K-Dramas, Adoption, and the Idea of Cultural Experiences

 

Scrolling and watching Netflix's selection of international content feels a bit preparing for vacation— albeit one advertised as an expansive retreat with opportunities to learn. Looking at how visual media labors represent a version of reality, it tracks out that for a viewer to identify and invest with the projected images, you have to fall and identify the Self with the film object. Allegedly, cinematic identification supposedly depends on putting aside any preconceived notions to suspend disbelief. However, there is a particular fixed edge to that viewing process when watching transnational content, like watching a movie or a show from a different country allows you to jaunt alongside the characters in a new cultural experience. Hyunji Lee emphasizes this phenomenon as one tied to the perspective of a transnational viewer,  where "cultural differences and unfamiliarity with foreign media increase viewers' fascination with and pleasure gained from them" (367).  For someone not culturally attuned to K-drama's content and meaning, international content doesn't just work as a palate cleanser from the local media, regardless of quality, mediocre, or excellent— around them. In the hands of an active and appreciative fandom, transnational content becomes malleable. The material expands their cultural literacy and understanding as they enjoy the escapism of pretty characters in wholesome romances.  

I thought this reception of K-drama as a cultural toolset the stage for a dynamic that paralleled the selective framework exhibited in Dorow's "Why China?: Identifying Histories of Transnational Adoption." The active expectation of receiving modes of fulfillment while perceiving someone or something as cultural different doesn't absolutely complicate fandom appreciation, but the "selective appropriation and repurposing of other's culture for their own self-interest" that sometimes occurs seems to reflect the self-interest of the adopted parents interviewed by Dowe (Lee 368). The legacy of Western historical perceptions of Asia and China cannot be separated from contemporary understandings of Asian American identities and institutional interactions with the country when looking at adoption practices. Dorow is careful to reassert parental rights and choice throughout, but ideas of desirability and accessibility attached to children as prospective adoptees dominate the decision-making process. Both notions depend on preconceived ideas— gleaned and circulated throughout American society and its marketed images— that assign identity and value to a child. The mixed elements of the American model minority image and the cultural interest of a fetishized, Orientalist China constructs the literal child as an entire engaging multicultural experience primed for sentimental and productive fulfillment (Dorow 279). The successful integration into the white nuclear family unit means a great deal to these parents, but not as much as maintaining their whiteness and feeling culturally invigorated at the same time. It slots the child as both a subject of cultural intrigue and an object of cultural indoctrination, not mentioning the overarching savior tropes intertwined into narratives of Western rescue.