Erin: Is there something that you did as a student that you feel prepared you for what you're doing now?

Kate: I love film festivals now because of working with Reel Teal [a film club at UNCW]. However, besides Reel Teal and Flicker- which were very helpful to me- I would say being on the editorial board for Film Matters and then being published was super helpful. If nothing else, it basically gave me a good enough CV to be accepted into a graduate program. 

Practically, the best experience was presenting at Visions right after I had graduated from UNCW. This is because it gave me that first bit of practice. I had to write an abstract, apply to speak somewhere, and then actually present in front of so many people, as I think there were approximately 300 people in the audience at Lumina. As conferences where I would present would have normally lower numbers for attendance, this experience was invaluable.  

A large part of what is expected as an academic is to try to present at conferences at least once a year, if not two or three depending on available travel funds. So, I think it was so incredibly helpful that I have had a couple projects in grad school where I have had to give a conference paper to the class. I actually reworked an existing piece that I had done for Visions and got to present it again, which was very cool. 

I am going to present part of my thesis work in May at the Music and Moving Image Conference at NYU. Having the Visions background is so helpful because it gives you an idea of what you're getting into and if you're cut out for doing this sort of presentation. While Visions didn’t feel like low stakes, it was more comfortable as I was from UNCW. I felt at home which gave me the confidence to know I can do this sort of presentation beyond Visions where my professors will be presenting as well.

Erin: What challenges have you faced as you've gotten forward in your education and then in what you're doing overall in this field?

Kate: I feel like I can make an itemized list for you of my challenges. However, probably one of the largest for me is what is referred to as the “imposter syndrome.” The way I understand this is that one will feel that someone will find out at any time that I don’t really belong and that I shouldn’t have gotten to the level that I have gotten to.

When I was in high school, I was the kid that loved film and everyone knew I loved film. Then I arrived at college to pursue a degree in film where everyone loves film. You realize there's a lot of people just like me. And you're like, “oh my gosh, I don’t feel worthy.” Then, I went to graduate school where I know that I love my studies, I can do it at a high level, and then I realized that everybody's brilliant here. I began to question if I’m just stupid and perhaps I do not belong here. Feeling, “How do I measure up?”; that is where I am experiencing the imposter syndrome. I think that there are a lot of people who deal with this, especially in graduate school. They can go through their whole lives wondering, “Am I smart enough to do this? Am I dedicated enough to do this? Have I just fooled everyone into thinking that I can do this?” I find myself worrying if I'm going to let everyone who believes in me down. 

Rejection doesn’t make this any easier. I hope I can maybe talk a little bit about this during the panel. I am expected to hopefully present at conferences, therefore I must submit to a lot of them as I will only get accepted to a small proportion of them, if any. In this past year, I have submitted material to somewhere between 25-30 different journals or conferences as I have to work the odds. Sometimes, really great things happen such as presenting in Miami but there are also a lot of opportunities that I didn’t get. From my work as the co-editing chief of a film journal, I understand that the people making these decisions are not usually making a statement on me or my work. Often when we make choices, it is because we had a very specific idea of what we wanted for our issue and we tried to pick a diverse group of papers that communicated that focus. We often have a conversation with each other that even though there are really interesting and well done pieces, they just didn't quite fit with the idea that we had. From my experience of being on the other side, it is important for me to remember that a rejection doesn't mean that I did a bad job or am a bad scholar. 

I have, therefore, had to learn to take rejection well and have hope that even if I am not going to get the next one, it is important for me to keep trying. I try to keep the focus on that each time I do a submission or create an abstract, I get better with this process. I find myself balancing the “I knew I wasn’t good enough for this” with my logical side that rejection is most likely not even about the quality of my work but what they are looking for and that I just need to keep trying. This can be sometimes difficult. Sometimes, I just have to remind myself that at the bottom of this, I love film- which is why I am doing this. I have to remind myself that I truly love the topics that I study and practice letting go. This is obviously hard sometimes because of the passion that I bring to my work.

Erin: What can you tell me about your master's thesis?

Kate: Right now, I am in the research stage. So through May, I will be inundated with reading and then “free writing” from the reading. Writing my actual thesis will probably begin in June. I hope that I will be able to defend my thesis in late August. 

My thesis currently is on K-pop, specifically the music videos and other visual content of Bulletproof Boy Scouts (BTS), the grammy nominated K-pop group..

Throughout their music videos there is the use of mirrors. This is incredibly compelling. I am going to be looking at their lyrics in relation to mirrors as a representation of a reconstructed identity versus an authentic identity. The notion of hiding yourself- which I find to be kind of an inherently queer mode of living in the world. For many who are queer, you have to often pass for straight in order to get by in the world. There's a lot of film theory about mirrors. There is an idea that mirrors force the audience to confront themselves, similar to close-ups as in when you see someone's face close up it makes you think about yourself or identify with the person.  BTS does that a lot. There’s a lot of staring into the camera longingly in slow-mo. Their work has a queer undertone throughout their whole like body of work. 

In addition, they have a hyper use of social media which I am looking forward to exploring. I find their direct commenting and interacting with fans during live streams compelling. The ability to watch this on a phone allows for transference between fans and artists and a breakdown of any boundaries. It adds to fandom, but also to stan culture and the potential to create over the top stalker fans. 

The imagery of mirrors, and possibly broken mirrors becomes important- perhaps reflecting the breakdown between a separate fan and a separate artist and how BTS is promoting them to become, in a sense, as one. This way you get very passionate fans, and the fans will end up doing subversive fan activism on the behalf of BTS. You might have heard about the incident where BTS fans reserved tickets for Trump rallies and then didn’t show up, or when BTS donated $1 million to Black Lives Matter and within 24 hours their fans had matched it.

I question whether the musicians understand that their work will be consumed by Westerners and they are directing their work in a unique, subversive way. For me, this is obviously a rich topic.  I could write about 500 pages. However, a Master’s thesis is only 80-100 pages so I will be focusing this down over the next three months. What I do know is that I can see that more people are getting excited about K-pop and I can’t wait to continue to contribute to this excitement with my work.

Erin: Is there anything else you want to talk about today?

Kate: I’m so happy that Visions is doing these kinds of workshops. I know I would have appreciated them tremendously when I was in school. I am sure that your current students are very happy to have the knowledge that is being provided by the many wonderful diverse voices that have so much to offer. Even being a panelist, I have found myself learning from the other panelists. So, I wanted to give a big shout out to Visions for putting this on- particularly that the Vision’s team has been persevering during this pandemic. I think it's so great that UNCW has this program in place where it can innovate and evolve and do such amazing work. I am very thankful that I have been asked to be on a couple panels. I hope that I can provide some insight.

To hear more from Kate, follow her on instagram, @k8theegrrr8.