Methodologically, we built on existing theories of queer performativity, queer of color critique, queer diaspora, and queer Asian studies. We also draw on the continually evolving praxis of “Global Asias” which emphasizes Asia as both fragmented global imaginations and interlinked formations that stretch beyond geocultural boundaries. We consider queer as creative cultural practices, expressions, and productions that move beyond static gender and sexual categories; and we view Asia/Asianness as a catalyst of difference and affinity inevitably entangled with geopolitical specificities. The (in)authenticity and (in)coherence of both terms have always been interrogated by and mediated through local, transnational, and global public and pop cultural imaginaries. We redirect the growing body of queer Asia scholarship (Chiang and Wong 2016, 2017; Tang 2011; Yue 2018; Yue and Leung 2017) toward explorations of the potential and paradox of the too-often taken-for-granted forms of queer Asian pop. In doing so, this panel demonstrates the analytical potential of “queer pop in global Asias,” which names a vibrant queer cultural phenomenon that at once disrupts Eurocentric studies on popular culture and the persistent anxiety of queer Asian discourses that attempt to “speak back” to queer Eurocentrism during the most recent wave of queer globalization.
To achieve these goals, this panel contains three talks, exploring the diverse ways queer Asian pop (re)negotiates, (re)positions, and (re)formulates marginalized identities, subjectivities, and desire in an Asian-dominated global cultural landscape and media industry that was once saturated by Euro-American embodiments, visions, and voices.
Our dialogue begins with Alvin Wong’s examination of the boyband Mirror who has garnered immense popularity in Hong Kong and the Hong Kong diasporas globally. Wong employs a queer Sinophone approach to explicate how queer stardom in Sinophone Hong Kong must be understood through a multidirectional critique. As he evaluates, the queer stardom of Mirror grows out of its members' participation in local TV programs, and critics and industry analysts also attribute Mirror's success to the traumatic and melancholic social environment in post-2019 Hong Kong. This transnational and transregional rise of Mirror not only disrupts the domination of J-pop and K-pop in Hong Kong but also demonstrates that Mirror’s queer stardom bonds fans in different generations together through queer consumption of various media and cultural events.
The second talk by Michelle Cho examines the globally influential Korean boy music group BTS as an example of K-pop’s transpacific worlding practices. Cho argues that BTS’s transpacific circulation draws forth the constitutive ambivalence—transcending categorization—that is central to the contrasting ideals of homosocial and heteropatriarchal masculinity for Asian and North American audiences. Her intertextual and paratextual analyses of BTS unravel the ways in which the group’s citational practices juxtapose diverging fields of association, which is key to their appeal and to the imaginary of a global K-pop empire. Cho argues that BTS’s strategy of counterposing and thus unsettling gender norms via transcultural pastiche enacts a queer relation, which closely draws on the particular conditions of K-pop’s intended global address.
Lastly, Jamie Zhao’s presentation inspects the queer-generative dimension of China’s adaptations of global TV formats and K-pop girl group cultures in an inter-Asian context. She discusses how Chinese transnational appropriation of a particular TV format from South Korea—music group manufacturing shows—has coalesced with local gender and sexual paradigms, inter-Asian flows of feminist and queer knowledge, and idol group promotion strategies. Examining two music group manufacturing shows produced in the post-2020 years, Zhao reveals that the convergence of global TV formats and inter-Asian girl band cultures in a heteropatriarchal-structured society has transformed the Chinese shows into a stage commercializing young women’s nonconforming personas, defiant voices, and same-sex intimacies. Paradoxically, this convergence allows emerging queer images to disrupt China’s official governing and policing of social minorities.
Collectively, this panel investigates emerging potentialities across inter-Asian, transregional, cross-cultural, and global flows that manifest in encounters and synthesization of media and pop cultural forms, gender and sexual ideals, and ideological and capitalist forces. We stimulate critical discussions that interrogate global queer, media, and cultural knowledge that has been enabled by and reoriented through a globalizing Asia while inter-referencing both Asian and non-Asian gender, sexual, audio-visual, and idol cultures.