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A group of young men are practising dance movements in a small studio. The garments they wear look loose and worn out. A cold, compact fluorescent light casts its light on their bodies. The camera is located in front of the dancers at the other side of the room. The room is remarkably shabby and tiny. It is full of odds and ends, such as speakers, electric fans, a small fridge, tables, and drawers. Behind the dancers, there is a green exit sign on the wall, which signifies that the studio is located right in front of the exit. Despite such stringent conditions, the dancers fully focus on their rehearsal. They work hard. They gasp, and their bodies are sweating. On the video thread, female fans leave comments that address the bodily effort of the performers, such as “Heavy breathe [sic.] after the dance… so sexy!!!” (ID: ****momo). Other comments express sympathy: “[T]hat small room […] [T]hey work so hard to proof others that they capable to doing anything from nothing to everything […]” (****ung).Footnote 1

Introduction

I draw this scene from K-pop boy group Infinite’s dance practice video titled “Paradise Dance Ver. (2015) (Woolliment 2011).” Since the 2000s, K-pop has become a global phenomenon, along with the transnational circulation and popularity of Korean pop culture, called the Korean Wave. The Korean Wave, or Hallyu, refers to the increasing popularity of South Korean popular culture since the late 1990s, including music, drama, film, and fashion (Iwabuchi 2002). These products have gone global and entered a number of regions of East Asia, the Middle East, Southeast Asia, Oceania, Latin America, the USA, Canada, and parts of Europe (Ravina 2009, pp. 3–9). Currently, K-pop is the driving force of Korean Wave. As dance-driven music, K-pop is characterized by young idols’ spectacular visual performances. Among many other K-pop groups, Infinite consists of seven male singers, and is one of the most well-known boy bands that has been groomed by Woollim Entertainment since 2010.

Recently, major K-pop music agents, such as SM Entertainment, JYP, and YG Entertainment, began to post their singers’ dance practice videos on their official YouTube websites and share them with fans around the world. Woollim Entertainment, too, has released dance practice videos of their trainees and singers, including Infinite’s. Unlike official music videos, in which viewers would be exposed to highly polished and decorated images of singers, these videos are barely edited. Instead, they simply show singers’ dance practice scenes in small studios. Nevertheless, many of them get high views on YouTube.Footnote 2 So then, why do fans watch these ordinary and often unofficial low-budget videos?

This chapter particularly focuses on Infinite, given the group’s elevation in status—from a poor, unknown group in the “Paradise Dance Ver.” video to rising K-pop super stars today.Footnote 3 I argue that fans enjoy the dance practice video because of an intimate and erotic sensation while watching the bodily labor of the men, as well as sympathy toward the male dancers, which allow the female viewers to reverse gender power dynamics. I first closely read the singers’ bodies and movements in relation to the song lyrics, using descriptive analysis. I also look at the rehearsal space and the setting/editing of the camera angle. I look at how these visual signs indicate socioeconomic status, and how the intersectionality of class and sexuality shapes the gendered experience of the female audience. For audience reception, I observe and collect comments on the video thread published from October 2011 to July 2015. I classify the entire comments into several categories and select the key themes.Footnote 4 As YouTube videos can be circulated globally, it would be difficult to provide definite biographies or geographical belongings of this particular study group. Nevertheless, their use of language, ID, profile pictures and subscribed channels are indicative. In this chapter, K-pop female fans refer to YouTube users who use English as their primary language. It can include Koreans, but Korea has its own search engines that are popular among local Korean youth, such as Naver. Korean K-pop fans would also prefer to use Korean when leaving their comments. Thus, ethnic and racial diversity of the audience group could vary, and it should be understood as a more inclusive and fluid group of people in terms of multiple categories of ethnic and national identities.

