From Huntr/x to Leelou Dallas Multi-Pass: ass-kicking heroines and emotional context coupling

The first time I heard Golden and Soda Pop, the two smash hits from the Netflix global phenom, K-pop Demon Hunters, was before I’d watched the movie. I saw them climbing the charts. I knew the movie was on Netflix. I had a listen because I’m always curious about unexpected global popularity.

The songs didn’t hit for me on first listen. I could tell they were good pop songs, but they felt too much like eating candy floss, as pop sometimes does.

Then my favourite Formula 1 podcaster posted that it was “the best movie ever,” on his Instagram story. The recommendation was so unexpected I decided to give the film a go on the spot. My husband and I watched it that night after the kids had gone to bed.  

The first fifteen minutes go so hard. It’s funny, fun, cool, and executed to painstaking perfection. There’s a little something for every age group in it. The way the back story of the hunters is woven into the modern K-pop fan experience brings such an electric energy to the animation. KPDH writer and director, Maggie Kang, said she saw BTS live in LA when she was writing the story and tried to evoke the same sense of fizzy collective anticipation and magic in the concert scenes. She succeeded. It’s one of the best openings to a movie I’ve seen in years. No notes.

I loved the movie so much that it’s kind of the reason I started SOTM. It led to so many thoughts about the nature of modern storytelling and story creation—how we build worlds upon worlds. My feelings about the movie also changed how I felt about the soundtrack overnight. It wasn’t just my kids who wanted to listen to it constantly. I had it on repeat for weeks. Golden and Soda Pop are generation-defining bops. Your Idol and What it Sounds Like are incredibly affecting (for me).

It's clear that my quick change of heart was due to narrative layering. My experience of the music was altered by its connection to the characters in the story and their arcs, which was deepened even further by my own recognition of the parts of myself I found in the film. Your Idol is about the worst of pop and fan culture—the dark side of parasocial feelings and the predatory capitalism built into any art created for mainstream consumption. What it Sounds Like is about self-acceptance, shame, and choosing vulnerability and connection over the fear of being seen and rejected.

K-pop Demon Hunters has sent me down many rabbit holes, but today I’m  thinking about emotional context coupling. When the layering of music deepens and broadens our emotional experience of a story. This is not a new idea. The connection between narrative, music and performance in evoking audience emotion is raised in ancient Sanskrit texts dating back to 200 BCE. In a western context, these ideas have been theorised since the 80s. In 2019 there was a study exploring how the inclusion of music in film increases viewer empathy for characters. An artful convergence of music with visual storytelling is a powerful tool for enhancing an audiences’ emotive experience and triggering memory.

Here’s another example from recent history: Running up that Hill (a Deal with God) by Kate Bush, which re-entered global charts on for the first time in 2 decades in 2023 after being used in the Netflix show Stranger Things.

I am a Stranger Things stan. The intensity of emotion evoked in this particular scene was due to the audience witnessing one of the core (and much-loved) characters, Max, trying to escape a seemingly inescapable fate. Her friends use a Walkman and a Kate Bush cassette to pull her subconscious back from the Upside Down into the real world. Two years later the feeling the scene evoked in me is still so vivid that I tear up a little just thinking about it. No surprises that Running up that Hill was one of my top songs of 2023.

I hate horror. I’m very wimpy about jump scares. Stranger Things pulled me in with its 80s nostalgia, pseudo-scientific magical mind powers and endearing ensemble cast of misfit children. Now it has its narratives hooks in deep and I’m committed, gore and all. The creators have managed to credibly build upon the world season by season while keeping the human stories both believable and relatable, and this scene was a clear emotional peak. If you haven’t watched Stranger Things but plan to, DO NOT WATCH THIS CLIP. Spoilers ahead.

I really hope they don’t screw up the final season.

My lifelong favourite example of the power of a scene being perfectly crafted alongside a soundtrack is in The Fifth Element. Everything about this film is iconic. The Yves Saint Laurent costumes. Every character: from super green Chris Rock to slimy Gary Oldman. It was 1997 and action man Bruce Willis was at the peak of his mono-syllabic fame. I was twelve years old and raised on a narrative diet of Disney Princesses and ‘happily ever afters’. I went to see this film with my Dad at the cinema. Seeing an ass-kicking female protagonist on a big screen for the first time was universe-expanding for me (“I fifth element—supreme being—I. protect. you.” Ooof). The fact that the only way Korban Dallas could save the day was by showing vulnerability? Decades ahead of its time. Ground breaking. We went to Burger King afterwards and I had a BBQ Bacon Double Cheeseburger. Core memory.

I love the dystopian future of New York filled with smog and flying cars. I love the way the technology in the film is advanced but grimy, breakable, lived-in. It’s so offbeat. A classic tale of good vs evil set within a masterpiece born of Luc Besson’s mind.

I did a project in high school about technologies in The Fifth Element and whether they were likely to become real enough to use. It was a powerpoint. I painstakingly synced it to the Diva Dance and handed it in to my teacher on a USB stick. All she had to do was press play. It was more than homework for me. Looking back, that was the first time my love for stories, music and technology converged. There really is no better scene in cinematic history (for me) than the Diva Dance. This is my Roman Empire.

So it’s apt that thirty years later I’ve found sudden and intense creative inspiration from three more ass-kicking heroines taking out bad guys in sync with a great tune. We are all made of stories.