I initially didn’t intend to watch the Netflix blockbuster “KPop Demon Hunters,” an animated film about a K-pop girl band that must save its fans from a group of demons who have taken the corporeal form of a K-pop boy band, as any clever demon would. I had no reason to believe it would be to my liking, let alone culturally relevant to anyone anywhere near my age.
Just because I sometimes write about K-pop doesn’t mean I want to hear it. The film contains so many things I normally hate, including juxtapositions seemingly for juxtaposition’s sake, e.g., hey, wouldn’t it be hilarious if cute, leggy cartoon Asian girl idols slaughtered monsters? I did not particularly care to find out what manner of cultural self-extinction, whitewashing and watering-down the largely North American production had to tolerate in order to appeal to the masses.
And yet, when I did watch it, I found that this worldwide blockbuster isn’t the sloppy, West-kowtowing sellout I had assumed it would be. Rather, it might be proof that we are living in a post-multicultural world — or at least that pop culture has normalized imagining such a world as within reach.
It started streaming back on June 20 and has since become Netflix’s second-most-successful original film of all time. Its tinnitus-inducing single “Golden” (lyrics: “We’re goin’ up, up, up, it’s our moment / You know together we’re glowing”) is No. 1 on the Billboard Top 100. Its Rotten Tomatoes score — 97 percent — is similar to that of “The Godfather” and “Schindler’s List.” Plus, unlike those latter two slouches, this cartoon has singalong screenings in the United States, Britain and Australia. And yet here we are.
This is a film about a three-member K-pop girl band called Huntrix that represents the current iteration of an endless line of female singers/demon hunters. Their life’s purpose is to protect the so-called Honmoon — the thin membrane between our world and the demon-filled netherworld, which resembles the bleak Upside Down from the Netflix series “Stranger Things.” Each generation of demon hunters taps its successors. Got it?
Why do these demon hunters have to be a girl group and not a law firm or something? Because their supernatural powers come entirely from their fan base. The bigger the screams, the higher the album sales, and the more social media engagement, the more equipped Huntrix is to defend the universe. So when Gwi-ma, the head demon (voiced by the “Squid Game” actor Lee Byung-hun), wants to sneak past the Honmoon barrier, his strategy is obvious: create an even hotter, competing boy band called Saja Boys, who are so hot that they make girls’ eyes temporarily turn into popcorn (really). Steal the fans, steal the world.
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