How did Academy Award-winning Kpop Demon Hunters win hearts around the world?
Kpop Demon Hunters won the Academy Award for best animated film on Sunday night – the latest in a growing list of accolades for the film that has swept the world since its release last summer.
At Oona Herman Elementary School in San Francisco, stickers depicting bright-haired Kpop Demon Hunters characters have become the hottest currency.
Swapped among students, these stickers, like so many other things related to the hit film – about a group of K-pop girls using their golden voices to fight demons – are everywhere in eight-year-old Oona’s life.
At the Kpop Demon Hunters-themed birthday parties she attends, kids receive goody bags containing merchandise from the movie and pose for photos with giant cutouts. Of course, they also scream while listening to the film’s soundtrack.
Oona can’t decide what she likes best about Kpop Demon Hunters, so she says, “The characters, and all the dance moves and songs!”
Since its release on Netflix last summer, Kpop Demon Hunters has established itself on the biggest stages. It won the Golden Globe for Best Animated Feature Film and Best Original Song; it became the first ever K-pop song to win a Grammy; and he has now won both Oscars for which he was also nominated.
The virality of the film surprised the world – and its creators too.
So much so that when the film blew up, fans complained about the lack of merchandise. Netflix told The Hollywood Reporter that its pre-release sales pitch received only “mild” interest from retailers. Today, companies are rushing to put these toys on shelves.
But Oona and her friends aren’t the only ones under the spell of anti-demon crooners. Her mother, Christine Kao, was surprised at how much she enjoyed it too.
“When we watch it, I really cry every time,” she told the BBC.
“Oona always says, ‘Why are you crying?’ I was like, “Because it’s so beautiful!” I think this hit a lot of adults unexpectedly. »
If you haven’t watched Kpop Demon Hunters, the sections below contain spoilers.
How it’s done, done, done
In the film, protagonist Rumi finds herself torn between her responsibility as a demon hunter and her secret identity as a half-demon.
For Christine, this tension has a personal touch.
“Just seeing an Asian American woman and her struggles with her family and her expectations, there are a lot of identifiers that we carry with us,” Christine says. “We didn’t have anything like this when we were kids.”
Of course, beyond the film’s fandom, this universal story about self-acceptance comes in the form of a love letter to K-pop.
For Oona, the Saja Boys – Kpop’s supernatural boy band Demon Hunters – remind her of her favorite K-pop group, BTS, “because they all look a little different and they’re always changing their look.”
Indeed, Soda Pop, the bubblegum hit by the Saja Boys, has been widely compared to BTS’ Butter.
There are also plenty of satirical Easter eggs for K-pop fans: a furtive conversation between two idols immediately sparks dating rumors; the debut of a new group quickly sucks in fans; and they swoon over male idols for their “respectful” behavior.
“It’s really funny if you’re a K-pop fan, there are a lot of inside jokes,” says Dr. Grace Kao, Oona’s aunt and a sociology professor and K-pop researcher at Yale University.
“But if you’re not a K-pop fan, you don’t really need these jokes to enjoy them.”
K-pop is rising, rising, rising
Plot aside, the film opened a can of earworms that have dominated film festivals, music awards and mall background music around the world.
Oona says that even her friends who haven’t watched the film “know all the songs.”
The team behind the award-winning soundtrack includes songwriters and producers trained in both K-pop and Hollywood.
So it’s no surprise that the Kpop Demon Hunters soundtrack sits at a clever intersection between K-pop and Western pop music, says Ray Seol, associate professor at Berklee College of Music.
The producers “were very clever in making this sound more global”, he told the BBC. “So the general public, when they hear this music, it’s still K-pop, but somehow it’s really similar to the pop music they know.”
While most K-pop tracks are dance music with catchy lyrics, in Kpop Demon Hunters, the songs serve to propel the story. The lyrics are also notable for the lyrics, which have “a deep meaning of the discoveries themselves and their identity,” Seol says.
“The worst of what I come from, the patterns that I’m ashamed of,” Rumi sings in What It Sounds Like – on one level it’s a reference to the marks on her skin, which betray her part-demonic heritage, but what resonates are the scars she’s trying to overcome.
Finally, Kpop Demon Hunters comes at a time when the global appetite for Korean pop culture is booming.
“I feel like it’s not just the quality of the animation itself,” Seol says. “It’s time for the world to be ready to see this very authentic animation, and it’s very fresh.”
The genre has come a long way since Gangnam Style, the viral Korean track that broke cultural barriers and YouTube viewership records in 2012.
Today, groups like BTS and Blackpink have become regular participants at Western award shows, newer groups like Stray Kids and NewJeans increasingly have members of diverse nationalities, South Korean President Lee Jae Myung has embraced K-pop as a soft power tool to boost diplomacy and economic growth.
On Sunday, the singers behind Kpop protagonists Demon Hunters, Ejae, Rei Ami and Audrey Nuna, performed Golden in front of a sea of colorful glow sticks and glow bracelets, waved enthusiastically by audience members – like at a K-pop concert.
“Growing up, people made fun of me for liking K-pop. But now everyone is singing our song and all the Korean lyrics, I’m so proud,” an emotional Ejae said at the Oscars on Sunday while accepting the award for best original song on Sunday.
One of them is Yenna Oh, a primary school student in the city of Paju, near Seoul. She gathered a collection of photo cards of the film’s characters, which she carefully organized into an album.
“I’m especially excited when Rumi, Mira and Zoey defeat the monsters,” says the eight-year-old.
What adults see, however, is a new wave of the unstoppable Korean wave sweeping the world.
“I think [Kpop Demon Hunters] marks a turning point in how cool Korea is,” says Kao, the Yale professor.
“I don’t think it’s just K-pop, but just kind of K-everything.”
Additional reporting by David Oh in Seoul