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Editorial
Editorial: Mapping Television and Politics in Popular Culture
Ann Larabee 7
Articles
Unmasking Queerness: Blurring and Solidifying Queer
Lines through K-Pop Cross-Dressing
Chuyun Oh and David C. Oh 9
Idols You Can Meet: AKB48 and a New Trend in Japan’s
Music Industry
Yuya Kiuchi 30
Japan with Indonesian Flavors: The Production of
Japanese Images within Indonesian Teen Novels
Dewi Anggraeni and Himawan Pratama 50
From Kurdish Sultan to Pan-Arab Champion and Muslim
Hero: The Evolution of the Saladin Myth in Popular Arab
Culture
Omar Sayfo 65
Reading the Margins: Embedded Narratives in Feminist
Personal Zines
Anne Hays 86
Hardboiled Feminism: Vera Caspary’s Laura as a Revision
of the Detective Genre
Brian Matzke 109
A Woman Like You? Emma Peel, Xena: Warrior Princess,
and the Empowerment of Female Heroes of the
Silver Screen
Wim Tigges 127
“This Savage World Was an Open Book”: Genre and
Landscape in Edgar Rice Burroughs’s Tarzan Series
Conor Reid 147
Book Reviews
Surveillance Cinema, edited by Catherine Zimmer.
Reviewed by Emma Bedor Hiland 195
Clockwork Rhetoric: The Language and Style of Steampunk,
edited by Barry Brummett. Reviewed by
Roger Davis Gatchet 197
Birth of An Industry: Blackface Minstrelsy and the Rise
of American Animation, edited by Nicholas Sammond.
Reviewed by Niamh Timmons 200
For His Eyes Only: The Women of James Bond, edited by
Lisa Funnell. Reviewed by Deyapriva Sanyal 202
Fighting Over the Founders: How We Remember the
American Revolution, edited by Andrew M. Schocket.
Reviewed by Anthony Di Lorenzo 203
Body of Truth, edited by Harriet Brown. Reviewed by
Emma Thompson 206
T
WO MEN NIMBLY RUN ACROSS A STAGE WHILE SINGING A ROMANTIC
love song. They gather at the center where a woman is sitting
passively with her back to the audience. The men open their
hands toward the woman and turn her around to face the audience,
revealing her long, brown wavy hair, knee-length white lace dress,
and high heels. One man gently kisses her chin, and she responds by
smiling coyly, while covering her mouth, slightly flinching her
shoulders, and averting her eyes. As soon as the song finishes, all
three gather closely, put their arms around each other’s shoulders,
and playfully jab and tap, cavorting around each other. She makes a
victory gesture and shouts “Yay!” in a low-pitched voice while press-
ing her arms down, waving her fists, and spreading her legs widely
like she is squatting.
The scene involves a cross-dressing performance in SM Town Live
World Tour III (2012) by Tamin, a Korean pop music (hereafter, K-
pop) male singer, who is well known for his androgynous appearance.
K-pop male singers are often called “Flower Boys” because of their
slender, androgynous bodies and fashion-conscious, beautiful
appearance. Cross-dressing is one of the most popular conventions in
the mainstream K-pop industry. Male singers’ cross-dressing is par-
ticularly beloved by (mostly female) fans. In K-pop, androgyny and
male cross-dressing are considered neither an absence of masculinity
nor homosexuality.
9
10 Chuyun Oh and David C.Oh
performing art, talnori is still performed today. Given the long legacy
of talnori embedded in Korean culture, the play has naturalized cross-
dressing for (heterosexual) mainstream Korean audiences.
Like talnori, Korean society approves of K-pop cross-dressing not
because of progressive advocacy of homosexuality but, rather, because
of compulsory heterosexuality. Military regimes along with neo-Con-
fucian beliefs have stigmatized homosexuality as a “foreign” value or
“mental disorder” as a means to uphold gender hierarchies and notions
of the ideal heterosexual family in Korea (Bong; Lee; Miriam; Park-
Kim). In such a heterosexist structure, homosexuality’s denial rather
creates space for male performers to freely perform cross-dressing roles
as they are not read as homosexual. Strong normative assumptions
about lived heterosexuality allow for what would be understood from
a Western point of view as alternative queer performances.
