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Paper short abstract

This paper examines how Vietnamese Gen-Z pop culture, through tlinh’s music, articulates political agency and alternative futures. In a context where public dissent is constrained, care, vulnerability, and intimacy become soft yet consequential ways of reworking power.

Paper long abstract

This paper examines how Gen-Z political imaginaries emerge in contexts where overt dissent is constrained, focusing on Vietnamese pop culture as a site where power and alternative futures are negotiated affectively. Taking tlinh’s music video nữ siêu anh hùng (superwoman) as a case study, the paper argues that care operates as a quiet but insurgent mode of political critique, challenging neoliberal and patriarchal norms that shape contemporary youth subjectivities.

The paper reframes Vietnamese Gen-Z politics as unfolding through cultural and creative practices that rework gendered ideals of strength, autonomy, and authority. Through close analysis of lyrics, visuals, and bodily gestures, it traces how vulnerability, interdependence, and tenderness unsettle two dominant figures of neoliberal power: the self-contained corporate woman and the hypermasculine male leader. These interventions do not confront power directly; instead, they move around it, disarming its affective foundations and opening space for alternative modes of agency.

Situating this analysis within feminist theories of care and cultural politics, the paper shows how pop culture functions as a space where political feelings are rehearsed and circulated, particularly for Gen-Z audiences navigating disillusionment with formal institutions. At the same time, it remains attentive to the limits of such interventions, recognising how care may be appropriated or reabsorbed within dominant hierarchies.

By foregrounding pop culture as a site of soft revolution, this paper contributes to debates on Gen-Z movements by expanding what counts as political action, highlighting how gendered, affective, and everyday practices shape the trajectories and futures of youth-led transformations.