As usual, Yuka Kinoshita sits behind a small table and joyfully greets her audience, welcoming them back to see her enjoy her daily meal. In this recent video, she has three large size Domino pizzas and milkshakes and is about to consume up to 6700 Cal. Known as oogui bijyo, “gluttonous beauty,” Kinoshita is one of the most well-received Youtubers in the Mukbang community, which features hosts eating enormous amounts of food in a short period of time.
The theme of Kinoshita’s channel is centered around her eating vlogs. From the familiar setting of her living room, to the same uplifting background music, to saying “gochisosamadeshita” with her hands clasped every time she finishes the last bit of her food, these elements have become part of the signature components of Kinoshita’s videos and attracted more than 5 million followers to her channel. In all her videos, Kinoshita opens by presenting the food she eats, some sponsored by companies and others sent by her fans, telling her viewers the total calories and then diving straight into devouring. Instead of being an intense, fast-paced competitive eater, like she is offline, she portrays herself in her videos as a delightful girl who is always satisfied by the delicious food she has, constantly affirming how good the food tastes.
Kinoshita’s intended audiences are her fans and the larger Mukbang community because of the uniqueness of her theme. In recent years, some international fans have voluntarily uploaded subtitles in different languages and gained her an international fanbase. Regardless, Kinoshita’s intended audiences are still her Japanese fans as they contribute more to her financial returns when they consume the products that she recommends, which are most accessible in Japan. Her focus on Japanese audiences can be seen in her YouTube description box, which only has a short introduction paragraph in English and all other information including ways to contact written in Japanese. The comments section is also largely dominated by Japanese viewers, whom she actively engages with by liking their comments.
By critically analyzing her videos from the perspective of popular culture, Kinoshita can be categorized as an influencer and a micro-celebrity. Because of her large number of followers, fan engagement and advertorials, Kinoshita falls into Abidin (2015)’s category of “influencer.” Similarly, Marwick (2015)’s definition of micro-celebrity as someone who utilizes webcams and videos to promote themselves as a consumable public persona can also be seen with Kinoshita. Her videos with a uniform Mukbang focus can be seen as online performances and strategic appeals to her audience, proving that a micro-celebrity’s persona is different from their actual selves as the persona could be highly artificial.
Just like most influencers and micro-celebrities, Kinoshita keenly promotes advertorials, which is defined by Abidin (2015) as promotions by influencers who claim to have personally experienced the products in hopes of gaining financial returns. This can be seen in Kinoshita’s multiple personal and in-depth reviews on food from specific companies such as Domino’s Pizza and Starbucks. As a Mukbang YouTuber, she has the expertise in judging food from having tried out a wide variety of cuisine. In addition, she further increases the credibility of her advertorials by finishing all the food in front of her camera, showcasing that she has indeed enjoyed and personally tried all the products that she endorses.
A specific example from Kinoshita’s channel is her 2016 video titled Taiwanese Beef Ramen 9102 cal, one of her most popular videos with more than 12 million views. Just like her other videos, this is typical Mukbang in which she eats 5 packs of ramen, a huge bowl of rice, and a massive side of cooked beef strips. In this video, she maintains her usual style with a joyful tone and appearance of enjoying what she is having and emphasizing on how good the food is. She has this light-hearted style in order to elevate the idea that the abnormal amount of food that she consumes is effortless and to relieve the potential stress that the audience may feel when watching an individual taking in so many calories. Her persona and energy make the video a self-conscious performance and appeals to her audience in a consistent way.
The message of this video, on the surface level, is to provide her Mukbang fans enjoyment from watching her eat, helping them destress and simply stimulating their appetites. However, this video also builds an interconnectedness between Kinoshita and her fans. All the food in this video comes from a Taiwanese fan called Neko Chan, whom Kinoshita thanks multiple times throughout the video. Before eating the food, Kinoshita also shows clips of her cooking beef strips as a side and shares cooking tips with her viewers. In addition to her frequent fan interactions in the comment sections, this is another example of reciprocal intimacy, which is defined by Abidin (2015) as influencers’ acknowledgment and appreciation for their fans. By offering thoughtful tips and making a video to thank Chan’s gifts, these acts of reciprocal intimacy create perceived interconnectedness, which is intimacy felt by the audience toward the influencers. Therefore, this video’s message is to serve both as a Mukbang episode to offer viewers enjoyment and an act to deepen the perceived interconnectedness between Kinoshita and her fans; it is through videos such as these that she is able to let her fans see the appreciation that she has for them and the gifts that they send.
