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“Are they really that great?”
This is the question I heard the most after writing a cultural criticism about BTS’ fandom last year. This question literally contains the intention of’I don’t know if it’s so great,’ rather than wanting to be persuaded by that greatness, and somehow there is a corner that discourages the will to answer sincerely. Above all, I would like to have to prove the value of the object in the realm of’flavor’. What on earth? Overwhelming record? Economic value? Outstanding aesthetics? Would such a gathering prove a respectable taste? As a BTS fan, my taste and eyes are always on the test table of proof for some reason.

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Despite its overwhelming influence in the Korean pop culture industry, idol music has rarely been treated as an object to seriously discuss artistry. This is because even though it is on the spot of fashion, it is outside the cultural hegemony that leads the criticism discourse. The contradictory status of idol music as’mainstream culture located outside hegemony’ is the issue of who enjoys this music. The term’Brother’s’ and’Pasooni’, which refer to the fans of idol singers, create a’double depreciation’ effect of devaluing not only the young women who are the main fan base, but also the value of their favorite idol music. (Remember the familiar voice of the heart, such as’What music do the pasoons know, they just look at their faces’.) The interesting thing here is that when the enjoyment of a particular culture is women, they tend to homogenize them into a group. Is that it is more severe. Let’s take the hooligan, a football fan who is too fond of the cheering team, and causes riots and vandalism. I often see stories of frowning hooligan riots, but that doesn’t mean that even the majority of healthy football fans are caught up as hooligans. However,’Opa’s troop’ and’Pasooni’ are not particularly words referring to problematic fans, but rather are more of a universal name that refers to the overall idol fan. The identities of the various individuals that make up the actual idol fandom are tied together and disappeared under the name’Pasooni’. The movement to stereotype a specific group is directly proportional to the social pressure traditionally exerted on social minorities. Consider stereotyping the media for Asians, LGBTQ, foreign workers, and women. In Hollywood movies, the universal human role with a distinct personality, that is, the protagonist, is still occupied by white heterosexual men with a high probability. Although it improved due to the strong demands of the times of diversity, the representation of women, people of color, and LGBTQ still revolves around the conventional stereotype. The attitude of Korean films that recreate Chinese Koreans (Chosun peoples) or foreign workers is no different. Be it naive or criminal. This kind of lazy representation works the same for stereotyping of idol fandom. This is an attempt to easily homogenize people who do not converge into a single identity. This is the operation of the hegemonic power behind stereotyping.

ARMY, a fandom of BTS, is a fandom that is particularly sensitive to such stereotyping. In Korea, BTS started out as a separate entity from the existing idol industry cartels, such as agency halo, senior fandom, and connection with broadcasters, and pioneered their own survival strategy outside the verified mainstream network. It is buried in a tremendous record, and many don’t know, but the process of being accepted abroad was never easy. In the early days, foreign media, which were treated as strange Asian idols and poured out soulless enthusiasm, gradually began to show their presence as an equal player in the Western mainstream music industry, “factory-recorded music” and “gay pop.” ”, “K-pop industry that exploits minors through inhumane slavery contracts”, “12-year-old girls and low-level music that they like”, etc. As a target to pour out Western prejudice against K-pop, they summoned BTS to their position. Cut down. Both at home and abroad, they had to endure lonely in the basket of those who do not always recognize them as’members of themselves’. It is this kind of sympathy for identity as an outsider and minority that has come to the sense that ARMY, a fandom, “we must be the only backbone of BTS.” Through the appearance of BTS being rejected, fans will look into their position in this world, and in the meantime, they will rely on each other and look at BTS who calmly walk their way to reflect on the meaning of’solidarity’ and’teamwork’. do. This recognition that anyone can be an’outside’ and’minority’ at some point in life is not just protecting BTS, but boycotting the awards ceremony voting in protest against the wrong awards ceremony practices that promote paid voting, and white paper It is published, pointing out historical revisionism, and is expanding to interest in the wider world, including donating 1 million dollars (about 1.1 billion won) to the black civil rights movement. This is the reason why fans are complaining, not complaining, “I just came to like the singer, but I was doing social movements without my knowledge.” The ARMY Census, which is currently being conducted in commemoration of the 7th anniversary of the fandom’s founding, is a project initiated by fans to resist the stereotyping of the fandom and objectively index the various entities of the fandom. . Those conducting the survey reported that the reproduction of the media lighting BTS fans to those of a specific age group or gender is used to reduce the influence of BTS’s music along with the misconception of fans. It is said that it will collect information on ARMYs around the world as accurately as possible and disclose the data. Currently, a survey is being conducted for fans around the world in a total of 40 languages, and up to 400,000 fans have participated in the survey so far. In such an attempt, there is a request to recognize the fan as an individual and specific’person’ contained in the fandom, rather than easily categorizing it according to taste.

When you search for related keywords on Social Network Service (SNS) and YouTube, ARMY members of various ages, races, genders, and occupations met BTS at certain moments in their lives, and what message they shook their hearts. There are countless videos confessing what kind of life has changed. Recently, I saw a video of a woman’s shaved hair on the video sharing service’TikTok’. This woman, a fan of BTS, was diagnosed with breast cancer at the age of 30 and had to push her long straight hair with the help of her husband for chemotherapy. She laughed and pushed her hair and soon began to pour out tears. She uploaded the following subtitle to the video. “Because of BTS, I raise my head and face (life) confidently even in this difficult journey. I am so grateful and proud to be their fan. In the midst of this hardship in my life, I am finally learning how to truly love myself.” Some people carefully ask if the self-narrative given by the fans via BTS, and the tight bond between BTS and ARMY, which was born from it, is the result of excessive meaning. In fact, everything may be the result of the planning done under the company’s master plan, but he is worried that the fans are too blindly caught up in it. However, no matter how genius a project exists, it is impossible to artificially create a rapport between fans and artists. Even if it is possible, such an attempt is easy to get caught under the eyes of fans who break down all the content into nano units, turn it around, and get the nuances behind the scenes. ‘Narrative’ (narrative) originally means a story going on over the passage of time. Until the narrative presented by BTS becomes the fans’ self-narrative and the support of their lives, there is a sedimentary layer of trust and trust that they and their fans have built up together. In the last eight years of BTS, it was a time to prove how they grew up by defending this proposition that it is easy to say,’If I have a fan,’ it is too difficult to keep its meaning. If you flip through the huge narrative of the glory and record of BTS that anyone can find out by searching, there are small narratives that only fans can know and are densely embedded like gold. The rear view of working alone all night with equipment in a hotel room during the tour, worrying to the end over the last line of songs to be included in the album, the lonely feeling that you will be caught in the hand of a letter sent to fans at dawn, and sometimes with surprising honesty. Even though they talked about the crisis and difficulties they faced, they said, “Because you are not alone, but because you are seven, and because ARMYs support you, you can definitely make it.” Teamwork given for each other with sincerity, authority or coercion, but with friendly gestures, eyes, and constant praise. Looking at them, success was possible even if it didn’t get bad or broken somewhere, I think it was a new thing. Among ARMYs, the process of slowly growing one step at a time is so beautiful that the boys who were incomplete at first were only interested in the performances of mystery, or simply followed the trend, and then incomplete boys only held on to their love for fans and music and trust in each other It would not be a coincidence that many people confess that they have become. The power of ARMY, who is said to be the most powerful fandom in the world today, is not in the firepower derived from the number of fandom heads. It is in the power of expansion that arises by accepting the narrative of another person called BTS as one’s own narrative and connecting it to the attitude of life, in other words’solidarity’.

Ji-Haeng Lee Media Culture Researcher, Author