Thread by @Noahpinion

1/One reason I'm so happy about the popularity of South Korean stuff in America is that I think it'll help Americans become less provincial.

One of my big theses is that most Americans barely even realize that other countries exist, and need to get out more.

2/In this regard, the South Korean wave is very different from the Japanese entertainment products that Americans like. Those products are mostly fantasy stuff -- cartoons, comics, video games...

3/Japanese entertainment products are of course influenced by Japan, but they are filtered through several layers of fantasy and whimsy.

Americans who get into Japanese fantasy generally aren't connecting with the actual country of Japan.

noahpinion.substack.com/p/weebs

4/But South Korean stuff is mostly live-action. Americans are seeing actual Korean people on their screens, rather than just fantasy characters that Koreans created! Yes, Squid Game is fantasy and Kpop is heavily produced. But live-action makes a difference...

5/And Parasite and K-dramas have even one less layer of fantasy; they're fiction, and they have a few fantasy elements, but they try to depict a somewhat realistic picture of South Korean life and society in many respects.

6/So Korean media products are teaching Americans that there's a world out there beyond America -- a world with its own problems, to be sure, but a world that's different from what Americans might otherwise have assumed was universal.

7/Understanding the existence and difference of other cultures helps Americans realize that there are better (and worse) ways of doing things. It also helps them understand how much culture they share with other Americans.

8/Obviously foreign media products can only do so much -- living abroad is a much deeper way of teaching people to step outside their own culture. But in lieu of everyone living abroad, even just looking at little pieces of other cultures can help.

9/I sometimes worry that America has become something along the lines of Ming Dynasty China -- a country so huge, so rich, and so secure that we start to think our country is the whole world, and thus ignore important developments beyond our borders.

10/Americans desperately need to realize that we're just one country among many, and that there are other ways of doing things. Provinciality and self-absorption could be our downfall.

(end)