Fans of Color Prize Winner
Transformative Works and Cultures is pleased to announce Osarugue Otebele as our inaugural Fans of Color Prize award winner for her article “The (anti)fan is black: Consumption, resistance, and black K-pop fan vigil labor”! Otebele’s article will be published in TWC’s upcoming special issue “Centering Blackness in Fan Studies” on December 15th.
The Fans of Color Prize had 15 submissions, covering the breadth of TWC’s publications from 2021-2024, while providing an incredible glimpse into the impactful work happening in (and outside of) fan studies. Otebele’s submission stood out because, as one reviewer noted, it was “conceptually ambitious.”
Otebele, a 4th year PhD candidate in the Department of Film & Media at UC Berkeley who goes by Osa among friends and colleagues, is a K-pop fan! She’s been an Epik-High fan since middle school and is also a fan of UKISS, SISTAR, EXO, BOYFRIEND, and others. As a fan, Otebele’s hope is that the K-pop industry will continue to thrive.
We sat down with Otebele to discuss what brought her to her research, what she’s working on next, and where she sees the field heading. As a little sneak peek to the upcoming issue on “Centering Blackness in Fan Studies,” we’ve shared some of her remarks below.
TWC: What brought you to this specific research topic?
Otebele: I’ve been a K-pop fan since I was in middle school. When I was a younger fan, I wasn’t as aware of the racial tensions in fandom spaces. It wasn’t until I got to high school that I realized that my lack of involvement was also due to not knowing where to locate other Black K-pop fans. This was partly because it was also in high school when words such as “woke” or “conscious” became part of my vocabulary, so I was always looking for ways to bring attention to my Blackness and, as a K-pop fan, it was difficult to do that. Both the industry and many non-Black fans wanted to escape from having conversations about race.
TWC: Could you briefly explain the key problem or question your article, “The (anti)fan is black: Consumption, resistance, and black K-pop fan vigil labor,” addresses?
Otebele: My article is interested in the ways Black K-pop fans engage instances of appropriation within the industry (from artists and fans), while also attempting to maintain their status as fans. Some of the key questions of my article were, “what makes an anti-fan?” and “how do Black K-pop fans employ digital media platforms to perform their fannish affect?”
TWC: Were there any unexpected challenges you encountered during your research?
Otebele: I would say the biggest challenge was working against my own knowledge and love for the industry to write an article that was quite critical of it. In a way, this challenge is also what my article describes, because I’m really invested in how, for Black fans, the identities fan and anti-fan often require their simultaneous performance.
TWC: Are you planning any follow-up research or new projects based on this article?
Otebele: Yes! I’m currently working on another article focused on narrative coherence in the aesthetic performances in K-pop eras. In that paper, I examine how K-pop engenders a critical addition to the instability of cultural identity while on the other hand, it necessitates and reproduces the fungibility of Blackness, where groups can enter in and out of a performance of Blackness that best fits a particular era. My concerns are with how the narrative coherence of each era (hip-hop era, afro-beat era, Y2K, or house music era) requires a commitment to the performance demanded from these various musical genres.
TWC: Where do you see the field heading in the next few years, and how do you hope your work contributes to that?
Otebele: I think much of K-pop studies is focused on transnational fandoms and cross-cultural exchange, but we should also be having the difficult conversations about cultural extraction, about race, about gender and their relationship to fan labor. The industry is growing even more global with many K-pop idols emerging from the United States, Canada, Japan, and more. We really have to turn our attention to the kind of social ideologies that these idols are bringing from their various cultures and locations and how that changes not only the sound and look of the industry but also its fandom.
Otebele also emphasized to us that receiving this award as a grad student really gave her work a sense of validity and importance, while also encouraging her to continue working on Black fan experience of K-pop. When asked if she had any advice for early career researchers aiming for impactful publications, Otebele shared: “Revise, revise, revise!”
We can’t wait for you all to get to read Osa Otebele’s award-winning article, “The (anti)fan is black: Consumption, resistance, and black K-pop fan vigil labor,” which will be published in our upcoming special issue “Centering Blackness in Fan Studies” on December 15. Congratulations again, Osa, from everyone at Transformative Works and Cultures!