Overall, Kinoshita’s channel is popular for its Mukbang theme and is especially well-received by her intended audience, the Japanese fan community. With a signature cheerful attitude, Kinoshita successfully builds a gluttonous Mukbang personality for her self-conscious performances in her videos, appealing to her fanbase. From the lens of popular culture, Kinoshita is a successful influencer and micro-celebrity who is able to deftly promote advertorials, construct reciprocal intimacies and build a perceived interconnectedness with her audience.
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References
Abidin, C. (2015). Communicative <3 intimacies: Influencers and perceived interconnectedness. Ada: A Journal of Gender, New Media, & Technology 8. Retrieved from: http://adanewmedia.org/2015/11/issue8-abidin/ (Links to an external site.)
Marwick, A. (2015). You may know me from YouTube: (Micro)-celebrity in social media. Pp. 333-350 in A Companion to Celebrity, edited by P. David Marshall and Sean Redmond. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons Inc.
The premise of this YouTube channel is quite interesting--I had previously heard of eating channels but never even knew about the term Mukbang. It is also intriguing to think about how interconnected Yuka Kinoshita’s advertorials are with the purpose of her YouTube channel. As you mentioned, and as Abidin stated, “advertorials,” or the promotion and personal advertisement of products, are embedded in the definition of a “micro-celebrity” (2015). I think this holds especially true as the purpose of her YouTube channel is eating a variety of cuisines at an unusual level, but in her demonstration of eating, she is inherently promoting an array of food, restaurants, companies, etc. In my opinion, this is what makes her so effective as a YouTube star and enhances her ability to acquire tons of views and subscribers. She is relatable and embraces the ordinary, as Marwick claims the new breed of “micro-celebrities,” specifically YouTubers, does (2015, pp. 336). She explains that “micro-celebrities” stem from the ordinary, yet something about them allows them to rise to the status of being well-known (Marwick, 2015, pp. 337). She specifically uses the example of Here Comes Honey Boo Boo and Duck Dynasty as they are examples of traditional “working-class American southerners,” and explains how “their class is exploited on these shows as a matter of exotic difference” and also that “their media access provides them with the ability to command enormous attention” (Marwick, 2015, pp. 337). In this sense, Yuka Kinoshita is famous by a similar concept of qualifications. She is a traditional Japanese citizen, quite similar to her viewers, yet possesses a certain absurdist talent that she is able to share with a wide audience due to her command of a media, in this case, YouTube, which lead to an influx of subscribers and a large fanbase.
ReplyDeleteAbidin, C. (2015). Communicative <3 Intimacies: Influencers and Perceived Interconnectedness.
Ada: A Journal of Gender, New Media, & Technology. Retrieved from https://adanewmedia.org/2015/11/issue8-abidin/
Marwick, A. (2015). You May Know Me from YouTube: (Micro)-celebrity in Social Media. Pp.
333-350 in A Companion to Celebrity, edited by P. David Marshall and Sean Redmond.
Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons Inc.
Response by Jeffrey Fishman:
ReplyDeleteMukbang videos pop up on my Instagram explore feed all the time, and I never really know what they were. I think your blog post does a great job of explaining this genre of video. However, you possibly could have included a little more information about why this genre of video is so popular in Japan. Maybe there is some connection between the popularity of these videos and the Japanese cute culture that was discussed in Professor Jolyon Thomas’ lecture.
In his essay “The work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction”, Walter Benjamin develops his idea of a cult of personality among celebrities by reasoning, “The film responds to the shriveling of the aura with an artificial build-up of the ‘personality’ outside the studio. The cult of the movie star, fostered by the money of the film industry, preserves not the unique aura of the person but the ‘spell of the personality,’ the phony spell of a commodity.” While Yuka Kinoshita is not a movie star as defined by Benjamin, I still believe that she is a part of a cult of personality surrounding YouTube. You mention that Kinoshita is a competitive eater, but her temperament is very different in her Mukbang videos. Her delightful, calm image is generated in order to create this cult of personality and sell a commodity (the food in her videos).
Lastly, I think that the genre of Mukbang videos could possibly be considered camp. In her essay “Notes on Camp”, Susan Sontag explains one definition of camp as, “love of the unnatural: of artifice and exaggeration”. Kinoshita’s consumption of this large amount of food in her videos is definitely unnatural, and this exaggeration is utilized throughout Mukbang videos to sell products. I really enjoyed your analysis of this niche video genre!
References:
Benjamin, W. (1936). The work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction. Visual Culture: Experiences in Visual Culture.
Sontag, S. (1964). Notes on Camp.
Sarah Abbe
ReplyDeleteLots of my friends have ‘hyped’ up watching mukbang channels in the past, but I never actually ended up watching a video until your blog post. I am honestly surprised and impressed by how much of a following that Kinoshita has gained because the idea of making a mukbang seems a little bizarre and uninteresting. Clearly, there is such a large group of people who value Kinoshita’s food reviews, or at least enjoy watching her eat food.
