Book. For those who did not know the addictive dimension of South Korean series, nor their success abroad, the phenomenon Squid Game – of which Netflix will broadcast the second season on December 26 – was a revelation. Online viewing records in many countries, unannounced gatherings in public spaces, renewed interest in the childish game of 1, 2, 3, Sun… This dystopian series about a game of massacre between proletarians organized to entertain a few plutocrats was a further demonstration of vibrant South Korean soft power.
In 2022, in K-pop, soft power et culture globale (PUF), sociologists Vincenzo Cicchelli and Sylvie Octobre were already exploring the hallyuthis “South Korean wave”through its most iconic cultural products, such as K-pop music. In their new work, K-dramas, these feel-good series (PUF, 208 pages, 19 euros), they are interested in these series, such Squid Gamevery popular on video-on-demand platforms.
In an attempt to explain their resonance with foreign and particularly Western audiences, and after viewing around a hundred titles, sociologists quickly dismiss the exoticism of these productions with very varied and inter-permeable genres (romance, comedy, fantasy, thriller, historical fiction, etc.) can arouse. They do not dwell any more on their aesthetics calibrated for commercial success.
“Map of knowing how to love”
On the contrary, the two authors favor an angle of analysis that they consider new: K-dramas represent “an ideal of what unites individuals”. “These series draw a map of knowing how to love, writing a sort of manual of knowing how to live with others, a grammar of inclusion of the weakest. » An option which can replace, therefore, Western achievements which celebrate the solitary hero and develop “a pessimistic view of the individual”.
Sylvie Octobre and Vincenzo Cicchelli analyze in detail fifteen series in light of the social themes explored by the screenwriters. Boys Over Flowers (2009) allows them, for example, to address the question of inequalities in a couple, Business Proposal (2022) to evoke “the invention of a shared feminism” between men and women. As for Mr. Sunshine (2018), it is an opportunity to return to resilience in the face of modernization and imperialism. Meticulously, the authors list the clues of emotion (a central notion of Korean philosophical thought, they explain), sincerity and authenticity nestled in the bonds that the characters weave.
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With its macabre extrapolation of every man for himself pointing out the cynicism and extreme violence of modern capitalism, Squid Game seems far from this “banality of good” defended by the authors. If she does figure d’« exception »this series phenomenon would still maintain “central topics of connection and sincerity” thanks to final gestures of kindness at the end.