As gender studies scholars and feminist critics have demonstrated, masculinity is a social construction, and thus constantly challenged and reshaped depending on different sociocultural circumstances. Today, ideal Korean masculinity has been transformed from “manly” breadwinner types to soft and even androgynous looking men (Oh 2015). This soft masculinity currently dominates Korean and East Asian pop culture (Epstein and Joo 2012). K-pop emblematizes such soft masculinity in the twenty-first century. The term “flower boys” is widely used to describe K-pop idols who have perfectly groomed and polished appearances, and often have androgynous and feminized features, which become the predominant male prototype in K-pop (Xiaolong 2014). Changes in men’s grooming should not be conflated with a subversion of patriarchy, as the society still struggles with and confronts entrenched misogyny, responding to the growing women’s rights movement and the improved social and economic status of women (Lee 2015). Nonetheless, men’s grooming and “flower boys” come in response to relative shifts in perspectives on male bodies. In K-pop, male bodies become consumable objects; the more consumable they are, the more desirable they become. Such fluid gender representation in K-pop and the subsequent consumption of male physicality set up a new criterion in evaluating ideal masculinity and have a potential to challenge the stigmatized notion of conventional Korean masculinity as “authoritative,” “militarized” Confucian men (Sea-ling 2000; Moon 2005).

As K-pop is circulated globally, K-pop is not just a local issue limited to the Korean context. Asian-American men have been stigmatized due to racialized stereotypes—being coded as effeminate in comparison to normative white masculinity (Wong 2010; Shimakawa 2002). The majority of K-pop singers are Korean.Footnote 5 Nevertheless, their bodies are often reminiscent of Asian-American stereotypes in the gaze of Western viewers, as demonstrated by the success of the “Gangnam Style” (2012) music video by Korean rapper PSY, whose short, non-muscular body and round face has been viewed as “authentically” Asian (Pan 2013; Bevan 2012). PSY, however, does not resemble typical K-pop male singers but rather fits into the historically constructed “inferior” and “asexualized” Asian-American male stereotypes (Kang 2013).

Analyzing K-pop dance practice videos not only complicates and expands our understanding of masculinity, but also issues of female spectatorship in a global context. Gaze is power; the construction of masculinity is not monolithically determined but informed by polysemic interactions with (female) gaze projected on their bodies (Goddard 2000). In the process of decoding pop culture, counter-hegemonic readings are possible (Hall 1980). Female spectators and critics engaging in diverse racial, gender, and sexual identifications have resisted the male-dominated gaze via female-oriented readings (Gamman and Marshment 1989; Hooks 2003; Schauer 2005; Thornham 1999), which Bell Hooks calls “the oppositional gaze.” Footnote 6 In the era of “pornographication” of mainstream culture, men’s objectification is maybe not a strange phenomenon (Schauer 2005, p. 62). What makes K-pop fans unique, however, is that they move beyond objectification of the male body by de-stigmatizing and rather eroticizing Korean/Asian/Asian American masculinity, and actively redefine the subjectivity of female spectatorship, which I will elaborate on throughout this chapter.

Like the gaze, the body physicalizes the symbolic mechanism of subversion and/or subordination. Moving bodies “reinforce the ideologies that act on and through them, but they also have the potential to issue a dynamic challenge to static and repressive notion” (Rossen 2014, p. 63). Although each dance practice video exhibits different performers and choreographies, they share some similarities. Physicality matters. Fans watch the videos to see moving bodies, and performers or their agents upload the videos to share their movement practices. How is male sexuality embodied, expressed, and consumed in the global social media in which fans freely speak of their desire without censorship? What does the consumption of the male body tell us about female spectatorship, gaze, and shifting gender relations today? How do dancing Korean men and their fans challenge stereotypes of East Asian masculinity in a glocal milieu? These questions lie at the core of my analysis.

Tragic Heroes With “Hot” Dance Moves

The lyrics of “Paradise” describe the deep sadness of parting and desperate feelings of love. The chorus explains the meaning of “Paradise” in the context:

[Chorus] This place is a paradise only if you’re here

A paradise that has locked you in against your will

A sad paradise that you won’t go if you’re awake

A paradise that we can be together forever […]

The best paradise, without you it’s a hopeless world

As the lyrics express sorrow and joy, the choreography of “Paradise” compendiously exhibits both sides of love through passionate and tempestuous movements. In the dance practice video of “Paradise”, the choreography consists of speedy and powerful movement sequences. Each group member has his own solo part. During a member’s solo, the other members do not take rest but constantly move across the space. For their group dance scenes, all of them execute the same movements and create a great level of harmony, moving identical ways. Despite the limited space, none of them hit or bump into each other. Indeed, Infinite is well known with their synchronized group dance style, which is called “knife group dance”, or Kalkunmu in the Romanization of Korean. Kal means a knife and kunmu refers to a group dance. Kalkunmu means that each group member does exactly the same movements as sharp as a knife; their accuracy in terms of timing, speed, level, space, and movement quality is so homogenized, synchronized, and identical, like an object cut by a knife.