I think you clearly proved the interconnectedness of Kinoshita’s videos to her audience by emphasizing the interactions she has with her comment section. I was also impressed with your ability to recognize and connect the fact that her channels are, in a way, advertorials. Kinoshita’s channel supports a variety of food and companies, and, in return, she receives a myriad of commercial endorsements and views from an engaged and niche audience of ‘foodies.’
The specific video you touched upon, titled Taiwanese Beef Ramen 9102 cal, is a microcosm for Kinoshita’s ability to obtain a ‘micro-celebrity’ status and appeal to her audience. Being that this video has 12 million views, Kinoshita falls under Abidin’s definition of micro-celebrity: “‘a new style of online performance that involves people ‘amping up’ their popularity over the Web using technologies like video, blogs and social networking sites’” (Abidin, 2015). Kinoshita is essentially able to eat lots of food in front of the camera with a smile on her face, proving that she enjoyed the food while easing people’s self-consciousness regarding eating too many calories.
Ultimately, through Youtube’s platform, Kinoshita is able to successfully appeal to a niche audience within popular culture.
Works Cited:
Abidin, C. (2016). Anonymous and trolling in context: An interview with Gabriella Coleman. PopAnth
From someone who also wrote her blog post on Mukbang and watches Mukbang regularly, I found your post really interesting and insightful! Yuka Kinoshita’s videos seem to be quite similar to Stephanie Soo’s videos (the Youtuber I wrote my blog post about). They both speak throughout their videos and the focus of the content is on their dialogue and the amount of food they are consuming. I find it interesting that Kinoshita and Soo chose this style of Mukbang over the other option, in which you don’t speak at all and just focus on the sounds of chewing through a microphone. Looking at this choice through a critical approach to pop culture lens, I believe that Kunoshita and Soo may have chosen this route to be able to create a perceived intimacy with their viewers when they speak to the camera while they eat. As influencers, they “engage with their followers to give the impression of exclusive, intimate exchange” (Abidin, 2015). This may have contributed to both of their crazy success on Youtube. Another part of your post that I found interesting was the reciprocal intimacy that Kunoshita showcased in her Taiwanese Beef Ramen video; I have never watched a Mukbang Youtuber have his/her food paid for by a fan. I definitely feel like this aspect of her channel would encourage more of her viewers to send her gifts like Neko Chan did because of how much she mentioned and thanked him in the video. This is surprising to me because it seems like Kunoshita is achieving an even deeper level of intimacy with her fans that I haven’t seen in Mukbang before. Overall, I loved your blog post because it taught me things even an avid Mukbang viewer like me, did not know about!
ReplyDelete-Jean Hsu
Sources:
Abidin, C. (2015). Communicative <3 intimacies: Influencers and perceived interconnectedness. Ada: A Journal of Gender, New Media, & Technology 8. Retrieved from: http://adanewmedia.org/2015/11/issue8-abidin
ReplyDeleteWow! Before reading this review, I had never heard of Yuka Kinoshita. As a Mukbang fan myself, I enjoy watching people eat a ridiculous amount of food. I also like the food reviews that are typically included in these videos. Sometimes after watching, I feel obligated to try some of these meals. In each video, she finishes the food. Her servings and caloric intake are tremendous. The first time I watched a mukbang, I was shocked by the amount these people can eat!
According to your post, Kinoshita’s channel is centered around her eating vlogs. Her intended audience is Japanese Mukbang fans, however, other viewers are from America and other parts of the world. She actively engages with her Japanese viewers in the comment section. This engagement creates an illusion of intimacy. Fans feel personally connected to her through these interactions. I agree Kioshita fits Abidin’s definition for an “influencer” (Abidin 2015). Over time, she built herself into a public persona. According to Marwick, she also can be viewed as a “micro-celebrity” (Marwick 2015). Over time, she has reached 5 million fanbase. With such a large following, Kinoshita reaches a large audience. With help from likes and dislikes, she properly caters to each video to her audience’s liking. In each video, she promotes and raves about the food she eats. She provides in-depth food reviews, so viewers can eat like her. These reviews can be seen as advertorials. She makes subtle promotions when she urges her audience to try these delicious options. Her channel is successful; she can promote advertorials, make her fans feel connected and produce popular content. I loved your analysis in this blog post. Great job.
- Nola Riina
References:
Abidin, C. (2015). Communicative <3 Intimacies: Influencers and Perceived Interconnectedness.
Ada: A Journal of Gender, New Media, & Technology. Retrieved from https://adanewmedia.org/2015/11/issue8-abidin/
Marwick, A. (2015). You May Know Me from YouTube: (Micro)-celebrity in Social Media. Pp.
