The audience

This chapter focuses on the roles of mukbang performers and their relationships with their audience. It begins with an historical overview of the role of an audience in performance, drawing on the form of ancient Athenian drama. It examines how exchange and transaction takes place between performer and audiences across genres, applying this to mukbangers and their viewers. The appeal of vicarious experience and voyeurism for audiences is then examined in relation to eating, food, and travel. The chapter ends with an overview of different viewer profiles, highlighting ‘gallivanting gastronomes’ and ‘nostalgia’ eaters, offering some perspectives on the categorisation and pathologisation of mukbang viewing motivations, as ‘good’, ‘bad’, and ‘mindless’.