The Death of “Foreign”
Welcome to the new age of media in America
NETFLIX // COURTESY IMAGE
This year, four of the top 10 most searched Halloween costumes in the United StatesU.S. were for Squid Game, a Korean show on Netflix that skyrocketed to massive global success in late September 2021. The rest of the top 10 were predictable mainstays of Western culture, including Spider Man and Harry Potter. It is impressive that a new show, one in another language no less, managed to secure so many spots among a list of decades-old cultural icons. American entertainment has long been popular overseas, but the growing popularity of foreign media in the United States implies a shift in how Americans are consuming media and culture.
For decades, America has dominated the production of culture on a global scale. In 1998, an article ran in the Washington Post titled “American Pop Penetrates Worldwide.” America was exporting “mass-produced products of its popular culture,” the article said. A New York Times article from 1994 titled “Pop Culture; The New Colossus: American Culture as a Power Export” cited a report by Variety that of the world’s 100 most attended films, 88 were American. The top 10 TV shows of the 1990s and the 2000s were entirely American. In the 2010s, the list remained dominated by American shows with one slight variation: the wildly popular sitcom, The Office, which was a remake of a British show.
America has gone from exporting culture to having its most popular show of the year be an imported show. The success of Squid Game has been extraordinary - it reached number one on Netflix in 90 countries, making it the first Korean series to hold the number one spot in America. Yet, Squid Game is not the only Korean media to take Western viewers by storm in recent years. The Korean movie Parasite made history for being the first non-English movie to win Best Picture at the Oscars. Despite the massive success of Squid Game and Parasite, the spread of Korean culture might be best exemplified by the success of K-pop, Korean pop music.
K-pop has been massively successful in America. BTS is a boy band known for catchy pop songs and impressively aesthetic performances. BTS has achieved levels of success that were previously unheard of for Korean groups. They broke the record for the most-viewed music video in 24 hours and, in 2020, were the first K-pop group nominated for Best Pop Group Performance at the Grammy Awards. BTS has had six number one hits on the Billboard Charts --- to provide comparison, NSYNCync achieved one number one hit, and the Backstreet Boys and One Direction never got any. Like Squid Game, BTS has had success that rivals American cultural sensations.
Another indicator of the shift in America’s eagerness to consume foreign media is the long list of foreign shows popular in America. The French show Call My Agent, the Canadian show Schitt’s Creek, the British show The Crown, the Israeli show Shtisel, Japanese anime shows, the Swedish show Young Royals, and the Spanish shows Money Heist and Elite have all seen success in America. Telenovelas, Latin American serial dramas similar to but not the same as soap operas, are also more successful than American soap operas in US markets.
In the past, Americans have appeared hesitant to consume foreign culture, but that hesitancy is clearly receding. The increase of successful foreign media shows a shift away from the decades-old global hierarchy of America producing media for other countries to consume without returning the favour. Shows, music, and TV no longer need to be American exports to be successful - they can be American imports.