East Asian Identity?

In Chua’s paper, I found it was interesting that the drama, Romance 2000, failed. I would assume that the larger the scope of the object, the wider the audience it should attract. However, since this is not the case, answering his questions about the “East Asian” identity might give some insight about this.

“Are the audiences of the East Asian popular culture ready for the mixing of cultural and political themes that are hewed from different locations?”–In this current time, no. As in Storey’s definition on foreign, “it is always a question of national difference…[and] it can equally be a question of…ethnicity” (148). Although countries like Singapore are populated with “Chinese” people, they would not identify themselves that they are from China. To illustrate this further, I, with a Cantonese Chinese background, find it very difficult to even identify to, for example, someone from Beijing, let alone to another country. I am definitely interested in other countries, but I would never forget that I am Chinese-American. Even with the “Japanization”, as mentioned by Chua, the Taiwanese–as they were most influenced by the Japanese–were still Taiwanese. They might have admired and went crazy for Japanese idols, they still knew they were the residents and a citizen of Taiwan, through and through. Even the Koreans, who emulated Japanese manga and animation still wanted to repackage them into “Korean” products. This shows the strength of nationalism in these countries. Another point that Romance 2000 might not have succeeded was that even though it tried to include too many cultural topics that it just became too burdened with the differences that there was not “universality” in the drama.

Continuing on to his next question where he asks about, “Does the failure suggests an absence of a possibility of an emergence of what might be called an ‘East Asian Identity’ from emerging through popular culture, in this instance television drama?” In the short term, because of the economic differences–and the cultural differences described above–among all of these East Asian countries, it is still a long way off before they all can call themselves “East Asians”. We cannot guarantee that this cannot happen in the long term, since globalization is spreading cultures more and more into the depths of each country than ever before.

* * *

I was surprised when I read Sung’s paper, I was surprised to find out that it was Kpop that first began the Hallyu instead of Kdrama since that is what is most known. I suppose that, as the author mentioned, their marketing strategy was really successful when they pushed for the drama instead of the music. When he mentioned that “visual” was the way to go, the obvious medium was drama if the Koreans want to spread their products. Music, although it can also be visual, it is missing the “intrigue” element from a storyline that can be presented more thoroughly in a drama or a novel or a volume of manwha.