Description
K-Pop is a cultural phenomenon reaching and generating millions in technologized societies across the world. While existing scholarship examines K-Pop idols’ production and commodification of femininity/ies through neoliberal economic governance, research needs to address how these femininity/ies are specifically shaped by techno-neoliberalism.
To address this, this paper focuses on aespa, one of the most commercially successful K-Pop girl groups. Since their debut, aespa have cultivated a futuristic brand dubbed their ‘iron flavour’ (쇠맛), featuring avatar counterparts, AI-generated characters, and a virtual universe. Drawing on Feminist/Intersectional Science and Technology Studies, we examine how aespa perform distinctly techno-neoliberal constructions of gender, race, and sexuality. We analyse four aespa music videos, employing a feminist post-structural discourse analysis (visual, aural, and linguistic methods) to understand how these create meaning.
We find that aespa perform a distinctly techno-liberal femininity, representing the next stage in K-pop’s commodification of gendered bodies. Produced through techno-neoliberal digital infrastructures, virtual worlds, and algorithmic forms of visibility, aespa intensifies the commodification of femininity/ies as endlessly (re)producible and exploitable. Femininity becomes an industrial site in itself. Given K-Pop’s accelerated cross-border flow, understanding the gendered, political implications of this techno-neoliberal aesthetic is crucial for IR going forward.