well as superiority to them. It imagines a hybrid fan who vacillates between the genuine fan and the ironic commentator.

In Dramaworld, the use of tropes reads closer to parody when the inclusion of them is important to establishing the rules of the televised world, meaningfully moves the plot forward, and/or is valued by Claire, an everywoman stand-in for the global fan. On the other hand, it reads closer to satire when the exaggeration does not serve the narrative but rather acts as a momentary comedic caricature that is unusual to Claire. Thus, the tropes themselves are indicative of the show's hailing of the global fan into a hybrid standpoint. The explicit mention of tropes acts as a narrative device that acknowledges fans' deep commitment to their fan texts (see Jenkins, 1992). As such, while the tropes may have escaped the detection of non-fan viewers, they are highly visible to fans and a source of pleasure. This can be legitimating because fan interests are generally denigrated as excessive (Jenkins, 1992), and Korean popular culture interests outside Asia are additionally marginalized for their racial difference and lack of proximity to the hegemonic domination of the West (Otmazgin and Lyan, 2013).

However, satirizing tropes can also mark dramas themselves as culturally other. This is visible in the coverage of Dramaworld, which at times positiioned Korean drama tropes as ‘cliché’ (Doo, 2016). As such, the treatment of tropes reflects the hybrid standpoint of the global fan as it sutures local tastes and viewing practices that mock Korean tropes and global interest that revels in them. In episode 2, when Seth reads the aforementioned rules to Claire, the show moves from hidden intertextual parody to overt expression. Through the laws, Dramaworld validates fans’ conversations about narrative. However, the rigidity of the tropes as ‘laws’ also mocks Korean dramas as formulaic. As moon_light7_452 observed, ‘Everything you love about k-drama while making fun of it at the same time. Brilliant!’ Her quote demonstrates a lucid understanding of the liminal position of the satirical parody—appreciation and mockery.

In Dramaworld, the shift toward mocking satire is first visible in episode 4. During Claire's attempt to have Joon apologize to Seo-Yeon, a drunken young woman jumps on Joon's back while he continues to walk. After Claire asks, ‘Who is that?’ Joon replies matter-of-factly, ‘It's a girl.’ Claire pauses and looks confused before realizing this is a trope, saying ‘Drunken piggybacks. Magnetic pull. Weird.’ Because ‘magnetic pulls,’ irresistible forces in Dramaworld, were demonstrated earlier in the episode, the exaggeration of the trope does not add new narrative meaning, functioning instead to mock the trope. In the following episode during Joon and Claire's second driving scene, Joon experiences an existential crisis, questioning the purpose of his life and work. Throughout the conversation, Joon maintains his gaze on Claire, who asks, ‘Shouldn't you be keeping your eyes on the road.’ While his crisis motivates the story, the trope of not looking at the road does not. It exists to mock dramas’ lack of verisimilitude. The satirical humor stems from the viewer's reading of dramas as nonsensical.

In the examples above, the satirical work is situated in the larger framework of parody. Like the name of the production company Third Culture Contents suggests, the show is meant to exist as a new form, referencing the original—Korean dramas—while creating a different text marked by its departures from the original. The parody works by finding enjoyment in the recognition of the trope and the pleasure in Korean dramas as the referred text. The nature of the satire cannot veer too heavily toward mockery because it would disrupt fan admiration for the original, creating resentment toward the satirical parody, instead. Thus, it must have polyphonic meaning—mocking satire and playful parody of the trope—that together flatter the global fan. The encoded pleasure derived from the use of satirical parody constructs the hybrid position of a global White fan, who understands herself as superior to the originating culture of the text but who admires and values it all the same.

Modeling the global citizen

If the current moment is one of transition, where mediated counter-flows are beginning to challenge US-dominated media production, then Dramaworld offers front row seats to the struggle over representations of the ideal global citizen. The show's three main characters model differing forms of global citizenship for its viewers. The narrative of the show privileges the hybridity of the White female global fan as the normative subject; however, it provides enough representational material to read Seth as the preferred hybrid cosmopolite. Starting with the construction of ideal hybridity, this section points to a shifting space that is marked by the complicated co-mingling of dominant and counter-flows.

With its two romantic leads, Claire and Joon, Dramaworld manages hybridity with different representational strategies—Claire as a young White woman with fan interests in a text from a faraway world and the intertextual knowledge of Dulake as a biracial Korean American actor in Korea. Claire's hybrid interests are narratively favored while the hybridity of Joon's body and lived experience is hidden. Seth acts as the third point to this triangle. While he is the antagonist to both, as an outsider like Claire, he holds up a dark mirror. Although narratively a villain, reading against the preferred meaning assigned to Seth offers up a different kind of hybrid positionality for the transnational fan.

In episode 2, when Seth asks Claire why she believes she was chosen to act as a facilitator, she responds that she is ‘not even the main character in my own story.’ Thus, the justification for Claire's presence in Dramaworld is her status as typical fan. Her claim to legitimacy is particular to her White global fandom, rather than innate ability or cultivated skill. Her ability to fully immerse herself in Korean dramas and her valuation of that world over and above her mundane life in the US likely opens the portal between Claire's world and Dramaworld. This fits a long history of US films in which Whites are necessary to save racial others from themselves (Schultz, 2014). Thus, it is her Whiteness that makes her the appropriate character to rescue Dramaworld from Seth. Through Claire's intervention, she positions White fandom as uniquely able to redeem Korean fan texts.

