Roald Maliangkay The Australian National University Ever since the - - PDF document

HOW THE WEST WAS WON: REFLECTIONS ON THE CONSUMPTION OF K-POP OVERSEAS

Roald Maliangkay

The Australian National University

Ever since the South Korean (hereafter: Korean) government began to endorse the promotion of Korean pop entertainment for direct profit and to further bolster the nation’s soft power, 1 carefully groomed and tailored music acts have been successfully promoted overseas. Although K-pop, as it became known, is regarded as a form of musical entertainment, the particular appeal of the acts involved is foremost visual. Even though many of the acts are relatively similar in terms of their performance, presentation and physicality, recognizing specific singers on the basis of their music and voice alone is difficult. This is partly because the sound of K-pop acts is indistinctive. The music commonly has a strong R&B flavor considering its melodic contours, vocal quality, and tresillo-based beat, but arrangements differ considerably and include light pre-teen pop and rock ’n’ roll. It regularly involves short rap sequences that have little “attitude”, but sound rushed, as if the fact that the lines do not suit the beat well is unintentional. Voices are clear and pitch-perfect — on recordings — while auto-tune, heavy arrangements and sound effects help support a rich “studio-sound” that would be difficult to reproduce live on stage. Although there are musical differences based

• n the gender of the acts, overall the sound is very much reminiscent of that of K-

pop as a whole as opposed to any K-pop act in particular. Even so, the difference in sound between North American R&B songs and K-pop is disappearing fast, not in the least due to the increased use of English and “attitude” in K-pop performances. Another reason why K-pop acts are a visual phenomenon rather than a musical one is that the English words in the lyrics rarely make sense on their own. Consider, for example, the opening phrases of Exo-K and -M’s recent hit Mama: Careless, careless. Shoot anonymous, anonymous. Heartless,

• mindless. No one who care about me?

Although these lyrics may certainly seem careless and mindless, they are not meaningless and must be considered part of an act that interjects phrases for their sound and symbolic rather than literal meaning, while perhaps also connoting an understanding of Western culture for an audience with a limited knowledge of

• English. Although the grammar may be wrong, and may be recognized by the

audience as wrong, the use of the words implies that the performers, some of whom are native English speakers, are under no pressure to verify their facts. The use of the random English in an opening sequence or chorus is intentional. It breaks with the rules of traditional English grammar and empowers the

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1 A nation’s efforts to boost its soft power very rarely precede economic gains. See Roald

Maliangkay, “Oberflächliche Eindrücke” [Superficial impressions], Kulturaustausch II (April 2012): 68.

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performers, who are regarded as having the final say on the words’ true, symbolic meaning. These performers are expected to be physically attractive, to dance very well and with great synchronicity, and to dress according to the latest fashion. The fact that their movements often seriously impede their singing performance matters little as long as they lip-sync well and meet the visual standard set by the high definition-quality videos of their performance shared online. Another important aspect of the acts is that the stars appear on TV in shows and dramas, so their “true” character can be carefully assessed and scrutinized. Talk show hosts rarely ask the celebrities to sing a full song, but they may ask them, instead, to dance to a little snippet of one of their songs, or sing or dance to that of another act. K-pop has, so much is clear, become an industry for good-looking celebrities who can dance well as opposed to singer-songwriters. Although Psy’s hugely successful song Gangnam Style may be benefiting from its seeming ridicule of K-pop, there is no denying that K-pop has created a new genre of popular music that is increasingly popular with non-Koreans in countries commonly associated with the West. But how can something so relatively foreign win over so many hearts in such a short time, despite the obvious cultural and language differences? In this paper I will attempt to answer that question by isolating the main factors that have respectively driven and ushered in K-pop in the West. There has been a tendency in the past to explain the success of K-pop overseas on the basis of the quality of the Korean products and their management, but local conditions play an equal

• role. It should be possible to arrange the factors below chronologically, according

to the order in which they took effect, but when analysing how they play out in a local context it is impossible to appraise their importance as they converge with a multitude of other factors and conditions. Since chronological categorisation could suggest a grading of importance, I will, instead, group the factors based on their role in the success of K-pop. Driving sales of K-pop 1. Relaxation of censorship. 2. Government support of creative content industries. 3. Economic crisis of 2007. 4. Positively technocratic, democratic image of Korea as a middle-power.