In the video, the dancers express intensive emotional engagements in the movements. All members stand in two lines. They slightly hop and step forward, kicking their feet and stretching their arms and pointing their fingers to the front, and then they drop them together. With the lyrics, “This place is a paradise only if you’re here,” they point out the audience when they speak out “you.” Footnote 7 They catch their arms again and place them on their chests with passion, as if telling their lost lovers that they are still in their hearts. They quickly swing their arms and legs backward, step back, and kick their knees briskly in the air, bending the other legs, stretching their arms downward and palms facing front, and stare at the audience with faces that are full of strong emotions, which successfully illustrate the lyrics “The best paradise, without you it’s a hopeless world.” Positioning their feet back and forth, they lean on their back legs and throw up their arms forward with clenched fists for a couple of times, while holding the other arm to the side, facing their palms forwards. Punching the air with their fists, they gradually descend to the floor, opening and closing their front knees repetitively. When opening their knees, they thrust their pelvises together with their thrown arms, and magnify the tightness and tautness implied in the movement. During the entire rehearsal, they constantly maintain their focus. They dance hard with full effort, like cheerleaders do onstage. Their dance is powerful, strong, rigorous, and firmly staged with full of energy.

The scenario of the song resembles an epic poem, due to the grand scale of melody and music style. The dancers envision this tragic scenario through movements. Their gestures often resonate with those of heroic or legendary figures in an epic film. At the climax of the song, the sound gradually quietens. Sung-kyu Kim, the main singer of the group, kneels down on the floor in a dramatic manner, singing “I’m gonna hold you in a little longer, I’m gonna look at you a little more, until my heart cools off a little more.” He stretches out his hand, clenches his fists, and beats his chest, lowering his head to express sorrow. He looks desperate and desolate. The other members circle around him, dragging their feet, and descend to the floor slowly, undulating their entire bodies, as if their hearts are melting because of sadness. On the floor, they make sudden, explosive movements, sharply flicking and bouncing their chests back and forth, as if their hearts and fever are still alive. Their facial expressions deliver pain and agony in a realistic way. The singers successfully transform themselves into the roles they play—the tragic heroes—by embodying the chivalric code via dramatic movements and facial expressions with the melancholy lyrics. This chivalric code, accompanied with physical expressions, enhances the believability of the tragic images of their characters. By portraying pitiful characters with their sensual, powerful dance movements, the performers play double-sided characters: tragic heroes in narrative and entertainers in physicality. This raises the question: how do fans decode such a double-layered presentation of masculinity and discover meaning identified with and for themselves?

“My Poor Babies!”: Reversing The Cinderella Complex and Empowering The Female Gaze

For fans, the performers’ explicit exhibition of bodily labor evokes sexual connotations. As the movement style is strictly rigid and requires a significant level of physical energy, their bodies and faces become slick with sweat as time goes on. Some of them wear sleeveless shirts, and their muscular arms also become agleam with sweat. The video culminates with the singers standing on their own spots, showing their final poses. The music is just over, so there is no background sound. The audience now hears the performers’ breathing. Due to the fierce, demanding choreography, the dancers’ breathing comes in short gasps, and at the end of their practice, all of them are short of breath and panting. Responding to the last scene, fans write:

[A] moment of silence for all our nonexistent ovaries (ID: ****e Kim)

OMG ! Their breath at the end ! They’re exhausted ! x) Infinite are the best <3 (ID: ****a Rahary)

I think I replayed their heavy breathing at the end like a million times….. ;_;” (ID: ****paradaisu)

Other comments also contain emoticons, such as “<3”, which means love, or kiss. As the performers’ sweating bodies metaphorically suggest an erotic sensation, fans connect heavy breathing as resulting from intense physical labor with sexual connotations.

