A Study on Sociocultural Literacy from a Post-Truth Perspective in Media : Focusing on Kick Service’s 203n Year Series

The <203n Series> of Kick Service is a sketch comedy addressing social issues through extreme scenarios. This comedy aims to achieve satirical effects and transform anxiety into humor, by employing exaggerated settings. From a sociocultural perspective, this content may be interpreted as a form of sociocultural literacy in that it materializes plausible futuristic scenarios to embody prevailing anxieties, thereby facilitating a post-truth mode of engaging with the future. Post-truth is characterized by creating numerous “alternative facts” where distinctions between fact and fiction, truth and falsehood, cease to exist. Hence, the <203n Series> of the Kick Service intends to propose an alternative future through various imaginations and satires of what lies ahead. This endeavor stems from the current social landscape and the anxiety about future society. To mitigate the discourse on anxiety, the content of the <203n Series> comprises three key features: (1) framing extreme situations and perceiving them as unlikely future, (2) employing excessive settings and negating both the present and future, and (3) denying truthfulness while emphasizing truthiness. These characteristics align closely with the direction of the content shaped by the post-truth paradigm. Initially, the <203n Series> of Kick Service may appear playful or frivolous, however, this perception arises from its seemingly far-fetched premise. However, as Žižek suggests, a future redefining the boundaries between the “possible” and the “impossible” in novel ways is necessary. Thus, the <203n Series> of Kick Service offers the potential for reconsidering by blurring the boundaries of reality and inviting audiences to imagine anew.