SMCU: Is K-Pop Ready for a Marvel-Inspired Shared Universe?
When SM Entertainment announced SuperM, a K-Pop supergroup consisting of members from three already existing groups, boldly calling them “the Avengers of K-Pop,” I was sure it was an uncreative marketing tactic to grab the attention of Western audiences, particularly those from the US. However, it seems like the South Korean entertainment company had something else planned.
On September 24, 2020, SuperM releases their much-anticipated and highly teased music video titled One (Monster & Infinity), at the end of which member Taemin reveals a mysterious logo on his phone screen.
Exactly one month later, SM Entertainment announces that the mysterious logo belongs to their new girl group called aespa. A few days after, founder and chairman Lee Sooman introduces aespa as the first project of the never-before-seen SMCU, aka SM Culture Universe. CEO Lee Sung Soo went on to explain that “SM’s worldview is no longer restricted to a single team and all its past and present artists share one big world together. We’re in the process of creating that culture. Internally, we call it the ‘SM culture universe.’”
And so the dots connected, the planets aligned, and I realized that SuperM bamboozled me. It was clear that the title was a dead giveaway to the fact that SM is trying to create a shared universe with all of their idol groups, using the Marvel Cinematic Universe as their main source of inspiration. But can a Marvel-style universe work in K-Pop?
How Did The SMCU Start?
SM Entertainment groups have been making cameos in each other’s music videos for a long time, like SNSD’s Yoona in Super Junior’s U (2006) or Shinee’s Minho in SNSD’s Gee (2009). One could argue that these cameos were the first hints of an eventual big bang, but I think they were simply cross-promotion. Now, it’s true that a shared universe itself is also a cross-promotion strategy, but I’d say it’s a little bit more complex than that. Seeing Minho in Gee encourages you to check out SHINee and hopefully convince you to fall in love with them. But aespa’s logo in SuperM’s video attempts to make you curious about the girl group as well as urge you to pay attention to every other SM Entertainment group’s video because you might spot another aespa reference somewhere along the line. Minho’s cameo was cross-promotion and nothing more, while aespa’s logo teaser was cross-promotion as well as one piece of a large-scale puzzle. But if these early cameos weren’t the hints, what was?
On April 7, 2012, after many teasers and two prologues, EXO finally debuted with MAMA. The group was split into two subgroups, EXO-K and EXO-M. The former consisted of Korean members, released songs in Korean, and mainly promoted in South Korea. The latter was mostly made up of Chinese members and exclusively sang in Mandarin Chinese, which meant that they were marketed almost exclusively in Mainland China. The two subgroups released the exact same songs from the exact same albums at the exact same time. The only difference between them was the language. All members had unique supernatural powers assigned to them, such as fire, light, teleportation, water, healing, and more. And thus, the story of EXOPLANET began.
Although the exit of three members caused EXO to ditch the two-subgroups idea and morph into one group, their worldview continues to thrive. Their fifth studio album, Don’t Mess Up My Tempo, released in 2018, contained one lead single and nine B-sides inspired by the remaining nine members’ powers. Their Obsession comeback, which took place in November 2019, took their story one step further by introducing each member’s evil clone for the first time.
The “different grounds, same sky” concept was further developed into a “limitless” one through the next ambitiously formed group called NCT, short for Neo Culture Technology. Announced in January 2016 and officially debuted in April of the same year, NCT is SM Entertainment’s most recent all-male K-Pop group. It currently has four subgroups, each with a different sound and theme. Existing members often rotate between them, and new ones are regularly introduced. In September 2020, the group had one mega-comeback in which all current 23 members participated.
October 2019 saw the budding stage of the SMCU. It happened in the form of SuperM, a group consisting of four members from NCT, two from EXO, and one from SHINee. SM boldly introduced them as “the Avengers of K-Pop,” thus strategically implanting the MCU movies in our minds. The group has since released two albums and even has a limited-edition apparel collection in collaboration with Marvel themselves under their belt. Their most recent music video included the first teaser for aespa, the company’s brand-new all-female girl group, and the very first official SMCU project.
Will The SMCU be Successful?
Crossovers have been a comic book tradition for ages, with the very first team-up dating back to 1940, when MLJ Comics had the Shield and the Wizard meet for the first time. But while comic books have been around for almost a century, K-Pop is very young in comparison. Seo Taji & Boys, who debuted in 1992, are considered the first K-Pop group, so the genre has been around for a little less than 30 years. It’s safe to say that a Marvel-inspired shared universe has never been seen in K-Pop before, and SM Ent’s idea is brave, creative, and innovative. But will it work?
The short answer is yes. The long answer is also yes, but with two conditions.
The first and probably most important condition is to prioritize the music. Although film and music are both considered entertainment, we approach them with different purposes in mind. We watch movies because we want to explore someone else’s story; we follow the MCU and its heroes because we are excited to find out what sort of adventures they will go through and how their journeys will impact their mentalities, personalities, and overall lives. We feel a range of emotions towards the characters, from hope and excitement to disgust and disappointment. But we listen to music because we want to explore our own emotions. When we feel heartbroken, we look for a ballad that perfectly puts our sadness into musical notes. When we feel confident and want to boost our mood, we usually choose a pop song that makes us imagine ourselves on the catwalk. While movies are primarily an act of empathy, music is an act for the self. Both are valuable, necessary, and often life-changing experiences, and it’s not inherently a bad idea to combine the two. An entire story behind your group can be a lot of fun; EXO has been proving this for almost nine years. As long as SM Entertainment makes their ambitious story secondary to the music.
This leads me to the second condition. Because we approach movies and music differently, SM Ent. has to pay attention to the feedback from fans. What works in film will not necessarily work in music, and vice versa. One side of the fandom might be happy to see a universe grow and eagerly look for connections, thus creating all sorts of theories about the next chapter of the story. But the other side might want their idol’s music to shine on its own and be given the attention it deserves, not to be used as a connector to something that the company considers bigger. Both parties’ opinions are valid and need to be taken into consideration. Since the idea of a Marvel-style shared universe is so new in K-Pop, feedback will be essential for reaching the level of success that SM Ent. hopes for.
To conclude my thoughts, I’d like to share a very well-known quote by Kevin Feige. Given that the MCU is the primary source of inspiration for the SMCU, I hope SM Entertainment can use these words as a number-one guide for their ambitious project:
“… we’ve always remained consistent saying that the movie that we are making comes first. All of the connective tissue, all of that stuff is fun and is going to be very important if you want it to be. If the fans want to look further and find connections than they’re there. There are a few big ones obviously, that hopefully the mainstream audience will able to follow as well. But the most important thing and I think the reason that all the filmmakers are on board is that their movies need to stand on their own. They need to have a fresh vision, a unique tone and the fact that they can interconnect if you want to follow those breadcrumbs is a bonus.” — Kevin Feige
