Symbols and Rituals on the Grounds of Queer Culture Festivals

Abstract

The Queer Culture Festivals (QCF) in South Korea have been rapidly growing as a social movement that promotes visibility and pride of the LGBTQ population. This study explores rituals and symbols at QCFs: territorialization of the festivals grounds; booth activities; staged speeches and slogans; queerthemed artefacts; and participants bodily expressions. These various activities question and mock the hegemonic notions of heteronormativity and gender binaries, the ideology of the normal family, Confucian puritanism, and the antiqueer rhetoric of Evangelical Christians. QCFs also deploy playful symbols to subvert the stereotypes of LGBTQ people as abnormal, amoral, and sinful; instead they depict LGBTQ as proud and worthy. The article argues that, in comparison with secularized, individualized, and commercialized festivals of contemporary South Korea, QCFs have retained the ritualism, communality, and subversiveness of traditional festivals—and this difference is due to queer participants realizing their yearning for a utopian world via their participation in QCFs