Liew Kai Khiun (Nanyang Technological University) and Pei Hua Paige Tan (Nanyang Technological University)
Through digital content shared on social media networks in sustaining and continuing currency of the otherwise dated Taiwanese television drama, Meteor Garden (2001) this paper explores durability of Asia’s transnational fandom. Originally adopted from a Japanese manga, the drama series popularized the Japanese concept of “bishonen” or “beautiful boys”, and within a decade saw numerous remakes regionally in East Asia. Beyond the broadcasting stations, what has given this production its currency is the advent of the social media that created the transnational online platforms of virtual fan communities. Collectively, between 2015 and 2017, the authors counted about 72 Twitter 914 Facebook accounts and pages and 482 youtube videos devoted to the television drama and its artistes. Online activities on these sites included a plethora of fan-made literature of photoshopped illustrations, fan fictions and other forms of memorabilia in addition to more reflective recollections. From these user-generated content, one also witness the emergence of an inter-generational transnational fan community from China to Southeast Asia as collective cultural memories are being generated around Meteor Garden. Through the study of the prosumer patterns of these fan communities and the related social media and digital platforms in which they operate, this paper posits the need to examine the more vernacular and organic patterns of distribution in the arena of popular entertainment; one that is capable of de-centering from the industry to form autonomous cultural communities in what will be described in this paper as Cultural Ever-greening.
Liew Kai Khun is an Assistant Professor with the Wee Kim Wee School of Communication and Information at the Nanyang Technological Universit. His research covers that of transnational popular cultural flows between East and Southeast Asia Studies. His recent works included the monograph Transnational Memories and Popular Culture in East and Southeast Asia (2016)
Pei Hua Paige Tan completed her Masters in Mass Communication with the Wee Kim Wee School of Communication and Information at the Nanyang Technological University. This topic is based partially on her thesis on the transnational cultural memories of Meteor Garden.