Julien Dufresne Lamy follows in the footsteps of the Blackpink star and signs the K-Pop novel Black and Pink

Their names are Lisa, Jennie, Jisoo, and Rosé. At the beginning of the summer of 2016, the four members of Blackpink, whose average age is 19 years old, made their first television appearance and tested their facial expressions. Egyo, They say in South Korea, and they ask the audience to love them. Their wish will be granted beyond their expectations. The quartet quickly became an image hallyu, A Chinese term referring to the global boom of South Korean culture between K-pop music, Korean food, video games, and typical TV series. Squid game. Blackpink is leading YouTube and Spotify to the point of becoming the most listened to female band in the world.

Having become an inspiration for luxury, the four girls present an image so smooth and coordinated that it is difficult to detect a grain of reality. In his book Stage show (J.C. Lattès, forthcoming May 2), Julien Dufresne Lamy embodies this contemporary epic. This “true novel” – transformed into fiction through dialogue and sometimes made-up scenes from a very real story – is based on an investigation lasting several years.

The 36-year-old is a highly published author Two cigarettes in the dark (Belfond, 2017), dedicated to choreographer Pina Bausch, and Very beautiful monsters (Belfond, 2019), an epic dedicated to the New York drag queen scene, weaves together a work that revolves around performance, fascinated by “The body and its countless regenerations, and the reality of presenting one’s life on the scene,” He explains in a bistro at 10^H Paris region. When in 2020 he discovered the story of Lisa, Blackpink’s most popular rapper and dancer, he saw in her “A great, resilient and romantic heroine.”

Julien Dufresne Lamy begins learning Hangul, the Korean alphabet. Then he tries, with the help of the conversation teacher, to master this difficult language. “Respectful and wise.” in which “I don’t want to” Does not exist and some verbs are translated differently depending on the age of the interlocutor. Essential learning to avoid Western condescension and clichés. And also to put himself in the shoes of his heroine, Lisa, in whose footsteps he follows, without being able to meet her, during a three-month stay in South Korea in the spring of 2023.

The biggest star in Korea is Thai

The latter was born Pranpriya Manopal in Thailand, arrived in Korea at the age of 14 without speaking a word of Korean, and is the first foreigner discovered by YG. “Lisa had to face the rejection and racism prevalent in East Asia versus South Asia, lands that some consider poorer and less noble, says Julien Dufresne Lamy. His five years of training had been a long ordeal. Ironically, today she is the most important artist in Korean music. She is a person of openness, humility and perseverance in the face of an entire system that she has tamed. »

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