American Classical League Institute 2024

The Korean entertainment industry is ground zero for discussions of cultural inheritance and Western hegemony, which in part arise from the nation’s neocolonial relationship with the United States post-World War II. Mythic vocabulary originally coded as Western or U.S.-American is adapted by K-Pop performers to constitute the building blocks of a new mythological codex. This form of classical reception illuminates the ways in which we can read classical texts. The dialectics of rage, joy, and identity in K-Pop can shed light on the intensely personal, existential nature of Dionysus’ anger in the Bacchae. Furthermore, understanding the mutually implicated relationship of fan and artist can provide new ways of parsing the dynamic between the god and his chorus. These connections problematize the ingrained cultural hierarchy upheld by the West and merge the field of classical reception with K-Pop and its myth-constructing praxis.