An Examination of the Causality of Meritocracy and the Collective Boredom of the Young Generation in Dramas: Focusing on <My Liberation Notes>
Authors:   Academic Association of Global Cultural Contents, Kim Dong-hwan , Hong Jong-yeol 
Published: December 2024

It is difficult to view the one-person culture centered around the youth generation as a cultural characteristic of a
specific generation. Just as Simmel believed that capitalist changes in relations were behind the emergence of individualism
since the modern era, the emergence of the one-person culture was not spontaneous either. Behind the one-person
culture, there are youth who have encountered problematic situations such as NEETs, reclusive youth, and the n-po
phenomenon. This draws attention to the special emotional state of the youth generation called ‘collective boredom.’
Boredom is an emotional state that leads to apathy resulting from repeated frustration and the abandonment of choices
or orientations. The boredom experienced by the youth generation is a causal relationship between two social factors.
One is the alienation phenomenon caused by the spread of neoliberalism, and the other is the meritocracy that emerged
with capitalism. When the alienation of youth, which has been caused by long-term exposure to the discourse of meritocracy
and neoliberal market logic in Korean society from elementary school to the early years of social life, becomes
an emotional state, the youth generation experiences ‘collective boredom.’
A drama that well depicts the collective boredom of the youth generation is <My Liberation Notes>. This work allows
us to look into the basis of the emotional state of the youth generation in Korea. All the characters in the play pursue
happiness, but that soon leads to giving up, resignation, and boredom. Baudrillard said that the premise of equality is
happiness, and that the happiness of modern people cannot escape the logic of a consumer society. Therefore, both equality
and happiness are fictions created by a consumer society. However, the youth generation has become helpless against
grand discourses such as equality as they experience repeated alienation due to meritocracy. The characters in the work
lose the power to resist the established society accustomed to competition and achievement, the society that only expects
the next achievement instead of fair compensation for achievement, and the neoliberal society that removes even the
protective shield after frustration, and reveal an emotional state of collective boredom. This can be said to be the fundamental
cause of the one-person culture.
This paper examines how the youth generation in <My Liberation Notes> escapes and resists each individual’s command
of existence based on the characteristics of boredom that modern philosophy has focused on. Through the characters
in the work, the author depicts a situation in which the young generation encounters ‘deep boredom’ in order to ‘break
through’ the oppression of the older generation, the injustice of consumer society, and the false consciousness of growth
discourse. This shows a meaningful narrative solution to the reality that the young generation faces, and allows us to
understand the choices of the young generation, such as the one-person culture and n-po phenomenon, from a fundamental
perspective.