NEW BLOG FOR MEDIA EDUCATION LAB: Good vs. Evil and the Limits of Empathy in K-Pop Demon Hunters

Image credit: TV Tropes

​Here is my latest essay for Media Education Lab:

​Narratives of good and evil are everywhere. They run deep in human storytelling, from ancient myths and fairy tales to modern movies and news headlines. We seem drawn to stories that divide the world into heroes and villains. The appeal is obvious: such narratives make moral dilemmas, which abound in our lives, easier to process.

Yet this clarity comes at a cost. By simplifying people into categories of good and bad, these stories obscure the complexity of motives, causes, and relationships. When we see the world this way, it becomes harder to resolve conflicts—whether in society or in our personal lives—because we stop asking what drives people and start treating “badness” as a complete explanation. It also makes self-reflection harder: if we reserve moral ambiguity for “them,” we are less likely to notice our own mixed motives, rationalizations, and capacity to cause harm.

Media literacy educators have long examined how stereotypes, misinformation, and ideology shape our understanding of the world. But the deeper narrative structure—the good-versus-evil moral binary that underpins so much storytelling—often goes unquestioned. This essay offers one concrete way to address that gap by briefly analyzing a widely watched media text, K-Pop Demon Hunters (KPDH), with a simple lesson-plan sketch at the end. 

Keep reading here.