Gender Iconography & Transformations in Korean Pop Culture: What Can We Learn From Japanese Women’s SF?

A lot of attention has been paid to Wonder Girls, to sexual imagery in advertising, but what about images of men an masculinity in Korean pop culture? This picture-laden post looks at both through the lens of a paper on SFnal treatments and transformations of gender in women’s SF in Japan by scholar Miri Nakamura. It’s long, it’s big, it’s one of those posts. Hence the excerpt.

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James on Wonder Girls

(START UPDATE #1 — 2:12 am same night): Well, Lime tells me that, no, it really is “boys and ajeoshis” who are the main consumers of Wonder Girls CDs. If this is the case, then this adds a more disturbing layer to my reading of the Tell Me video, since that would mean it’s a representation of a “girl’s fantasy” that’s constructed for the edification of male consumers. But the thing I have to wonder is, was the band aimed at male consumers from the beginning — from the release of “Tell Me”? And is it really true that the …

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