• 1. Censorship was relaxed, despite some terrible movies… (Lies, 1999 by

Chang Sŏnu / Yellow Hair, 1999 by Kim Yumin). The rating of Yellow Hair was rejected by the Korean Performing Arts Promotion Committee (KPAPC). Later President of the Korean Film Archives Cho Hee-mun commented that the film contains “scenes that are disgusting and totally unacceptable to our moral standards.”2

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2 Hwang Jang-jin, “Movie Stirs Debate on Freedom of Speech”, Korea Herald, March 26,

1999.

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• 2. Industry-specific intervention by the government has moved away from the

use of censorship and market protection towards providing financial and marketing support for content producers. Even so, Korean content remains very heavily monitored and controlled.

• 3. Due to the economic crisis, Korean dramas could suddenly be offered to

foreign broadcasting systems at very competitive prices. In China, Japan and Taiwan, Korean dramas suddenly appeared on TV during prime time, where it lead to some resistance.

• 4. A fourth factor that could be considered is Korea’s image as a technocratic

and democratic middle-power that did not seek to colonize another nation some time in the past century. Although a nation’s image abroad is never singular, and cannot be driven as easily as policymakers seem to believe, Korea’s technological and political achievements cannot be dismissed. In China, consumers may often ridicule Korea’s attempts at claiming historical feats, but many acknowledge that the country is leading in technology and entertainment, in comparison to Chinese or Western products. The possiitive image of Korea overall is likely to encourage young people to explore the broad spectrum of Korean entertainment. Sun Jung writes that in Indonesia many locals told her that one of the key attractions of K-pop lies in its blend of “modern, cool attributes, in large part

• riginating from Western popular culture forms such as American hip-hop and

R&B, European electronic music, and pop and visual elements from J-pop”,3 but I would argue that the attraction lies not so much in any musical qualities, which are, after all, increasingly less distinctive of Korean pop, but in four aspects that are

• nly partially related to music.
• 1. High quality of K-pop videos on YouTube. SNS allow people to easily share

videos, and what distinguishes K-pop videos from, for example, Japanese pop videos, is the very high quality of the first, not only in terms of their pixel density but also in terms of their arrangement, cinematography and

• choreography. The high density of the videos allows people to enjoy all the

visual detail, something only few J-pop videos allow.

• 2. High quality dance and presentation. Many fans of K-pop acts, and of boy

bands and girl groups in particular, enjoy re-creating and embodying the

• acts. Considering female fans between the ages of 13 and 24 appear to make

up the majority of the fans of both the male and female acts, the diversity in the styling of some female acts may be intended not only to help fans identify their idols, and — more importantly — identify with them, but also to show the possibilities of different forms of styling in a diverse range of

• settings. K-pop videos are like 4-minute catwalk skits that have a strong

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3 Sun Jung, “K-pop, Indonesian Fandom, and Social Media.” In “Race and Ethnicity in

Fandom,” edited by Robin Anne Reid and Sarah Gatson, special issue, Transformative Works and Cultures (2011), no. 8.

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impact on notions of both male and female beauty and are to be consumed with the eyes as well as the ears, possibly in that order. In order to remove any reservations fans may have over the bands being in the same league as they, the agencies release videos of their stars practising their dance routines without make-up or uniform. The “mirrored dance” videos encourage fans to try the dance routines and become more involved in the act, while indirectly highlighting the difficulty of the synchronised performances and the many hours of hard work put in by the stars.

• 3. Idols’ behavior and accessibility.
• 4. Idols’ look.

Local factors supporting K-pop’s success overseas

• 1. Uniqueness of K-pop;
• 2. Conservative behaviour.
• 3. Integration of SNS with video sharing websites.
• 4. Media.

Even when turning to specific cultures, explaining the fandom culture is difficult. How, after all, am I supposed to understand why a fan gets death threats — rather than a medal — for ripping up a Justin Bieber poster on YouTube? And why do girls rip out their hair when their idol finally gets a girlfriend who is not a celebrity? Some common factors in the nurturing of K-pop fandom can nevertheless be isolated. They include the unique and conservative alternative to Western pop music that K-pop provides. Although the presentation is sometimes eroticised, K-pop acts show no nipples or cleavage, are rarely aggressive, and never controversial. Another important condition of the success of K-pop overseas is the availability of social networking services (SNS), their integration with video sharing websites, and the quality of the Internet network on which they rely. Popular culture continues to be driven by people’s association with unique people or feats, or the ownership of uniqueness in more material form. People are driven by their pursuit of security, in the form of soft and hard power, or, in other words, association and ownership. Whereas symbols of social empowerment and hierarchy are infinitely complex elements of people’s daily lives, both in the corporate and private realm, people constantly stay informed on what allows them to maintain and raise their social status. Popular culture constitutes a realm of activity where social success can be instant and obvious. SNS offers the possibility to instantly highlight one’s achievements and acquisitions, and one’s dissenting