For fans, the performers’ heavy breathing signifies more than sexual excitement. It is also an issue of sympathy. “Breathings at the end of the video kinda [sic.] broke my heart” (ID: ****z Catak), “Bouncy hair. Poor babies, breathing so hard at the end of the dance” (ID: ****h DC), fans describe. In addition to the bodily labor of the performers, lyrics also help fans to better experience sympathy. “Paradise” describes sadness, and the lyrics resemble stories in a tear-jerking soap opera due to a dramatic storyline of the song. Love is so important that it can be compared with death:

Please stay here, I’m asking you a favor, I’ll treat you better, I can’t let you go yet

I must live, I must survive, ’cause I will stop some day

The lyrics sound intense because of the lexical choice, such as “must live.” It implies that love is the reason they live. If a female viewer could identify herself with the heroine in the lyrics, she would create a perfect moment of sympathy because these men cannot exist without her and desperately need her love.

The practice room of “Paradise” also evokes pity among viewers. Since the room is too small, some of them could accidentally hit props or furniture behind them while dancing. Fans write:

[S]eriously[,] I can barely focus on the dance in this video because I’m too busy thinking about how much this practice room looks like a HUGE FIRE TRAP: like look at all those exposed wires! and [sic.] that weird black material covering the walls!! Yikes […] (ID: ****ka Young)

Poor [S]ung [Y]eol they have such a small room to practice he accidentally hit the table at a moment with his long leg. It’s okay oppa you still dance the best! (ID: ****m Syed Ali)

Fans’ sympathy regarding the practice room connotes issues of class. The shabby small studio implies a harsh working environment that the practitioners might confront, as well as the potentially low socioeconomic status of the singers.

This class status of the dancers affects fans’ reception of the male bodies. Infinite has noticeable dance skills among many K-pop idols. Hoya, a member of the group, is often called a “dancing machine” due to his versatile and bold dance techniques (Kpooop 2015). But due to sympathetic feelings, the viewers become more generous while watching the group’s performance. The severe condition further illuminates the dancers’ work ethic. Fans praise not only the singers’ virtuosity but also the group’s diligence and sincerity as artists:

Yup! Think about they didn’t have a big company to back them up. I can only say it’s pure talent that has brought them this far. And they’ve been always living up to their name, never disappoint fans in terms of how amazing they are on live stage […] (ID: ****k Fann)

They did not have a sleek practice room back then. But look what they have delivered to fans under that circumstance. Instead of whining, complaining, or filing lawsuits against their agency, these guys’ work ethic deserves my most respect (ID: ****nite Musik)

Infinite’s hard work and work ethic inspire fans. Given the lack of social and economic capital, Infinite’s virtuosity reveals the group’s tremendous effort in achieving the fame that they currently have. The group could be a role model for the young generation, as the performers have worked up from the bottom and achieved their success through their bodily effort and virtuosity, perhaps without much help from their agency.

The fans’ approval goes beyond the issue of the work ethic. It is a complicated negotiation process of one’s identification as much as it is gendered and classed. On the comment thread, fans act out a certain role by playing or masquerading a particular position. In this virtual scenario, the fans become Infinite’s old friends, who have watched their success and who have helped to raise Infinite. Some of them said that they are proud of their “babies,” and “my boys,” as the group “got successful enough to get a better practice room eventually” (ID: ****ka Young).

That small room. [B]ring many memories for both INFINITE and inspirit. [T]ime flies. [T]hey work so hard to proof others that they capable to doing anything from nothing to everything. hahha. [W]e proud of u INFINITE (ID: ****jung)

[I] cried when they got a new dorm … how they work really hard to get where they got now … [W]e inspirit really proud of you, infinite :D (ID: ****a Winchester)

Watching this dance practice is just…goodness i can't even explain the feeling. Too overwhelming. So proud of my boys! […] (ID: ****gale)

