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Why is it important?

From Special issue introduction (Neil Ewen): In this first essay, Donnar examines Meokbang, a phenomenon which features ‘broadcasting jockeys’ who gain celebrity status by sitting in front of webcams, ‘live-streaming their consumption of vast quantities of food’. Donnar argues that while ‘Moekbang certainly facilitates a sexualised, voyeuristic gaze’, his subtle reading gestures towards how these broadcasts of DIY celebrity ‘navigate cultural and economic tensions, anxieties and passions specific to Korean society and culture’ and how it 'engenders divergent audience affects and ambivalent modes of viewing, including pleasure, desire, longing, horror, disgust and shame’. Donnar’s careful exploration therefore places the phenomenon within a national, cultural, and historical specificity that serves to problematise hegemonic representational stereotypes of, and assumptions about, Asian culture that are repeatedly elaborated in English language media.

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This page is a summary of: ‘Food porn’ or intimate sociality: committed celebrity and cultural performances of overeating in meokbang, Celebrity Studies, January 2017, Taylor & Francis,
DOI: 10.1080/19392397.2016.1272857.
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