Everyone wants to experience a little bit of American and British culture. The next thing you know, everyone is trying desperately to book tickets for the newest K-pop sensation.
While the world was watching the Great British Queue, I was trying to get tickets for Blackpink from Ticketmaster’s. There was a countdown and an app. I tried a different date with Mr Z, but it was futile.
My niece and my kid are both “blink”, which is an acronym for a fan of Blackpink. This girl band, which the US media call the most successful in South Korea, has been hailed by the UK media as the “best” of all time. BTS, AKA the Bangtan Boys (also South Korean), is second.
Squid Game is often called the most successful South Korean TV show ever, but it’s actually Netflix’s most popular show. You continue to use the dominant language as if it is going to dominate culture. As culture becomes more globalized, you realize that English is still the dominant language.
And then, bam! The Anglosphere lost its worldwide popularity crown and you didn’t notice until one your children wanted PS400 to attend a concert. Another one knows how to make Kimchi pancakes (but how). Tapioca flour is what we have, so why are we even using it? The third is a trial of the new opinion that Kpop is only for “neeks”. I want to translate it, but no one will tell me. I’ll take a bet that it is “something bad”.
I have been explicitly forbidden from conducting cod-sociological inquiry into why all this happened. I am not permitted, by the order of the household teenagers, to ask such questions as: “Is this highly indebted, but intellectually free and entrepreneurial society speaking on a wavelength that nations are no longer able to?”
I am not allowed to make cheerleader comments such as “It’s great you’re trying something so…erm, challenging with Duolingo – much more useful than, for example, doing your French homework.” Instead, I have to just accept it and celebrate the first anniversary of Squid Game by making a simplified bibimbap that I found on BBC Good Food.
But who does this? Who celebrates a TV program’s first birthday? It seems everyone now.