Accompanied by the words “babies” and “my boys,” the fans’ use of “proud” is significant, as the word implies and is applied to a hierarchical relation. Female fans’ ardent support resonates with “the Cinderella complex,” the conventional rhetoric that is still pervasive today (Dubino 1993). The Cinderella complex is named after a fairy tale Cinderella, the well-known story of a diligent, beautiful, and kind woman who was unable to change her destiny, including her lower social status, without the help of a prince. K-pop fans reverse this rhetoric. They like this video because here, Infinite is low-class “poor babies.” They pity Infinite having to work such long hours, often with mistreatment by their agency, despite the group’s talent. Fans are also aware of the fact that they take pleasure from watching the dancers’ moves, and that the dancers would not be able to succeed without their fans’ help.

Indeed, Infinite’s fans have “protected” their stars. K-pop fans are famous for their full-hearted dedication to their stars through both online and offline activities. Infinite’s fans are no exception. Inspirit, Infinite’s official fan club, has helped the group to increase visibility. In 2014, Inspirit launched a movement and urged Infinite fans worldwide to vote for Infinite so that the group could win at the “Mnet Mwave World Championship 2014.” Footnote 8 The fan club also accused “Golden Disk Awards” of not properly treating their stars. According to Inspirit, while Infinite traveled to Beijing in China to attend the ceremony, the agency did not provide Infinite with safe transportation and appropriate snacks during the stay. Infinite took a train and were provided with cup noodles, while other artists were provided with luxury car transportations and healthy lunch boxes, Inspirit said.

By celebrating the male dancers’ success from unknown, hard-working “poor babies” to rising K-pop stars, fans celebrate themselves—their power and ability to support their idols. They watch K-pop dance practice videos not just because they are fans of the group, but also because they feel empowered by watching the videos. By “saving” and “protecting” the group, female fans complicate and reverse the conventional rhetoric in gender construction: a heroic man and a tragic female who desperately needs men’s help. They enact power upon the male bodies to demonstrate their authority by complimenting their own labor to prove that fans’ support has sustained the male dancers.

Watching “Real” Stars with Intimacy

In a music video, K-pop singers look like stars. They wear fancy costumes and make-up and dance under the spotlight. All of these theatrical elements enhance visual splendor and transform a dance piece into a spectacular show. Infinite, too, are also clad in extremely ornamental colorful costumes with embellished accessories, such as tight glossy white skinny pants and silky blazers. Their official music videos project spectacular visual images with magnificent props, stunning lighting, and stage settings. In a live show, it would be more difficult to see “real” performers, unless the audience purchases expensive front seats. In many cases, the audience would watch the singers onstage through the big screen in a concert hall. Due to such theatrical distance, the audience believes that the performers onstage are special and different from them, which is often called “stage presence” or the “aura of theatrical presence” (Fuchs 1985; Copeland 1990). Such experience is also applied to the experience of watching music videos, given the hyper-realistic nature of modern technology today. The mediatized experience is no longer separable from the live experience, as the “experience of live performance in the current cultural climate is by reference to the dominant experience of mediatization” (Auslander 2008, p. 5). The emergence of high technology and digital media today often make music videos visibly more attractive and more real than live performances, which Baudrillard Jean might call simulacra (Jean 1981). Indeed, online is the primary platform where K-pop is circulated and consumed globally, and fans are used to watching singers via video screens. Due to the physical and metaphorical distance between the performers and fans, with the help of the mediatized presence, the singers remain stars.

Infinite’s music agent aims to frame the group’s public persona as romantic, fairytale-style heroes. For their song “The Chaser” (2012), the agency released another version of the original music video, entitled “The Chaser (Dance Ver).” In the official dance video, with a futuristic setting, quick moves of the camera angle, and highly fashionable and decorative clothes, all members appear perfectly groomed, like living manga characters. The original “Paradise” music video, too, exhibits Infinite as romantic, heroic figures.