In Sun Jung’s expansive work on Korean masculinities, she refers
to K-pop cross-dressing and performance of “Flower Boy” as
“pseudo-gayness.” The reasons the performances are well received by
the mainstream society is because “they are pretty but not actually
gay” (“K-pop”). Jung explains that K-pop male idols dressed as
women present “manufactured versatile masculinity” and exhibit gen-
der fluidity along with a wide range of artistry (Korean Masculinities
165). While Jung successfully frames cross-dressing with general vir-
tuosity of contemporary popular culture industry, she does not read
how cross-dressing has evolved in the genealogy of Korean perform-
ing arts. More importantly, an analysis of cross-dressing is not com-
plete without full consideration of corporeality.
Cross-dressing relies on the body, and the body as a theatrical
device accomplishes its meaning through physical actions. Identity is
an action verb, not a noun (Rossen 3).6 The body is the very site
where racial, gender, ethnic, and sexual identities are performed;
these markers are fully visualized and physicalized through corporeal
resistance and/or reinforcement of social norms. Queer is also a verb
that needs a physical action. Queer refers to “new ways of being
sexed, gendered, and sexual” (Kerry 701). Through bodily enactment,
“queering” becomes a way of looking, acting upon, or uprooting
previously held beliefs, opinions” that are considered “unproblematiz-
able” (Kerry 701).
An analysis of physicality in K-pop cross-dressing problematizes
gender norms and creates possibilities for a “third gender” as “a mode
14 Chuyun Oh and David C.Oh
Five men dressed as women confidently walk onto the stage to enthu-
siastic applause. Around the stage, there are faux signboards and a
giant disco ball. Some members of the group wear skinny leopard-
print leggings with tight black tops, and others have on miniskirts
with sheer black stockings and showy costume jewelry, including
necklaces and bracelets. They wear women’s wigs and high heels.
Their skin is waxed smooth, and they have applied pink blush, eye-
liner, and mascara. Yet, even with their feminized masks, they are
identifiable as men. The men are slender, but have clearly defined,
toned muscles. The camera zooms onto female fans and then a female
judge who erupts in laughter and claps loudly with excitement.
The performers are members of K-pop boy group, VIXX. In the
show, they parody the K-pop girl group Wonder Girls’ song “So
Hot.” VIXX’s performance can be read as camp because of its
exaggerated performance of gender. Camp is characterized by
“exaggeration, artifice, and extremity” and exemplifies kitsch aesthet-
ics (Rodger 25–26). Despite being dressed in women’s clothing,
VIXX’s physicality does not match the typical appearance of gender
blurring “Flower Boys.” Instead, like drag queen shows in Western
culture, VIXX exaggerates femininity. The performers sing in a high
pitch falsetto, while dancing together in a chorus girl formation.
They stand in a line and put one hand on the shoulder of the person
in front and sway their hips. While swinging their hips, they close
their eyes slightly and open their mouths as they seductively stare at
Unmasking Queerness 15
the amused audience. Then they turn, facing away from the audience,
to show their backsides, caressing their hips in mock imitation of sex-
ualized female K-pop performers. While showing their backs, they
turn their heads, face the audience, and giggle. The vulnerability and
sexual availability of their pose conjures typical representations of
women in mass media, in which women internalize the male gaze,
objectifying their bodies for male pleasure. Yet, in this performance,
it is primarily women audience members who share in the fun, as the
imitation disrupts the absurdity of the male gaze.
The performers, then, stand in a line and kick their calves back-
ward with a girlish attitude. Singing their solo parts, some of them
place their fists on their cheeks, rolling them back and forth, and
wink. An uncommon gesture in the West, the playful performance is
a sign of aegyo. Commonly translated as “cute,” aegyo (애교 in
Korean) is composed of two characters that combine “child” and
“lovability.” Combined with their dress and their objectified pose,
the use of aegyo is meant to signify youthful feminine sexuality. But
such exaggerations of femininity do not match their physicality.
Their muscular bodies belie their exaggerated masquerade of femi-
nized childhood. The tight and revealing clothes they wear accentuate
their muscular physique.
Male drag is resistive because it works inside of a patriarchal,
heteronormative gender system to expand gender boundaries through
absurdity and ambiguity (Koenig). Because of the theatricality
embedded in their performance, VIXX’s gender reversal is visibly
unbelievable and inherently presentational. A presentational acting
style refers to a technique in which an actor maintains distance from
the role s/he plays. The actor constantly reminds the audience that s/
he is aware of its existence and creates an “alienation effect,” so that
the audience cannot fully juxtapose the actor with the role s/he plays
(Brecht 71). VIXX’s presentational acting, accompanied by their use
of camp, constantly reminds the audience that the performers are
men playing women. This theatrical device allows the audience to
have distance from “commonsense” gender roles.