333-350 in A Companion to Celebrity, edited by P. David Marshall and Sean Redmond.
Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons Inc.
Josephine Cheng:
ReplyDeleteAs noted in the article, the Mukbang personality does fit hand in hand with Abidin’s concept of influencers who use advertorials to garner economic profit and Marwick’s definition of “micro-celebrity.” In addition, I believe that Mukbangs are an example of Storey’s sixth definition for popular culture, which first off, has no differentiation between high and low culture and, second, is commercialized. In the first case, given Yuka Kinoshita’s high viewer counts and immense popularity as a YouTube personality across the international community with over five million followers in total, one can presume that her content appeals to an audience from a wide range of backgrounds. Beyond merely capturing the attention of a large diverse audience, Kinoshita’s content breaks down the barriers between high and low culture by capitalizing on a category of video content which does not fit neatly into either. The practice of filming oneself eating copious amounts of food in short periods of time is still a relatively young trend in the history of Internet entertainment, while it does not fit into traditional conceptions of high culture, such as being “intellectual”, “textual”, or “dignified”, neither is it a perfect fit for widely accepted ideas of low culture, such as being “generic” and “vulgar”. Rather, as in the second case of Storey’s sixth definition for popular culture, Mukbangs are commercialized. As noted in the article, “Koshita keenly promotes advertorials” and her videos often feature food sponsored from companies such as Starbucks or Domino’s Pizza. In addition, the Mukbang Youtuber personally taste tests all her endorsed foods to further her credibility in recommending a product. While the act of eating the food serves as a source of entertainment for the audience, it is an inherently monetized process. For every sponsored dish that is eaten and every click that Koshita’s videos receive, Koshita earns money. Thus, I believe Koshita is not only a prime example of an influencer and microcelebrity, but her videos are also an example of Storey’s sixth definition for popular culture.
References:
Storey, J. (2009). What is popular culture ? Cultural Theory and Popular Culture, pp. 1-16.
I loved reading your post because I learned quite recently that the concept of “mukbang” has been widespread across the Youtube community. The term itself is a Korean word, an abbreviation of “mukneun bangsong” which basically translates into “eating broadcast.” Your blog did an excellent job of explaining how Kinoshita builds intimacy with her subscribers through her videos, because it might be difficult to comprehend at first how videos of a random stranger eating food can convey a sense of interconnectedness to the viewers. In fact, the very concept of mukbang started out as a means of providing a virtual company for people that are eating alone; examining the origin of mukbang makes it easier to understand why mukbang youtubers tend to build a solid parasocial relationship with their subscribers.
ReplyDeleteReading about Kinoshita, I also thought about how the concept of mukbang has been diversified into different branches of videos. To make their mukbang videos stand out from others, Youtubers have tried all sorts of different concepts, from ASMR mukbang to food marathon after 24 hours of starving. But regardless of the concepts and styles, I found out that the mukbang youtubers that have gained a lot of subscribers have gained success by building a sense of interconnectedness with their subscribers; they usually tended to prioritize not only their content but also their parasocial relationship with their subscribers by continuously expressing gratitude, just like Kinoshita does in her videos. This intimacy helps the Youtubers maintain a solid fan base consisting of loyal subscribers that promote their videos to other users.
-John Park
Kinoshita’s popularity in the mukbang genre of YouTube is particularly interesting to me because what I first thought of is the concept of eating as an interpersonal act, which is to be done with emotionally close people such as friends and family, rather than strangers. Especially when done in front of a camera for the purpose of publishing a video to a wide, massive audience, Kinoshita and other mukbang YouTubers have unintentionally broken what was once a traditional convention, by eating for strangers. This is an example of a parasocial relationship that Crystal Abidin explains as a result of an audience interacting with a microcelebrity online: while the fans and viewers of an online content creator may obsess and believe the creator is personally tailoring content to them, the content creator themself is unaware of their specific fans’ existence and rather recognizes their audience as a whole, singular body, that comprises of interests the creator plans to satisfy. Also interesting is your explanation of Kinoshita’s persona as possibly being “highly artificial”, like most other online content creators; though Kinoshita may seem very light-hearted in front of a camera while gorging on massive amounts of food, she might have exaggerated her calmness so that she can effectively “relieve the potential stress that the audience may feel when watching an individual taking in so many calories”. Her ability to build interconnectedness with her fans by eating in front of them, whether actually real or fake, and her ability to eat a large amount of food nonchalantly and with positive expressions, is one of the unique ways a YouTuber like Kinoshita can grab the attention of curious viewers and maintain viewership.
ReplyDelete- Anna Do