[Sshagradstudents] You're Invited – Dr. Suk-Young Kim: Beauty and the Waste (Monday, April 14 at 4pm)

[SSHA Dept Services]

Sent on Behalf of the Global Arts, Media, and Writing Studies Department
Dear all,
The Global Arts, Media, and Writing Studies Department invites you to a public talk by Dr. Suk-Young Kim (UCLA), an internationally recognized scholar of Korean media and performance.
Beauty and the Waste: Fashioning Idols and the Ethics of Recycling in Korean Pop Music Videos
Monday, April 14 | 4:00–5:30 PM
Conference Center Room 110
Free and open to the public – light refreshments provided
Abstract:
The Korean pop music (K-pop) scene in recent years has become a fashion powerhouse where its highly visible stars exert tremendous influence on their fans’ fashion practices. As K-pop content is most frequently consumed on YouTube, K-pop music videos have come to be cybernetic runway shows, whetting the fans’ appetite for endless fashion consumption. This talk examines K-pop’s double entendre as both a seminal player in and a critic of the fashion industry by comparing two highly influential music videos—G-Dragon’s “Crooked” (2013) and BTS’s “Spring Day” (2017)—that allegorically comment on the contemporary fashion practices of quick accumulation and disposal. Arguably the most successful artists in the genre’s history, both G-Dragon and the seven-member BTS exert huge influence on youth culture not just in Asia but far beyond. This talk will touch upon broader calamities generated by environmental crisis and highlight the struggles of millennials around the globe who are subject to the neoliberal ethos of ruthless self-promotion, often in the form of self-fashioning practices.
About the Speaker:
Dr. Suk-Young Kim is Professor of Theater and Performance Studies and Associate Dean of Academic Affairs at UCLA’s School of Theater, Film, and Television. She is the author of K-pop Live, Surviving Squid Game, Millennial North Korea, and several other groundbreaking works on Korean media, performance, and politics. Her scholarship has been featured by outlets such as NPR, CNN, The New York Times, and Billboard. Dr. Kim’s work has been recognized with numerous awards and fellowships, including the James Palais Book Prize and ACLS/SSRC/NEH support. She co-edits the Critical Voices from East Asia series at Columbia University Press and has held visiting positions at institutions around the world.
Please feel free to share widely; a flyer is attached. We hope to see you there!
[cid:f994374b-26f4-4cac-972e-fdd702442245]
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