An aspect of advertising and its relation to Korean pop culture that I’m particularly interested in is the advertising shift from product to melodramatic expression and value sensibilities reflective of the capitalist. The melodramatic justice that is described by Federenko is often present in Korean dramas such as “While You Were Sleeping” and “City Hunter” where a sort of cosmic justice seems to realign the world by the end of the story and provides cathartic release for the viewers. This similar display of moral order appears in a new form of advertising that fuses aspects of moral justice, old forms of informational advertising, and entertainment in advertisements such as Dingo K-beauty’s advertisement for nose and cheek pore masks:
This type of advertising is overt in its product promotion, and links the product to upholding liberal, progressive social values to beauty and cathartic justice. These advertisements would be significantly less effective if they merely focused on one aspect of this multi-pronged narrative. Rather, it fulfills multiple functions for the consuming viewers within the capitalist, democratic system, and reassigns “advertising content … with lived realities, making them communicable and thus empowering those experiencing them” (Federenko, 44).
This sort of lived reality is blurred further when CF personalities are often cast as parallel versions of their real selves. An example of this is when Irene from girl group Red Velvet reenacted a reaction she had during an album promotion in a commercial deal.
Another is when Etude House promoted their lip lacquer with Red Velvet singing the baby shark song, a song personally enjoyed and parodied by the members and their fandom prior to the commercial deal.
In these commercials, we see the lived realities of idols that became repackaged for advertising and promotion of products. I would further argue that these commercial deals capitalize on the fan loyalty to idols and aim to make their fans a big portion of their market base. For those who are not familiar to what the advertisement is referencing, it may appear as just another quirky form of advertising similar to the olleh! campaign. But, for those who are deeply intimate with the fandom of these idol groups, the reference to the original “source material” aka, the lived realities of these idols and their interests, incites brand loyalty and association between the fans, the idols, and the products, as if bringing in the consumer into the exclusive lives of popular idols and their day to day products.
This new form of advertising doesn’t upheave the standardization of capitalism and the culture industry though. As Adorno and Rabinbach puts it, there is a “disguise for an eternal sameness; everwhere the changes mask a skeleton which has changed just as little as the profit motive since the time it first gained its predominance over culture” (Adorno and Rabinbach, 14). These new elements of advertising aren’t meant to change the capitalist system in which they operate, but rather, it capitalizes on our changing society’s demand for new forms of advertising, media, and entertainment. Though I believe that these advertising forms still have to meet the function of the capital, the connection and relevancy they form with mass culture transcends the capitalist intent, and finds itself “fondly mentioned in the sociocultural histories … and reposted by nostalgic bloggers” (Federenko, 350).
This cultural value is immeasurable by the standard valuation of capitalism and the culture industry, and I believe, it points towards a future of increasing weight placed on relevancy beyond capitalist intentions. The connection viewers of advertisements such as to Red Velvet’s insider references, or Dingo’s comedic product promotion, speak to a new valuation for entertainment beyond product purchases, and is more akin to cultural indulgence in aesthetic and narrative sensibilities of these simulated lived realities. The lines between the simulated and the real, the idol and the fan, the production and the consumption, are blurred in these interactions leaving traditional valuations incomplete at best, and deeply cynical at worst.
The Politics of K-Pop 