Enhancing the show’s denaturalization of masculinity, the actors
do not try to pass as women but blatantly reveal how they fail to
fully perform women. In the opening, the performers abruptly lift up
their heads, shouting, “We are back!” in a low-pitched voice. But
once the song starts, they imitate femininity. One of the members
16 Chuyun Oh and David C.Oh
walks to the center, and he sticks one leg forward, thrusting out his
chest, and caressing his thigh with his hand. Undulating his chest,
he tosses his short wig. But since his hair is neither real nor long, it
does not reference the sexualized image of a woman tossing her hair
back. He enjoys his failure in presenting female sexiness with the
audience. As they laugh, he grins broadly and further exaggerates his
hand gestures by flipping his hair. As the song reaches the end, all
members simply switch their performing personae to men. They sing
in their natural voices to signal they are giving up the masquerade.
They smile widely, and their eyes indicate that they are ecstatic and
satisfied.
Discrepancy is one of the main elements that evoke laughter in
cross-dressing (Quemener). Interestingly, in VIXX’s show, humor
works disproportionately for female audiences. As soon as VIXX
appears on the stage, a female judge yells out in excitement and
laughs heartily. She leans forward to see the performers better and
greets them with applause. The female members of the audience, also,
seem to be extremely amused. They cheer, applaud, clap, and even
stomp their feet while laughing. They support the performers’ oscil-
lating gender identities. Their laughter deserves interrogation, as it
draws on the masquerade’s exaggeration to reveal dominating
gendered expectations and fixed notions of gendered being. Male
cross-dressing can provide potentially liberating images for women,
whose bodies have been demeaned and objectified in comparison with
the heterosexual male body (Darling Wolf). Indeed, the female
audience appears to be liberated and emancipated from the power
dynamics of the gaze in mainstream culture—women as displayed
object versus men as spectator—by reversing the gaze and denatural-
izing femininity. VIXX purposefully displays a failure of performing
female sexiness, as the performers make fun of their own masculinity,
to please the predominantly female audience.
The men in the audience, including the two male judges, seem to
not enjoy the performance. Once VIXX appears on the stage, they are
shown immediately grimacing and showing strong disapproval. Their
mouths hang open, with the subtitle “surprise and horror!” suggest-
ing the male judges’ inner dialogue.7 Unlike the women, the male
judges do not clap, but instead lean back, while shaking their heads
from side-to-side. Whether it is a media-provided image or a por-
trayer of the audiences’ real reactions, these judges’ immediate and
Unmasking Queerness 17
Under dim blue light, the male singer Sungjong Lee, or SJ, appears
with a high-pitched whistle sound. He is clad in silky, tight black
pants with a leopard-print jacket. He has short straight hair with
bangs, and his body is thin and slight, resembling the appearance of
18 Chuyun Oh and David C.Oh
Notes
1. According to Peggy Phelan, the body is “marked” depending on social hierarchy and power
dynamics imposed upon racial, ethnic, racial, and sexual identities and categories. In
Unmasking Queerness 25
Western culture, for example, a white heterosexual, upper class men are unmarked and can
be considered “neutral” or “universal” and free from stigmatization.
2. Over the last few years, there has been an effort to explain the phenomenal success of PSY’s
“Gangman Style” music video through the lens of talnori, as both employ satire and humor
to criticize social hegemony, and suggest a harmony between different social classes through
a festive performance (Park). This approach, however, idealizes and simplifies talnori and fails
to consider how talnori reinforces the status quo, such as patriarchy. Furthermore, there has
been a constant lack of discussions on the historical continuum of talnori.
3. We use talnori instead of talchum. While tal means a mask, nori means a play, and chum
means dance. Talchum refers to a specific genre in traditional Korean performing arts, but
talnori can be more inclusive. It refers to broader performative aspects, metaphorically,
because anything can be a play, nori.
4. VIXX parodied K-pop girl group Wonder Girls’ song “So Hot,” which aired on 20 Septem-
ber 2013 for a holiday special “Star Faceoff” program. Infinite’s members, Sungjong and
Sungyeol, covered JS and HyunA’s “Trouble Maker,” a male–female duet, for their concert
in China on 2 Dec. 2012.
5. The hand-carved masks had different colors and wooden constructions. These ornamentations
signify genders, ages, and characters of particular roles (Jang; Shim).
6. For example, she uses “dancing Jewish” instead of “Jewish dance” to describe ethnic identity
formation of Jewish as a performance, a verb, not as a fixed form of noun.
7. The authors translate the subtitles.
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