Fandom Love | K-Pop Demon Hunters
As an anthropologist, my primary mode of study is words. I rely on listening to the words people tell me and thinking very deeply about all of that. But there’s a problem with words that I have to always grapple with: what words actually mean can be really different depending on the person speaking them, and these meanings can even change depending on the context the word finds itself in. Two people could speak the same word but really be almost speaking different languages, based on the depth, connotations and meanings these words hold.
There’s one word in particular that I’ve been seeing a lot in fandom spaces. It’s not new in these places, but its something I’ve been encountering a lot. Love.
What does it mean to love a celebrity figure or a musical group? What does it mean when a fan gushes with love? There’s one movie that I think is the best to talk about the complicated ideas of fandom and love, and that’s K-Pop Demon Hunters.
K-Pop Demon Hunters is a movie hosted on Netflix, made by Sony Animations. The movie centres around a K-pop girl group who double as demon hunters. They use their voices and their songs to heal the rifts in the world that the demons come out through. While an animated movie about young women who heal the world through the power of song may seem like a silly premise, this brief description doesn’t do justice to the emotional depth this movie really explores. There are many different dynamics to this movie we can delve into, but I think a large majority of its intricate theming can be explored through the simple word: love.
From the very beginning of the film, there is a focus on the fans. Our introduction to the K-Pop girl group Huntr/x as demon hunters is on their flight to their concert which gets hijacked by demons. When the demons threaten the lives of Huntr/x’s fans, the idols get upset and are determined to save them. We see their relationship with their fans through their manager’s phone. When fans call “we love you”, the three idols call back “we love you, too”.
K-Pop Demon Hunters centres the fans, and the relationship Huntr/x has with them. One of the important aspects of their power as demon hunters is their ability to wield the love and support of their fans. So how does Fandom work in relation to love? And how do we see it working in this movie?
Love, in general, is a complicated word to explain. Defining based on some kind word based definition doesn’t often capture what puts love as something inherently different than just “really liking”. Love is inherently experiential. It’s not enough to just think about the words to define, but rather on how love is experienced and explored, as this is more representative of what people mean when they say they love. What someone means when they say they love their spouse is different to loving their parent, and different again to how you love your child. These differences don’t make one wrong in being called love, its just different. And all this can be different again to when someone says they love Taylor Swift.
So let’s talk for a second about this idea of love, and the experiential versions of love. Most of what I’m going to be drawing on here is derived from Mark Duffett’s chapter on love in fandom, where he focused his discussion specifically on music fandoms - which I think is fitting to the discussion of K-Pop Demon Hunters. In order to help us understand what is meant when fans of Huntr/x say they “love” Rumi or Mira, or even Huntr/x as a whole, Duffet has given us some other phrases and words we can use to better explore experiences and considerations which can be subsumed by this idea of love.
The first is “symbolic economy”, by which we mean the type of power dynamics which exist between people, only seen in its manifestations like concerts. It is, essentially, the recognition of the musicians social influence and power over people. It can be seen most visibly in live events like concerts - the high emotional reaction of fans to their experiences at the event. Probably the best explanation of symbolic economy is “energy”. There is an energy to the room when there is a concert imminently happening, or in the middle of it, and that’s something to difficult to explain except in the sheer idea of loving energy.
The second is a knowing field, which is the intense emotional conviction fans collectively enter into when they notice particularly engrossing parts of a performance, or persuasive elements of the context and experience. This is essentially a field of affect where one’s strong emotional experiences feel immensely personal, and yet are also far more than the individual. Entering the knowing field combined with the symbolic economy means that fans are overwhelmed and overpowered by their intense love.
The third is described as a pull, the way in which getting closer to an idol intensifies feelings of pleasure. This closeness can be physical, as in being close to a stage or even pulled up on stage with them. The idol has a particular pull to them, one which the fans can feel and long for, creating a temptation to touch, even if not actually physically.
The last we’ll be talking about today is counter-performance, which is how fans interact with the preformative templates of their favourite performers. By also interacting and performing these same endeavours, the fans unlock pleasures associated with these roles, movements and ideas.
Now all these different ways of interpreting the experience of “love” - again, not the definition of it, but the experience of it - helps to explain what we’re looking at when we talk about fandom love. Not all fans have to experience all of these, but rather they show us different dynamics and explorations of what fan love actually means.
And we see all of these dimensions playing out in K-Pop Demon Hunters.
For most of the movie, we have two competing pop groups: Huntr/x and the Saja Boys, the hunters versus the demons. These two are actively competing for the affection and attention of their fans, as the fans are what gives Huntr/x their powers, and the Saja Boys can use this attention to both lower the affect of the hunters as well as feed the great demon Gw-ma. They compete not only by writing and releasing different catchy singles, but also through active participation and performance for the audience.
In order to illicit a greater connection and feel from their audiences, increasing their inherent pull, the idols attempt to showcase authenticity. The first two song we hear them sing - How It’s Done and Golden - both paint pictures of who they are in reality. They sing openly about their identities, their pasts, and how they feel about themselves in their roles. While Saja Boys are being somewhat authentic in their songs, there’s a sheen of separation between the actual meaning and the lyrics themselves. Soda Pop talks openly about how the fans are their power source, and they want to consume them. However, it’s hidden in a sheen of catchy sugary pop music and large metaphors that are only obvious when you are given knowledge of their deep personal identities kept hidden.
Both Saja Boys and Huntr/x compete in a game of authenticity. Saja Boys try to appeal to the fans by attempting to show personality and interest. Their appearance on game shows, for example, are demonstrations of person-hood that allow fans to connect to them as personalities. Hunr/x does much the same, though already having a history of connection to fans to build on.
