Cute aesthetics of fear: A critique of Korean neo-liberalism in The School Nurse Files

The cute aesthetics of the South Korean series The School Nurse Files indicate a shift in perceiving the essence and manifestation of fear. In Korean popular culture, schools often serve as sites for brutal narratives such as zombie apocalypse, violent bullying or serial murder. In The School Nurse Files , this landscape is utilized for a story resembling Pac-Man, a 1980 maze action video game with cute octopus-shaped ghosts and an invigorating music theme. The show is based on Serang Chung’s novel School Nurse Ahn Eun-young , telling the story of a bright female fear-fighter, destroying evil spirits with a glowing party sword available on AliExpress for less than $1, and her accomplice. Both characters are misfits, eager to confront the obscured source of suicidal thoughts. The series is filled with symptoms of fear, while the origin of students’ suffering remains invisible. As with most trauma-inducing mechanisms of neo-liberal regimes, in Kyoung-mi Lee’s series, evil operates through nurturing destructive desires and exhausting human vitality. To those who can detect it, evil appears in the shape of cute creatures that do not look dangerous enough to call forth immediate action. These adorable aesthetic elements stem from wasted lives. The article draws upon Lauren Berlant’s concept of cruel optimism to explore the cute aesthetics of The School Nurse Files as a new way to talk about status fears proliferating in contemporary Korea.