The Psychgeist of Pop Culture: KPop Demon Hunters, edited by Courtney Lazore
Netflix’s 2025 animated movie KPop Demon Hunters quickly became a viral success with its creative visual style, catchy songs, and unique blend of K-Pop culture and traditional Korean mythology. The film currently stands as Netflix’s most-watched original movie with over 300 million views, a theatrical release, and a sequel on the way. KPop Demon Hunters’ fusion of idol and fandom culture with mythology, its focus on female leads, and its literalization of psychological concepts such as shame, power, self-acceptance, good versus evil, and identity have resonated with fans worldwide, cementing the movie as a significant cultural artifact of our current time.
This book is part of the collection The Psychgeist of Pop Culture series edited by Dr Rachel Kowert and published by Play Story Press. This book series highlights iconic pop culture content from television, film, literature and video games through an examination of the psychological mechanisms that endear us to these stories for a lifetime.
Submissions may consider the film within the broader contexts of K-Pop (such as ties to groups like BTS), the Hallyu wave, and other K-entertainment literature. Potential topics include (but are not limited to):
- Psychology of the classic good vs. evil
- Centering female leads and viral success
- History, psychology, and/or communication studies behind music as storytelling
- Identity formation and presentation
- Idol personas, masks, and authenticity
- The psychology of resilience, hope, shame, trauma, or grief
- Found family and community narratives
- Nature vs. nurture; the power of choice and voice
- Self-acceptance, post-traumatic growth
- Shadow work and/or individuation (especially in Rumi’s arc)
- Moral ambiguity/morally grey characters, presentations of the “other”
- K-Pop fandoms and healing; idols as protective parasocial bonds
- Idol culture’s “feeding” of fans (feeding fans or feeding off of fans)
- The psychology of viral media (both in the film and of the film itself)
We particularly welcome submissions from first time authors and authors from non-traditional backgrounds.
Please send your abstract (~300 words) and resume or CV to courtneymlazore@gmail.com by December 20, 2025.