"Kidult culture" phenomenon
intrigues Lee
Many college students use cartoons, reality television and video games as a diversion from their studies. However, Hye-Jin Lee (Ph.D. candidate, Daejon, Korea) uses these diversions to examine how adults engage in and consume childlike society known as "kidult culture."
Born in Daejon, Korea, Lee lived in the United States as an exchange student in South Carolina for a year. She received her bachelor’s degree in English literature from her home university in Korea before completing her master’s in mass communication from Iowa State University.
Lee briefly attended Rutgers University for her Ph.D. program in comparative literature but ultimately decided to follow her initial passion of learning how to make films.
"When I was in college, I always loved watching films," Lee said. "I watched about four movies a week in the movie theater. I just loved it and wanted to study it."
Life as a kidult During Lee's Communication Technology and Society class she discusses the effects of video games on society. Photo by David McNace
Lee enrolled at New School in New York City to begin her film studies and eventually came to The University of Iowa to study critical culture and media studies.
Currently in her third year, Lee is working on her dissertation while also teaching Communication Technology and Society and working as the managing editor of the Journal of Communication Inquiry, an academic journal that examines cultural and media phenomena within historical and cultural perspectives.
The topic of Lee’s dissertation on kidult culture spawned from a simple trip to Best Buy. While she was looking through the movie aisles, she saw the DVD, "Pee-wee’s Playhouse," located in the adult section.
It was at that moment that Lee knew she wanted to look into Adult Swim, an adult-oriented cable television network that features animated shows.
When Lee first encountered Adult Swim, she was amazed at how the cultural industry not only found but acknowledged an audience that consisted of a new generation of adults who love to watch cartoons and childlike shows.
"I think I myself am a kidult," Lee said. "I fit the description of not being married, not having a ’permanent’ job, not having a kid, not owning a house and most of all, I love to watch ’SpongeBob Square Pants’ and play video games."
She has always felt uneasy with the way the media and cultural critics simply condemn kidults as immature, infantile adults who try to evade ’adult’ responsibilities.
Her goal for the study is to challenge the notion that there is either a kid culture or an adult culture. She is aware of all of the criticism and the critiques of kidult culture, but wants to look critically into those claims and see why kidult culture is such a huge phenomenon.
"I think it is unfair to use the old standards of what defines adulthood for today’s standards of adulthood," Lee said. "Today, adults don’t buy houses, don’t have permanent jobs, they move from job to job, they don’t get married and they don’t have kids. I think there are structural conditions that make adults make those decisions."
Associate Professor Gigi Durham, Lee’s faculty advisor, was intrigued by Lee’s research and the links she was making among the issues.
"Her work is cutting-edge, as she is examining a 21st century phenomenon: the ’kidult,’ a transitional identity position that merges childhood and adulthood in an unprecedented way," Durham said.
According to Lee, life is not as simple as what many people imagined it to be growing up as kids watching cartoons. She believes that adults consume childlike culture because they are not experiencing the future of which they had once dreamed. The nostalgia is not about going back to the childhood, but about going back to the childhood that dreamed of a better future.
"She is looking at how this identity has emerged in an era of transnational media and neo-liberal capitalism, especially in an economic recession," Durham said.
Another aspect of Lee’s study examines the American context of kidult culture.
"I see a gender bias of kidult culture because Adult Swim is very male-centric, and Cartoon Network doesn’t really hide the fact that they are trying to attract male viewers," Lee said.
She hopes to visit Williams Street, the production company behind most of the original Adult Swim shows, to look into how the working environment influences the content of the shows and to see what creates the gender bias.
The main goal of her dissertation is to understand what it means to be an "adult" in the current age. Despite the binary notion of adulthood and childhood, Lee wants to find a more positive and productive definition of adulthood that is more inclusive rather than merely condemning or criticizing today’s adults for their failure to grow up.
"Her research is groundbreaking, complex and invaluable to our understanding of how the media construct audiences in ways that support the needs of global capital, in terms of both ideology and labor," Durham said.
In addition to her dissertation research, Lee has studied reality television and how it is being used as a cultural "self-help manual." She has also analyzed online and video games and how they are being used as cultural technologies for citizenship training.
Lee found herself intrigued by the reality shows "Extreme Home Makeover: Home Edition" and "Shark Tank." These shows have the private sector of business, rather then the government, helping out the public.
Lee’s research on video games for the Nintendo Wii and the Nintendo DS has shown that games are being used as alternative technology to allow users to stay mentally and physically fit. Video games such as "Wii Fit," "EA Active Sports" and "Brain Age" encourage video game players to become active citizens.
With these games, not only are users playing video games, but they are also taking care of their health and living a better life.
"These video game companies are trying very hard to challenge the notion that the systems are mind-numbing and passive devices but instead are active devices," Lee said.
Lee is currently working on her dissertation and will defend it next year, and in the meantime she plans to continue consuming kidult culture.