ABSTRACT
The vibrant flow of popular culture products from South Korea and Japan has transformed the way ‘East Asia’ is perceived in Indonesia. Recent cultural phenomena as a result of this new global force are copycat (or mimicking) products, such as I-Pop’s boy/girl band and K-Dramas remakes (sinetron or soap operas copying plots from the original K-Dramas). Instead of condemning the process of standardization, commodification and massification implying that the Asian globalization has created a homogenous popular culture scene, this research will go beyond the “economically reductionist explanations of globalization.” By looking at how the cultural industry in Indonesia is, in this moment, being strained to accommodate these foreign products, this research aims to show the cultural dynamics of today’s increasingly globalized environment through a Cultural Studies perspective. Homi Bhaba’s thoughts on mimicry, Fredric Jameson’s pastiche and Raymond Williams’ arguments on the evolution of culture will work as the conceptual foundations of the analysis. The main question to be explored will be: while mimicking the new global, i.e. East Asia pop culture, how does this force us to revisit the complexity and temporality of cultural globalization in Indonesia within the Asian context?