On the contrary, in the dance practice video, Infinite look significantly different from the type of “chivalric” men represented by their official music videos, along with the grandiose music style of the group. Infinite wear loose T-shirts and baggy training pants in a small studio without fabulous make up, spectacular backup dancers, or accessories. They look like ordinary men. Their appearance seems plain. Lighting is limited as well, with only fluorescent lamps in the practice room. There are no professional or theatrical props and settings. Rather, the small room is full of daily supplies. Behind the performers, there are household items, such as speakers, electric fans, a small fridge, tables, and drawers. Such a shabby background setting is unlikely to be an intentional display to cultivate the fans’ response. The agent has likely shared the choreography videos with fans as a “fan service,” not necessarily expecting a huge number of viewers. On their official YouTube Homepage, called “Infinitehome,” this dance practice video is categorized into a playlist entitled “INFINITE Choreography”, in which only eight dance practice videos are available. It is quite a small amount of videos, given their career since 2010.

Interestingly, it is the sub-par nature of the video that appeals to female fans. As it is a low-budget video, the video is also less mediatized, and thus appears less artificial. Such a “natural” look provides viewers with a different level of audience experience and a sense of intimacy. Because the room is too small, there is almost no distance between the camera and the performers. The audience can closely observe performers’ facial expressions. While dancing, the performers often frown because of concentration or physical tension. Due to proximity, it provides fans with imagination, so that they feel like they are observing the performers in person. A fan wrote: “[I]f i [sic] were to be that thingy in front of them on the floor, [I] will blush like mad omg, esp [sic] that part.:3” (ID: ****han peh). Footnote 9 Fans are able to feel as if they are witnessing these dancing men closely, which is impossible in reality.

This K-pop dance practice video seems to invite fans to see the “real” life of K-pop performers. A fan described, “I love how in this particular dance practice their outfits say so much about who they actually are. Too adorable” (ID: ****ey Stydinger). The artlessness of the video provides viewers with a moment of imagining that they are accessing the stars’ private, off-stage life as special guests. It is true that the idea of seeing the authentic self can be tricky and even naïve. Nevertheless, the dancers could videotape the rehearsals for their own evaluation, to see how they might look onstage, so that they can further develop their choreography and performance skills. When recording the video, they may not be aware of whether this rehearsal video could be open to the public later.

Limited video editing is another aspect that draws viewers into the dance practice video. In the video, there is no additional visual element other than the performers per se, as “the camera just stays still” (ID: ****vedobservxer). The camera in a fixed position implies that viewers are less likely to have any other distractions, and have more agency in term of gaze, unlike music videos that tend to establish viewers’ point of views and provide selected parts of the image/object.

Some of the fans go one step further and address the fact that they are replaying the videos multiple times to see specific body parts and movement sequences over and over again. The chorus part is particularly beloved by fans. It is their “favorite” because of the fierce and sensual images that the move generates. Referring to the chorus part, fans said:

That’s why he is my favorite. His exaggerated “pelvic thrust” won my heart. :P (ID: ****penas)

This choreo [sic.] is certainly paradise when they wear those tight black wife beaters and intensify the hip thrust LAWD (ID: ****eo)

i’ve [sic] never been able to watch this all the way through without my eyes wandering to sunggyu’s thighs, and always as soon as my eyes land on them i [sic] cant take them away!! help [sic] me (****y S)

So they do the epic hip action six times… not enough for me to watch all the members do it. I guess I’ll have to watch it again~ You know… for science… (ID: ****oTheRain)

They enjoy watching a particular dance scene associated with a body part that symbolizes male sexuality. For K-pop fans, online technology becomes a way of “choreographing” their desire (Oh 2015), as they get “erotic ideas” (ID: ****alita) from watching the male dancers’ specific moves.

The Polysemic Female Gaze

Watching the dancing male bodies, female fans switch their positions from being objects of gaze to being the ones doing the gazing. The female body has a long history of objectification by the male gaze, as “Otherness” (Banes 1998; De Lauretis 1987; Mulvey 1975). This group of women watching the male dancers, however, reflects a new progress in the realm of spectatorship and pleasure associated with the gaze. They do not simply reverse the bodily objectification, but engage in a complex process of negotiation of gender identification. Though the female viewers take pleasure from watching the sweating dance men, they are not necessarily “Othering” these men. Rather, they emphasize intimacy and reveal an emotional connection with these men. Their status as fans, not simply as spectators, could inform such a perspective, as fans often intentionally take up subordinate positions to their idols (Fiske 1992). But unlike traditional fandom, they do not necessarily idolize these singers. They challenge a double-subjugation of female fans by rejecting the hegemony of women as the object of the male gaze, and fans as subordinated group compared to their idols, or even (white) male-centered mainstream culture. On the comment thread, they share their ideas and feelings and bring up further thoughts and emotions on the transnational platform. Through the consumption of the male dancers, they publicize female bounding that is potentially informed by counter-hegemonic identification of gender norms. They physicalize something that could create efficacy, empathy, and potential changes. They perform imagination.