• views. As the following two examples show, social empowerment comes not only

from owning a nice foreign car or being part of a unique experience, but it may also come from one’s ability to mobilize likeminded others, or marginalize those with different beliefs (and, in this case, foreign cars). And then there are the media. In Australia, which belongs to the nations commonly regarded as Western, there is a fast growing number of K-pop fans who have no Asian background. They do not, however, make up the majority. Most

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important to the local market is the large number of people with an Asian background, including first and second generation migrants, who look for entertainment that helps to positively distinguish them within their communities, and offers entertainment that they can more easily relate to. The fact that Australia considers itself part of Asia certainly supports the exploration of those things Asian that have a significant “cool” factor, regardless of whether they are cultural

• r technological. K-pop may have a fast growing fan base in Europe and South

America, too, fans in Australia will be less isolated in their activities, both in practical terms, due to the presence of K-pop in the mainstream media, and in terms of there being a greater openness amongst Australians towards Asian

• culture. It remains odd, in some way, because the Australian news media continue

to largely ignore South Korea. Discourse on the nation is commonly limited to its strategic importance, and its role in dealing with North Korea. It is not nurtured by a fundamental interest from the side of the Australian media, who remain painfully uninterested in Asian cultures in general. In many other Western countries challenges to K-pop fandom may be similar. Some may not have a sizeable Korean community, or at least one among which Korean entertainment is

• popular. In those cases a deep-rooted orientalism or an unbalanced representation
• f Korea in the media can complicate matters. Although such conditions may serve

to strengthen ties among the K-pop fan base, they may also leave it ostracized. The success of Psy’s video lies partly in the fact that it somehow addresses such orientalist sentiments. When the video was placed on the US version of CNN’s home page, it was promoted as a fun video. And indeed, it worked perfectly on SNS to which CNN’s website provides direct links: its first sequences are humorous, fast, colourful and unusual, and they offer great diversity in terms

• f settings and characters. When people check videos through SNS the first 30

seconds are crucial. In the video a fat man is shown sweating it out in a beach chair with a little mini B-boy next to him grooving to the beat. In the 10th second, the man suddenly shouts “oppan kangnam style” into the camera and is seconds later shown walking into a stall with real horses performing a horse-riding dance. Although the strong electronic groove and fast and colourful sequence of events have certainly led to a greater number of people watching and sharing the video, they are not the only factors. Many people will have liked the video because it addresses the skewed image of Asian pop that persists: overly self-conscious, vain and effeminate, arguably the pitfalls of producing image-based pop. K-pop and

• ther Asian acts have been travelling everywhere for years, but to the Westerner,

they come across as all looks and no creativity, and as stars that take themselves a little too seriously. Unlike K-pop idols, Psy looks like the kind of bloke you could actually sit down and have a beer with, and poke fun at K-pop proper. Psy’s success shows that even if you have an act that relies on studio-engineered pop, you can do so without the best voice, or a six-pack, as long as you know how to perform, and carry it in a way that is understood universally: by being human. Conclusion I would like to end on a slightly sour note. Although there is no denying that Asian culture is permeating in the West in more obvious ways than ever before,

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resistance, perhaps nurtured by a degree of orientalism, remains. Last month, John Seabrook of The New Yorker, wrote, …I’m going to go out on a limb and say that there is no way that a K- pop boy group will make it big in the States. The degree of artistic styling is much more Lady Gaga than Justin Bieber. Perhaps there is an audience of ten-to-twelve-year-old girls who could relate to these guys, but there’s a yawning cultural divide between One Direction, say, and SHINee. Although SHINee would certainly embarrass One Direction — nomen est omen? — in a dance-off, the latter act does appear to place greater emphasis on song. Other Korean acts may never come close to emulating the success of Psy’s video, but the expectations of pop music are changing. If a chubby bloke with twin daughters and a drug record like Psy can make both Ai Wei Wei and the Secretary- General of the United Nations dance his horse dance on the same day in front of a film camera, perhaps we’re looking at what are the beginnings of a significant shift in the production of popular entertainment towards Asia. It may not open the hearts and minds of all Western audiences quite yet, but it may certainly encourage them to peek behind that mere veil of visual perfection.