The cultural contents’ trend is not always the same. It changes over time, according to people’s wants and needs. Unlike in the past, when a lot of viewers sought excitement, contents with the power to heal the viewers are now on track...............Ed.
To survive among the numerous contents flooding the media, there has to be a special catch that will attract the consumers. In a certain period, majority of contents show similar characteristics, forming a flow or a trend. Those contents that start a trend are said to have competence in the media. Lately, however, the lifespan of a single trend has become increasingly shorter, but there is a flow that stands in the center of numerous contents: empathy.
Looking closely into the recent popular contents, one will easily find that most of them are trying hard to empathize with their viewers. Among the various types of cultural contents in existence today, the ones that stand out are TV programs, which are considered the most strongly affecting media. From the end of 2014 until recently, the contents that gained much popularity were those that succeeded in empathizing with the viewers. Representative examples are Incomplete Life (Mi-saeng) and Infinite Challenge (Muhan-dojeon).
Incomplete Life is a drama that was aired on tvN from October to December last year. It gained enormous popularity, ushering in a golden age of cable dramas. A distinct factor that is considered to have contributed to its popularity is its storyline. Specifically, it is about an ordinary office worker, not an outstanding or superior one. A lot of people got to like the drama because its characters were just like any one of them. The episodes that showed common occurrences among office workers and that showed the characters finding themselves in trouble for trivial reasons easily gained the empathy of the viewers while healing their minds at the same time. If Incomplete Life featured characters with abnormal backgrounds or wealthy families, it would not have been as popular as it became.
Infinite Challenge, a variety show of MBC, also fascinated a lot of viewers both last year and this year. It is a long-running program loved by a lot of people, but a special project called To-to-ga captivated almost the whole nation. The project aimed to revive the stages that the singers who mostly became popular in the 1990s went through. A majority of the people in their twenties and thirties were enthusiastic about the fact that their pleasant memories were to be revived. Even after the project ended, To-to-ga became a kind of trend rather than being easily forgotten. The singers’ songs formed a bond of sympathy among people, greatly amusing the nation. Another factor that contributed to the popularity of To-to-ga was the stories of the singers. They honestly revealed their past lives after leaving the stage, which were just like anyone else’s life, not particularly special. When it turned out that such celebrities are ultimately just like anyone else, people grew even more appreciative of them, feeling a sense of kinship with them.
It is often said that when life in a society is too harsh, people hope to go back to the past. These days, however, people are more interested in treating the state of their minds and feeling empathy and warmth from other people. They see someone in a similar state as they are in consoling and comforting them. ST expects that this recent trend of empathy will last longer than did the other fleeting trends.