Toward an Open Dialogue for Masculinity and Spectatorship

Fans perform imagination by consuming the K-pop dance practice video. They connect heavy breath and sweating bodies with sexual activities and eroticize men’s physical labor. The performers’ demanding working environment, exemplified by the shabby practice room, signifies the low class of the singers. For fans, their bodily labor evokes both sympathy and esteem, as the singers have gone through a difficult period and become K-pop stars. It also conjures up erotic feelings, as the “poor babies” are dancing hard to satisfy their (female) fans, which can be the major part of their success. By celebrating Infinite’s success, fans not only praise the singers’ work ethic but also celebrate and empower themselves—their power and ability to support these “poor boys.” Fans become passionate protectors and benevolent patrons of these Cinderella-like K-pop idols. Fans further pity the singers because of the dramatic and tragic scenario of the lyrics that resemble a chivalric code in which fans potentially identify the heroine with themselves. The performers play multiple-layered characters: tragic heroes in lyrics and sensual dancing men in physicality, which can amplify female viewers’ pleasure as these men play both conventional and unconventional masculinity. The plainness of the video also attracts female viewers. It has no theatrical lighting effects, costumes, props, or setting, and the video is not edited either. Focusing exclusively on the men’s bodies and movements without distraction or predetermined camera angles, fans claim agency in their usage of the gaze. They also feel intimacy—a fantasy that they are watching the singers’ performances sitting in the room and peeking at the stars’ “real” life.

The construction of masculinity is inseparable from how it is viewed—spectatorship. Dancers depicted in the K-pop dance practice video and their female fans subvert the conventional notions of masculinity in a glocal context. These sweating “poor babies” do not resemble the stigmatized notion of conventional Korean masculinity—militarized, patriarchal and Confucianist men. This change is significant not because of changing representations of ideal manhood but because it reflects the reversed power dynamics in gender relations. Female fans observe the male bodies and subvert the gendered gaze. By eroticizing the dancing male bodies, women feel dominance and enact empowerment because the pretty young idols desperately need fans’ help (often both in reality and in the lyrics) and willingly please their fans. The vulnerable bodies, fully exposed to the audience’s gaze, open up the room for envisioning the male body as a site of desire—the platform of destabilizing power, dominance, and eroticism on the male bodies, some of which are still in the closet. The performers in K-pop dance practice videos and their fans also challenge asexualized stereotypes of Asian-American masculinity in Western culture. Fans’ appreciation of K-pop dancers ties up to sexual desire, as they consume the video in regard to particular sensual and erotic imaginations.

Western culture has a long history of male dancers who have confronted homoeroticism (Burt 2011). The notion of dance as a female realm still permeates Western culture today, which discourages men from dancing so that male bodies should not be objectified as a spectacle to the dominant (male) gaze, and thus not challenge heteronormativity (Craig 2013). Female fans liberate themselves from the stereotype imposed upon the male dancers and construct a resistive site in which the audience takes pleasure in viewing the dancing men. Though it is clear that their attempt is driven by sexual enjoyment, they do not necessarily confine the male dancers into the categories of homosexual or objectification. In a glocal context, they actively eroticize stigmatized Korean masculinity and asexualized Asian (American) manhood by exploring a wide range of narratives with a complex negotiation between the male body versus the female gaze: devotional fans versus saviors of the Cinderella-like men, and lastly, objectification versus intimate identification with their singers. Fostering dialogue on male corporeality in motion will demystify masculinity and open up alternative ways of performing sexuality, spectatorship, and identification of gender relations via spectatorship.