Authenticity and direct personalities and person-hood is an important aspect of an connection. Many fans see relatability as an important aspect, something that makes the musical idol something more than just a vessel for music. They become a real human being, one which the audience member can directly connect to and feel an affinity for. These relationships formed are somewhat para-social, but what creates the pull that encourages the attention of love and connection both sides need from their fans.
But there’s a dynamic to both of these presentations of authenticity. In Golden in particular, their openness of what they experience is highly edited. For example, Mira’s lyric “called a problem child/cause I got too wild/now that’s how I’m getting paid” hints at her experiences with a family who did not always just accept her, or even look maybe a little below the surface to examine why their daughter was acting in a particular way. However, she phrases this experience as an inherently positive thing, celebrating how her experiences got her to where she is. While there is an element of authenticity and truth to her lyrics, it’s not still inherently true. We see this at the end of the film when Gwi-ma is able to turn Mira’s own anxieties about finding an accepting and loving family against her, feeding on her insecurities which tell her she doesn’t really deserve one. When she realises her own short comings, it’s phrased as wishing she had “let the jagged edges see the light instead”, hinting to the fact she hid away the more difficult parts of herself from her friends and loved ones, but especially from the fans and from her music.
While Golden and these other songs showcase elements of their personalities, they’re heavily edited depictions and ones which still paint them as somehow perfect. This is, of course, a chosen aspect of the writing for these songs, depicting the pressure K-Pop idols often feel in being perfect and yet somehow relatable.
But, let’s talk about our final song, This is What it Sounds Like. This is the moment where everything is on display, where Huntr/x reveal to each other and to their fans all their flaws and struggles. This is the pure authenticity, the true authenticity, rather than the curated and edited versions. And the crowd responds by singing the song with them.
Singing along at a concert is not exactly new to K-Pop Demon Hunters, this is something people do at concerts, particularly in more recent experiences of concerts. This is part of the counter-performance kind of experience that we talked about before. The experience of being there, of being close, of experiencing what they experience, feeling that intense and overwhelming emotions of the symbolic economy meeting the knowing field, and then coming to fruition with a joining in the counter-performance. The audience is not just feeling their love for Huntr/x, but directly counter-perform to show their connection and love through the act of echoing back the sentiment to the idols.
And this is an important part of K-Pop Demon Hunters - the love and affection of fans is not just a battle for saving people from demons, or a mechanism through which to garner attention on their songs. The attention and love of fans directly power each fighting faction. Gwi-ma feeds on the souls of fans, and Huntr/x relies on the fans souls and love and attention to power the Honmoon as well as their weapons. It is love which grows the power, but mostly because within the love is the connection to the individual person.
There’s an interesting correlation in the film between the depiction and idea of an individual’s soul and their ability to love. The demons are seen as not having a soul due to their inability to love, and this is what Jinu struggles with throughout the film - grappling with the idea of being able to love despite his flaws, problems, and selfish past. He feels he can love, but struggles to overcome the shame of his own past. Huntr/x’s ultimate issue in truly achieving a golden Honmoon is the fact they hide aspects of themselves they don’t love. These aspects of themselves become the part that Gwi-ma most feeds on, the quiet shameful part of ourselves that makes us believe we are not worthy of being loved or loving in return. When Rumi demonstrates that true self-love is recognising the broken parts of ourselves, this is when the souls return to her friends. And its this that also allows Jinu to see himself as lovable again.
The fans ability to give of themselves in their soul to power the Honmoon, then, is not a parasitic idea like the demonic control of Gwi-ma, but rather a reflection of love. And the fandom love, the love shared by fans to both the idol and the community is one dimension of this, but is ultimately re-ignited by Rumi’s encouragement of the fans to also love themselves.
Even though idol love is para-social, there is still a two way dynamic to the relationship which bears attention. When we talk about the social economy, for example, this is a power dynamic in which the idol holds all the power. However, this power is only present because of the love and attention of fans. Without them, the social power is not present at all. Idols and celebrity figures need fans.
When the audience sings along to This is What it Sounds Like, it’s not just a powerful demonstration of fandom love, but rather one in which the power dynamic is on display. The social power is held by Huntr/x, but only after it was stripped away from them. The fans re-connect to Huntr/x, and Rumi in particular, not through false or edited authenticity, but rather through the true and real demonstration of their identities. The personalities are reconnected, through a true and honest view of who they are, fundamentally - flaws and all. And the audience wholly connects to it because they see a truth in it, and they love Huntr/x all the same for it.
And my favourite part of all of this? The love of the fans is not depicted only in these familiar experiences of screaming fans at concert halls or fans explaining their ships. It’s also in the depiction of the fans singing to give their souls to Huntr/x to help fight with. Because to love something, even para-socially, is to give a part of yourself fully. There’s something so strong about loving something to the point of fandom.
The truth of the matter is, love is a complicated word, with a multitude of meanings and readings. The word includes things like admiration, affection, affinity, lust, appreciation, or even just the recognition of creativity. It’s not often that the use of the word “love” in fandom is meant to insinuate something along the lines of romantic connections, rather fans use the word to convey both a deep subjective convictions, like a spiritual connection, as well as a shared sense of community between the fans themselves. It’s not just singing alone at home which provides a power to the experience of the group counter-performance, but the community aspect of it. It’s the crowd gathering to sing it back to Huntr/x that truly conveys the experiences of love we’re talking about there.
Fans fell in love with the meaning of the song. They fell in love with the lyrics. They love the harmonies. They love the passion with which it was sung, and the spontaneous emotional convictions behind its creation. They love with a kind of love that is only experienced by fans, feeling the energy of their shared space, the social power held by the object of their affection, and in seeing their own selves and experiences being echoed in those of someone else on a stage.