Abstract
Today, K-pop is a worldwide cultural phenomenon that receives attention from both media and academia. However, K-pop fanchants, which consist of encouragement calls toward performers, tend to be dismissed as screaming. This thesis examines the complex social interactions and meanings associated with practicing these fanchants. Discourse analysis, music analysis, and interviews with fans are used to study K-pop and fanchants. This thesis consists largely of two parts; first, a discussion on K-pop addressing cultural identity and gender identity; and examining how fanchants are created, practiced, and used to build identity. Cultural identities around K-pop have been constructed by 1) cultural ‘odourless’ (Iwabuchi 2002) which involves erasing Korean-ness and incorporating Nordic producers and ‘cultural odour’ to appeal to Western music markets. 2) Developing devoted fandomhoods through fandom activities during the ‘comeback’ period before and after releasing new songs or albums. And 3) a discourse of the Korean training system, which gives K-pop legitimacy as an ‘authentic’ performance, constructed by both artists and the fandoms. Second, how gender is performed and perceived by K-pop and its consumers is discussed. For masculinity, soft masculinity, which combines feminine figures and is promoted by concepts of Chinese wen masculinity and Japanese bishonen masculinity (S. Jung 2011a), is constructed by influences from both western media’s orientalist views and fandom’s emphases of subcultural practices to subvert stigmatizations of K-pop. Concepts of femininity, such as ssen-unni (strong sister), where artists emphasise female empowerment resonated with third wave feminism. However, practices labelled as ‘marketable feminism’, which is mixed feminist-friendly attitudes as an onstage performance and hyper-sexualised figures designed by male producers, convey contradicting messages. On the other hand, because performers emphasise feminist issues, fans feel encouraged and satisfied by the ssenunni presentation despite understanding the commercial strategy employed. Finally, fanchants are examined by taking BTS’s song IDOL (2018) as a case study. This thesis proposes that K-pop fanchants can be classified into largely two types, name chants, which express the fandom’s love towards the idols through calling the names of the idols and band; and music fanchants, which involve interacting with the song. Analyses of IDOL fanchants reveal that fanchants are intertwined artfully with the song’s cultural references such as chuimsae (audiences’ encourage calls) in pansori (traditional Korean narrative music), resulting in successfully incorporating multicultural audiences in practicing traditional Korean chuimsae. In addition, through interviews with members of the fandom, the fandom also recognises fanchants as an integral part of the song and make efforts to memorise fanchants deliberately or through passive daily music consumption. This thesis argues that fanchants works as a communication tool for fans to convey love to artists and build identity and community within the fandom.