| Post-post-colonial Korean Studies? | |
|---|---|
| Tweet Topic Started: Apr 27 2018, 07:13:36 PM (120 Views) | |
| black man | Apr 27 2018, 07:13:36 PM Post #1 |
|
The Right Hand
![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]()
|
topic split from http://www.anthropedia.science/single/?p=10000705&t=528776I remember the restrictions of the Cold War period still had a strong impact on perceptions of Korea back in the 2000s. Additionally, the geographical location in between Russia, China, Japan and the USA could have reinforced certain restrictive trends. Thus, some people had a tendency to portray Koreans as more "homogenous" than necessary. But at the same time there was already different trend which included more positive attitudes towards sociographic diversity, e.g., mudang, haenyo and taekkyon. Now, you mentioned "monolids" becoming in vogue among young people in the media again? That can certainly be interpreted as something very positive. Is there already an awareness of that this could be interpreted as young Koreans living in a "post-post-colonial" period? (Note that Asian Studies AFAIK so far just focussed on pre-colonial, colonial and post-colonial aspects of Asian societies. In this sense, there could be a kind of Korean uniqueness which should be discussed in much more detail.) |
![]() |
|
| luxemen | Apr 27 2018, 07:33:58 PM Post #2 |
|
Member
![]() ![]() ![]() ![]()
|
^Very interesting idea. Not sure if I've come across any studies done on the post-post-colonial mentality in contemporary Korean society but I'm going to try to see what I can find. But yes, I do think that monolids are becoming more accepted in niche areas of the contemporary Korean pop culture. Will come back later to elaborate on my initial thoughts. Edited by luxemen, Apr 27 2018, 07:44:59 PM.
|
![]() |
|
| black man | Apr 27 2018, 09:05:34 PM Post #3 |
|
The Right Hand
![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]()
|
^ Thanks a lot, Nurizone. A few remarks which might save time... "Post-post-colonial studies" are a bit like futurology from the perspectives of some intellectuals who cannot do these studies on their own because of their very backgrounds. As I planned to indicate in a thread on Postcolonial Studies, the latter are notoriously negativistic. One major reason is that generations of people all over the world have just been losing cultural heritage due to de-indigenisation during the colonial and postcolonial periods. The historical transmission of knowledge about East Asian martial arts IMO possibly reflects this in a particularly signficant manner: 1) intellectuals in southern coastal China passed on their martial knowledge within their own social class. 2) Okinawan noblemen adopted certain aspects of this southern Chinese martial knowledge and developed their own local traditions. 3) men from the imperial Japanese military adopted certain aspects of this originally Okinawan aristocratic knowledge and spread mainland Japanese karate. 4) colonial and/or postcolonial Koreans developed taekwondo schools partly based on certain aspects of mainland Japanese karate. 5) taekwondo schools seemed to displace the practice of taekkyon. 6) a possibly altered variant of taekkyon gained some public attention in the post-(?)postcolonial period. 7) a new generation of local anthropologists specialised on folklore studies and related disciplines could be checking the extent to which there were/are changes and continuities. Accordingly, "Post-post-colonial studies" would be studies conducted by Asians rather than a typical Western Orientalist discipline. One might suppose, one could try to trace back the historical backgrounds of contemporary variations concerning the hairstyles of Korean women as well. As far as I remember, you indicated the possibility. Correct me if I'm mistaken. |
![]() |
|
| luxemen | Apr 30 2018, 12:02:53 AM Post #4 |
|
Member
![]() ![]() ![]() ![]()
|
Black Man, Thank you for bouncing off these great ideas. I plan on doing a more extensive post (or even start a thread on one of those topics). As for the monolid discussion though (as it relates to the pop phenomenon in Korea), I do think that they are starting to gain more prominence in the model industry, in particular. Now, this might be puzzling at first but I think it makes sense, given that the modeling industry is still much dominated by the West and their beauty standards, which many find to be more accepting the traditional Asian phenotypes better than their home countries. Therefore, Korean models whose phenotypes may have once been 'shunned' out of Kpop or the more conventional media, they're finding more success abroad. And these models are re-introducing a more natural set of beauty ideals back to Korea, through their overseas successes, which the rigid Korean society often sees as more valuable than that produced on their home soil. These are some of the more successful models in Korea being interviewed for their experiences. You can see that all of them have the distinct Northeast Asian look and are natural-looking. Dae Na is also another good example of a Korean model who's found a great success in the West for his distinct Korean/NE Asian look. ![]() Incidentally, the most popular Korean actors in 2018 all have monolids and look distinctly Korean. It's my observation that once beauty trends change in one segment of the industry, they often have spill-over effects in other industries. Kim Young-Gwang is such an example who started his career in modeling and then transitioned into acting. Several years ago, his looks would have been considered rather 'unattractive'. But now they are considered more 'acceptable', 'Korean', and 'trendy'. ![]() Edited by luxemen, Apr 30 2018, 12:20:42 AM.
|
![]() |
|
| black man | Apr 30 2018, 04:39:14 PM Post #5 |
|
The Right Hand
![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]()
|
I corrected a few passages in my reply below:Great.
Very interesting. So did the colonial/postcolonial concept of "divide and rule" create a community split in overseas Koreans (between conform Europhiles and people who stayed more conservatives like what haters would perhaps call "FOBs")? (Please excuse that exaggerated polarisation. I hope, you'll find some better descriptions as for the different social groups in overseas Koreans whom it could concern.) And did conservative overseas Koreans influence present-day Korean popular media? Or is it more complicated? That said, I myself never paid much attention to the eye region per se although can recognise features in the eye region within a split second. As Blais et al. 2008 confirmed, Han Chinese and Japanese tend to focus on the nose region when taking a look at faces. By contrast, people of European ancestry tend to focus on eyes and mouth region. In this sense, one might expect, traditional Koreans are more similar to Han Chinese and Japanese since Korea is geographically in between China and Japan. But there are also people who favour the idea of predominately North Asian cultural backgrounds in Koreans. So in theory average Korean gaze and average Korean aesthetic preference might still be different from average Han Chinese and/or average Japanese ones. Or there could be differences between Korean American and Korean Korean gazes etc. What would you suppose? Source: Blais et al. 2008: "Culture Shapes How We Look at Faces"; doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0003022
I'd like to point to potential "hidden meanings" of words like 'attractive'. Just judging from the etymological aspects of the word itself, the 'attractive' person doesn't do anything. It's more like others express they feel 'attracted' to the 'attractive' person, which implies socially allowed forms of proximate behaviour. In short, there was probably a change concerning who approaches whom under which circumstances. E.g., one might ask, "Who was the photographer, who was the model and who was the audience prior to the new trend? Who are these people right now? And who might photograph whom for whom in the future?" Btw, I noticed a maybe comparable trend when watching the Naruto anime series: while the sellion was definitely prominent in main characters in the first episodes, I was under the impression, it tended to become flatter later on. Plus, faces generally became more elongated and feet smaller. Edited by black man, Apr 30 2018, 06:12:55 PM.
|
![]() |
|
| 1 user reading this topic (1 Guest and 0 Anonymous) | |
| « Previous Topic · Korean · Next Topic » |





![]](http://z6.ifrm.com/static/1/pip_r.png)




