Hong, S-K., & Park, S. (2015, July 15). Maducem ergo sum: Internet ‘Mukbang (Foodcasting)’ and its subcultural implication on the contemporary Korean society. Presented at IAMCR(International Association for Media and Communication Research) 2015, Montreal.
This presentation was delivered in IAMCR UQAM 2015, held at a lovely city, Montreal.
This study observes Mukbang provided by Afreeca TV and analyzes its implication on Korean contemporary society. We define Mukbang as a new and unique phenomenon developed in a specific socio-historical context of Korea and its food culture. Exploring diverse forms of Mukbang, this study discusses aesthetics and ethics of these programs which break the norms of traditional food culture and challenge the social norms governing the body and the subjectivity.
The presented paper was published as an article in a Korean academic journal.
Abstract
Food has long been an important content for Korean media, especially with many TV programs introducing a variety of foods and recipes. The recent advent of “Mukbang”(an abbreviation of food broadcasting in Korean) on an Internet broadcasting channel called ‘Afreeca TV’ opened a new chapter of food broadcasting. It changed what is important concerning food broadcasting in the contemporary Korean society: how we eat matters more than what we eat. Many people watch BJ(Broadcasting Jockey)s eat in an abnormal way on the internet and interact with them in paying and commenting their eating performance. This phenomenon influenced visual culture in general and became an attractive subject for media contents. Especially, it expanded toward the traditional TV channels, terrestrials and cable. Several real variety programs that adopted some features from “Mukbang” achieved quite a success and there even is a TV drama of which about 10% of the running time focuses on eating scene.
“Mukbang”inherits a grotesque aesthetics (Bahktin) and pre-modern ethics that breaks the norms of food culture which has been considered as legitimate in the traditional and modern society : valuing neither the good nutrition nor warm atmosphere coming from whole-hearted food which have been very important aspects in traditional tables, but encouraging to enjoy instant meals, frozen foods, and junk foods that are easily affordable in convenience stores ; showing people grabbing a quantity of food and devouring without table manners ; repetitively challenging to eat extremely spicy foods with an excessive reaction ; swallowing tens of thousands of calories up regardless of social demand for diet and a slender body, in other words, not caring but abusing their own bodies. It also reflects some noticeable aspects of contemporary Korean society: the meaningful growth of single-person households and the economic and social crisis of young generation, who is the major resident of that tiny single-person household’s room. The adaptation of the internet Mukbang’s ‘politically incorrect’ aesthetics and ethics into the TV culture shows an interesting hegemonic process through modification (omission, dilution, different reworking of constituents), reframing, and negotiation.
Representation of the contemporary existence is implied in the consciousness we have of the function of food, as Barthes said. According to Foucault, food and diet is the way in which one cared for oneself, and we may have better understanding of ourselves through observing food culture. This study addresses the question of how cultural practices in the Internet have challenged the legitimate food culture mediated by the traditional TV programming. It finally gives attention to the subjectivity that this hegemonic process cultivates through discourse analysis of programs and the media culture.
SOJEONG PARK 