Queer Aesthetics, Straight Markets: Disneyfication in the Korean Musical Dorian Gray: A New Musical (2016)

Abstract

Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890) has generated a long afterlife across global media, extending from literature to theater, film, and fandom. Its Korean musical adaptation, Dorian Gray: A New Musical (2016), illustrates how queer aesthetics are reconfigured under the logics of commercial entertainment and cultural export. This article examines the production through Alan Bryman's concept of Disneyfication, which describes how complex cultural material is sanitized, themed, and repackaged for mass consumption. The musical stages homoerotic intimacy between Dorian and Basil with unprecedented explicitness in the Korean context, yet simultaneously neutralizes queer politics by framing Dorian's queerness as the result of supernatural possession rather than desire. Idol casting and aesthetic spectacle position queerness as consumable fantasy for domestic fujoshi audiences and as a pinkwashed marker of progressiveness for international markets. Drawing on reviews, fan responses, and broader scholarship on commodified queer visibility, the article demonstrates how queerness in the musical is rendered hyper-visible but politically impotent. By embedding homoerotic spectacle within idol-centered fan economies and hybrid consumption practices, the production exemplifies how Korea's K-musical industry navigates the tensions between domestic conservatism, global marketability, and the commodification of LGBTQ+ representation.