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> Most of the Westerners who can stand that sort of thing are already watching it. This is a matter of exposure and habituation. I remember 6-7 years ago when

by sho_hn 4y ago

> Most of the Westerners who can stand that sort of thing are already watching it. This is a matter of exposure and habituation. I remember 6-7 years ago when I used sticker packs in KakaoTalk and Line, Western friends were baffled by all the silliness. Now they're all the rage on Telegram & co. I remember when Western friends rejected Korean pop music as too artificial and commercial vs. the "more authentic" Western pop. Now Kpop concerts fill stadiums here. I remember when friends rejected "Asian movies" as "bizarre and unrelatable". Now they win Academy Awards. All those forms of entertainment proved a lot more portable than anticipated, over time. That said, sadly the golden era of entertaining Korean reality/variety shows (Running Man et all) is kind of over already, it died with the peak of broadcast TV. The Netflix crop of shows is already far more Westernized and MTV-style. There may not be much worth exporting there.

pessimizer 4y ago
I generally agree with your premises other than Asian movies (especially Japanese) have always been considered amazing and were a major part of supporting arthouse cinema from the 60s on, it's Korean movies that have caught on. Kung Fu Hustle was literally the highest grossing foreign film in the US in 2005. Korean movies caught on not because of some change in Western aesthetics, but because they got better; Park Chan-Wook led the way. I deeply disagree with your conclusion, however. Westerners have had plenty of opportunities to like (e.g.) Running Man since K-Dramas became popular. Plenty do. It's not a new exposure to something different. Any show with subtitles operates at a disadvantage; shows that have constant titles appearing and disappearing on the screen and also have subtitled speech are an extremely tough sell, especially since (e.g.) Running Man is dumb and it's target audience is going to be people looking for a laugh. edit: you could get people used to the stupid noises and canned laughter, but all that stuff is usually used to punctuate the appearance and disappearance of on-screen titles.
- sho_hn 4y ago
  It was specifically Park Chan-wook and Kim Ki-duk that my friends outside the arthose/festival circuit rejected at the time, though, for example Seom or even Old-boy, as "too foreign". I think the internet- and streaming-driven globalization of media & subsequent exposure have definitely reduced the sort of knee-jerk inhibitions against watching something where the entire cast of characters is non-Western, or something subtitled. Content outside the Western bubble has increasingly lost the "this is a little strange and foreign" patina for average people in the millenials and younger gen. If you're below 25, and your fav sports team is perhaps an e-sports team from Korea rather than your local football club, you may not even realize people really, broadly used to think like that. When I was young, it was nearly impossible to watch a non-dubbed movie in theaters in Germany unless you lived in a major city, and even then it would be a special screening stuffed into an 11pm slot for the nerds. Which meant that content that didn't get dubbed would never be seen, and hardly anything not from Hollywood or major European countries would get dubbed. Now a big chunk of the programming in any theater is "original audio" screenings and it's no longer something that strikes people as odd to attend at all. Many countries' cinemas now get to contend in the market.
selimthegrim 4y ago
Line has always been my favorite messaging app but I could never get any of my other friends in the US to use it

by sho_hn 4y ago

pessimizer 4y ago

I generally agree with your premises other than Asian movies (especially Japanese) have always been considered amazing and were a major part of supporting arthouse cinema from the 60s on, it's Korean movies that have caught on. Kung Fu Hustle was literally the highest grossing foreign film in the US in 2005. Korean movies caught on not because of some change in Western aesthetics, but because they got better; Park Chan-Wook led the way. I deeply disagree with your conclusion, however. Westerners have had plenty of opportunities to like (e.g.) Running Man since K-Dramas became popular. Plenty do. It's not a new exposure to something different. Any show with subtitles operates at a disadvantage; shows that have constant titles appearing and disappearing on the screen and also have subtitled speech are an extremely tough sell, especially since (e.g.) Running Man is dumb and it's target audience is going to be people looking for a laugh. edit: you could get people used to the stupid noises and canned laughter, but all that stuff is usually used to punctuate the appearance and disappearance of on-screen titles.

sho_hn 4y ago
It was specifically Park Chan-wook and Kim Ki-duk that my friends outside the arthose/festival circuit rejected at the time, though, for example Seom or even Old-boy, as "too foreign". I think the internet- and streaming-driven globalization of media & subsequent exposure have definitely reduced the sort of knee-jerk inhibitions against watching something where the entire cast of characters is non-Western, or something subtitled. Content outside the Western bubble has increasingly lost the "this is a little strange and foreign" patina for average people in the millenials and younger gen. If you're below 25, and your fav sports team is perhaps an e-sports team from Korea rather than your local football club, you may not even realize people really, broadly used to think like that. When I was young, it was nearly impossible to watch a non-dubbed movie in theaters in Germany unless you lived in a major city, and even then it would be a special screening stuffed into an 11pm slot for the nerds. Which meant that content that didn't get dubbed would never be seen, and hardly anything not from Hollywood or major European countries would get dubbed. Now a big chunk of the programming in any theater is "original audio" screenings and it's no longer something that strikes people as odd to attend at all. Many countries' cinemas now get to contend in the market.

selimthegrim 4y ago

Line has always been my favorite messaging app but I could never get any of my other friends in the US to use it