Have you ever had? Snacks! The meaning of snacks by dictionary is a small meal or amount of food usually eaten in a hurry, and ‘a kill-time peanuts’ is the representative. This cultural context of cracking and eating peanuts when you are bored having nothing to do is something in common regardless of time and places. According to psychology, men might actually feel biologically hungry when feeling emotionally hungry and feel mentally secure by the action of eating food. Like this, chewing and tasting food and consuming contents for satisfying one’s soul have things in common and we may say that it is natural Snack Culture(snack+culture), a new cultural trend, was newly born years ago.
Snack Culture is 5-15minute contents we may enjoy as simply as we have snacks and they are webtoons, web novels and web dramas. In this busy modern society, people charge their hearts in their spare moments consuming Snack Culture whenever they feel emotionally hungry. It is because they may easily grasp and choose the contents they want irrespective of time and places and the contents are short and neither too difficult nor complicated so not burdensome. The recent soaring demand has made a tendency that the Snack Culture market is expanding in geometrical progression. In this current creators seem to move in large numbers from the traditional markets like broadcasting or literatures, the headquarters, to the Snack Culture markets. Both demand and supply all increase.
Snack Culture has imposingly taken position as a mainstream culture in modern society, however, its developing potential is being damaged under many people’s misunderstanding and ignorance. The most representative misunderstanding is that Snack Culture must be as simple to create as to watch; to be outspoken, the public consider that Snack Culture is not a creative work but more like an industrial product manufactured at random for sale. It is like a kitch was treated as low quality in the art world in the past. Does Snack Culture deserve this treat? So I prepare this: Pleadings Of Snack Cooks, For Snack Cooks, By Snack Cooks.
Pleading1 “Short Stories But Longterm Creation” - Web drama Scriptor A (29/female)
Web drama episode is generally designed to be 10-minute or more and an entire season to be made up of 10 episodes. The whole running time is about 120 minutes in total and it goes to two episodes of TV dramas or one movie. Many people think that we may make two TV drama episodes or a movie and cut it into ten pieces. But that idea is so a naïve one and, I may say, even rude misunderstanding. It is like you say to a poet, “Isn’t it possible if you cut a short story into pieces you get ten poems?” Web dramas are solemnly different from TV dramas or movies. As novels are different from poems, so are they different to as much extent as the distance from Earth to Pluto. We need a wholly different view in adapting not only motive but plots, tones and manners when writing a script, because web dramas are supplied to those who are in the wholly different situation from movie lovers’ or TV drama maniacs’. As far as the story is short, the more refined respiration is needed. One more thing. Snack Culture might easily attract people but also lose them more easily. Music composers said they grind their soul making an opening part because audience’ decision is made before the first 30-second preview finishes. We, too, pour our enormous time and energy onto the first 30 seconds, the hooking point, as much as the whole scripts, no, onto a representative thumbnail. <Short but perfect> is our motto and an everlasting problem to solve.
Pleading2 “Not Heavy But Deep”- Web Drama Producer B(33/female)
The main audience of Snack Culture is the young generation. We generally select casual and trendy subject matters so we need rather deeper insights. But people think that Snack Culture creators make it roughly to the way they feel. To be brief, completely misunderstanding! If a wrapping paper looks quite good, you might easily make believe the content is also good; but isn’t it hard to approve that a content wrapped with a transparent plastic bag is luxurious? JYP Park Jin-young said : You have much prejudice and ignorance when you say Rock’n’roll or R&B is real music because it’s hard and profound and dance music is easy to listen so it’s not a high quality.
Snack Culture is the same. It is not fair the quality is underestimated because it is easy to consume. We always make every effort to create our contents <light but deep> day and night. We will do our best not to put Snack Culture aside only to be a content for time killing and we think we must do. As one of culture lovers.
Pleading3 “What We Do Now Is Not Produce101” - Webtoon Writer C(31/male)
Snack Culture is based on the public by birth so it cannot be independent of People Producers’ judgment. For this reason producers want the contents to be more popular than artistic. View count is barometer of success. Of course, we do not raise any objection to the fact that popularity is the secret of Snack Culture. If we make what earns money, the producers make money and then they can give money back to the creators. But it is a dangerous point of view to make contents only for ‘popularity’. Monotonous contents only flattering the public gradually make them tired and at last they end up with degrading the whole industry. If you look up the webtoon pages, you may find that the popular genre webtoons are much more than other genre webtoons. It is not good. Culture should always be diverse.
Snack Culture creators seem to be socially recognized as if they were an illegitimate child of capitalism, not as pop artists. To be honest, I agree to some extent. So I would like to reflect myself, rather than to plead for myself. It might be because we ourselves brought about such misunderstandings and prejudice. It is inevitable we, creators should need time to purify ourselves at this moment Snack Culture industry explosively grows. Do not throw off the responsibility so simply saying, “It’s not fair!”
Those three pleadings above are not the actual interview but I reorganized usual talks with Snack cooks around me. Most of Snack Culture is not independent of such a misunderstanding except for some works. The reason can be prejudice from strangeness and ignorance as in Pleading1; or can be a mistake according to an old preconception as in Pleading2; or can be an inevitable(or self-inflicted) phenomenon due to the industrial particularity as in Pleading3. Whatever the reason can be, such a negative recognition on Snack Culture will accordingly do consumers harm rather than creators, because it is clear that low expectation brings about low quality result. If consumers look down on Snack Culture and thoughtlessly accept low quality contents, the quality cannot but be degraded. Not until consumers think Snack Culture is something of a creative work and do not stop giving encouragement and warning so the creators carry out their responsibilities to answer their expectations and love will Snack Culture escape from the unfair misunderstanding and reveal its own value.
Bang Yoo-jung Drama Scriptor / Translated by Park Eun-sun
* 《Cultura》 2021 October (Vol. 88) *