Importantly, Claire does not succeed by becoming especially talented in the rules of Dramaworld but by rejecting them. Throughout much of the first half of the series, she fails spectacularly in her work as a facilitator. It is only when she embraces the role of an investigator is she able to save her fan text. The shift is visually marked by her multiple wardrobe and make-up changes that were held static through the previous episodes, and it is narratively marked as she willingly violates many of the rules of facilitators, such as telling Joon that he is not real but a character. Rather than destruction, Joon is liberated, Seth's plot is foiled, Seo-yeon falls in love with the secondary male character, and, implicitly, Dramaworld becomes freed from its rigid tropes and narrative structure. With her success, Claire then returns to the ‘real world’ of her father's California-based sandwich shop. As such, Claire achieves self-growth while being unchanged by the culture of the Korean other while Dramaworld is saved by her (White) intervention. In this way, Dramaworld advances a hybridity that edifies the White traveler.

While Claire may narratively represent an idealized form of global hybridity, the show's secondary star, Dulake, signifies the conflicting kinds of hybridities made more possible in an age of increasing globalization (Kraidy, 2005). As a biracial Korean-British American raised in Los Angeles, Dulake was raised by parents who both emigrated to the US from different continents (Munoz, 2013). Dulake has usually played characters who are biracial, and in his breakout role, he played Dr. Horace Allen, a White missionary and founder of Seoul's Severance Hospital. Thus, his biracial identity is salient in a Korean mediascape that represents biracial Korean-White men as possessing desirable, cosmopolitan otherness (Ahn, 2015).

In the US, however, biracial Asian-White actors are most often placed into monoracial categories, depending on whether the physical expression of their biracial identities is mostly read as White or Asian (Nishime, 2014). In either case, their on-screen value comes from safe, exotic difference. As a text meant for White global fans, Dramaworld practices representational strategies similar to US media when dealing with Dulake's biraciality. Despite extratextual knowledge of his biraciality, his standard US American dialect, and his code switching between Korean and English, he is represented as belonging only to the world of Korean dramas—a world marked as utterly distinct from the ‘real’ world of the US. The show leaves no room for interpretation as the character of Joon has both unquestionably Korean parents played by well-known character actors, Lee Ki-young and Kwon Ki-Sun. Although Mr Park only appears briefly in the opening montage, his last words before he is dropped to his death from the rooftop of a building are ‘이봐요, 이봐요’ [‘Wait a minute, wait a minute’]. Mrs Park is also monolingual, and her role fits the trope of the interfering mother of a son who is in line to inherit his father's chaebol, a large Korean conglomerate. Thus, they are overdetermined as Korean, narratively erasing Joon's hybridity.

Conclusion

From Bollywood to Japanese anime, the counter-flows of media within Asia and outward toward Western and non-Western nations push Communication scholars to revise their understanding of the global flow of mediated culture. Nations once primarily understood as consumers of US-dominated media are increasingly exporting their own media products. The rapid growth and influence of Korean media is an especially vivid example of the changes to the media landscape. These media counter-flows have often been subsumed within the same binaries that split the world into ‘the West and the rest.’ That approach frames the relative success or failure of media flows and counter-flows in terms of non-Western media's ability to influence Western media audiences or challenge Western media domination.

While remaining cognizant of the uneven and hierarchical power differences between nations and cultures, we argue that rather than a binary split where we can identify the winners and losers of a culture war, Korean media counter-flows are characterized by dialectic hybridity between East/West, insider/outsider, producer/consumer, accommodation/resistance, male/female, and White/Asian. While counter-flows and hybrid spaces have existed as long as people have crossed borders and sailed oceans, digital distribution platforms have allowed a scale heretofore unseen. With these counter-flows spilling outside the diasporas for which they were first intended, they have created new audiences and, later, new texts that characterize post-national television, texts created in the post-network era of television that are marked by digital convergence—creation and distribution—and the suturing of multiple national televisual cultures.

Dramaworld, a co-production between Korean, Chinese, and US media organizations, serves as an exemplary text to trace the complexities of the new forms of representation and audience that emerge out of the accelerated counter-flows of Korean media. We argue that hybridity finds its most salient expression in the figure of the transnational fan, who is often imagined as the idealized consumer of these new forms of media culture. Dramaworld addresses the transnational fan as a White female fan through its use of parody and satire, situating her as an ambivalent viewer who moves from insider to outsider and alternates between a superior and horizontal relation to Korean culture. At the same time, the show offers up a space to revise the paternalistic colonial relationship between the US and Korea/n media, especially for the fan willing and able to read against the grain of the narrative. While the central romantic couple in the show continues to center Whiteness and dichotomize the US as White and Korea as Asian, Seth, a secondary character, threatens the neat alliance of race and nation and suggests other ways to imagine transnational audiences and identities. The interracial relationship between the two stars also disrupts the familiar gendered and racialized representations that replicate a colonial relationship between a dominant masculine White West and a submissive feminine Asian East. Rather than a simple reversal, however, we view the revision of the show's main interracial relationship as an accounting of the shifts in power between the US and Asia in the new millennium, even as the US continues to dominate globally.

Dramaworld, and other co-productions like the recent Netflix film Okja, offer more than a new funding model. They also increase the possibilities for reimagining the cultural relationship between the US and Asia. As more Asian countries exert their soft power beyond their continental neighbors, scholars must pay attention to the implications of mediated counter-flows. We can then understand these evolving global media relations as more than mere repetition of the same or, conversely, as radical breaks from tradition to witness and analyze cultural formations that emerge in new and unexpected ways.