Club Music Contorted Into Pretzels

[koganbot]

New GD&TOP single "High High," vocals and beats twisted as electronically tight as they can be, club music contorted into pretzels, and GD & TOP finally breaking into song* at 2:20. I think even the Brits in my readership - if any Brits are still reading - will be won over by this one.

Watch on YouTube

*EDIT: When they do this they spell out G-H-E-T-T-O E-L-E-C-T-R-O, and googling the term I got a St. Louis Record Company (their Website streaming what I'd ignorantly or archaically call "industrial dance rock"); DJ Godfather, a ghettotech guy from Detroit; Egyptian Lover, an electro hop DJ from L.A.; and this very strange entry at Urban Dictionary: Generating money for your home via money saving methods. Origin: Originating for Korea, it was first heard in the mythological pairing of a dragon and a white haired extremely good looking man. "The hamster is not running fast enough to generate enough ghetto electro to heat my shower." That's tongue-in-cheek, presumably. Right?

Comments

Re: http://thegrandnarrative.com/

[koganbot]

A Ha! Noona writes:

Around three o'clock the Korean models that were supposed to be dressed in bunny suits, dancing with G-dragon, refused to put on the outfits because they were too sexy, so Mac asked me if I could do it instead.

Whereas Mixtapes and Liner Notes writes:

I found that the ratio of shots of Asian women compared to those of Caucasian women, either alone or with G-Dragon and TOP, is about 1:6.

...

Since this is a music video, people were cast/invited to be at this party and to participate in the shoot, meaning that a considerable number of Caucasian women were specifically cast for this video, as opposed to them showing up by chance. Even if the casting wasn't biased towards Caucasian women, the editing of the video favors them: Asian women appear far less often, and almost never in close up. If you still need to be convinced that this isn't normal, then check out this Big Bang music video from 2008, where they are also in a club, but surrounded by mostly Asian women...

As I speculate about the reasons behind this creative choice, I can’t help but remember some of the writings by James Turnbull over at the Grand Narrative, indicating the hyper-sexualization of Caucasians in South Korean advertising. Until recently, you were more likely to see a Caucasian woman in skimpy clothing or in a sexually suggestive pose (often with a Caucasian man) as opposed to a Korean woman, which I witnessed myself while looking for a photoshoot on the Cosmopolitan Korea website: it's all Asians until you get to the Love and Relationships section, then suddenly some white people pop up - half-naked, as that section of Cosmo usually goes.

I'm guessing then that "Caucasians Are Sexy" was the casting concept for this video: Caucasian women are sexy, therefore if you have a ton of white women in your video, you must be the shit, or you must be in America/Europe, which makes you even cooler (Is it a coincidence that the invites to the party / video shoot were passports and plane tickets?). Not only does this reduce the white woman to a prop or a trophy simply put there to elevate the Asian man's status (especially when they’re all dressed in identical outfits as in the screencap below) but it also pushes her towards the "bad girl" category, which few Korean women would willingly associate with, and few Korean men would look upon favorably, if this translation of the lyrics for Miss A’s "Good Girl, Bad Girl" is anything to go by.

And then, after having read Noona's account:

It turns out she got an invitation because she's friends with people from the Seoulcialite Agency, "a boutique marketing and event planning company which specializes in high profile and exclusive events within the music, fashion and entertainment industry". They planned the party and the shoot along with YG Ent. On their website, they have a bunch of photos from the shoot - still a ton of Caucasian women, but lots more Asian women. This indicates again, that the editing of the video was biased towards Caucasian women.

Re: http://thegrandnarrative.com/

[askbask.livejournal.com]

The problem with this line of thought applied to popular culture in Korea is that it ignores the fact that Korean women are sexy all the time, much more often than you see a white women being sexy. Perhaps caucasians are hyper-sexualised in ads and videos, but then so are the Koreans. And the sex is the same; I may be building a strawman here, but if someone are suggesting that Korean women's sexuality in k-pop videos or shown by k-pop stars is presented as submissive, in line with cliches about Asians, and less aggressive than caucasian women then they are very much mistaken indeed. I could give you hundreds of examples from 2010, starting with Hyuna's pussy-popping-in-your-face dance in January, going through countless Ciara dance covers by female idols-- that raw, sexual dance style seemingly favored by everyone who's asked to 'do a dance' on a variety show, and finally start looking at the music videos themselves to show how wrong they are.

Certainly you will notice it when non-Asians pop up in Korean popular culture, because it is still a homogeneous society, but some people might make more of their appearances just because they're easier to spot.

Claiming the statement "the "bad girl" category, which few Korean women would willingly associate with" has any relevance when talking about k-pop ignores the fact that so many of the year's biggest female pop hits have been about living out the bad girl role, plotting revenge on the men, being confident about ones sexuality. How this is presented, and the problems with objectification is another thing entirely. But the things said here are simply not true.

Re: http://thegrandnarrative.com/

[koganbot]

Well, not knowing much about it at all, I'm wondering if K-pop plays by rules that are different from K-life, and if there's (even) more of a tension between pop and life there than here. I've no idea. It seems as if GD&TOP found women willing to wear bunny costumes here (I think it's the same performance that you linked above but that YouTube put the kibosh on):

Re: http://thegrandnarrative.com/

[askbask.livejournal.com]

Not sure why they would object to the bunny suits in the first place. I think there's tension between established, traditional conservative values and a liberal young population reflected in the pop culture.

Re: http://thegrandnarrative.com/

[askbask.livejournal.com]

THE young population, not a. The population as a whole is unfortunately increasingly old.

Re: http://thegrandnarrative.com/

[koganbot]

People have this tendency not to die as young as they used to. Is this necessarily unfortunate? (My 91-year-old dad is in the hospital as I write this.)

Am suspicious of a categorization system that pits "established, traditional conservative values" versus "liberal young" and then tries to fit bunny suits into it. I'd think there are a whole bunch of competing tensions - that is, not that there's just a tension between competing ways of thinking, but that the tensions themselves may be in competition with other tensions; that is, there's a tension between bunny and housewife, but also maybe between bunny and business woman, and bunny and feminist, and between lipstick feminist and nonlipstick feminist, and bunny business woman and nonbunny business woman. So you've got tensions between tensions, and all these various tensions exist within individuals as well as between them (and between groups). And what is the liberal "nontraditional" position? Is it plumping for equal economic agents within a predatory capitalist system? Or is it committed to social safety nets? What is the principal agent of socialization and nurturing? Is it the family? The school? What? These questions beset the West, and in the U.S. we don't even have to deal with questions as to whether or not modernization is tainted by its association with Japanese occupiers and U.S. troops and dictatorial governments.

Me, I'm somewhat amused and bemused by the casual use of the word "chick" in Maddie's and Mixtapes/Liner Notes' posts.

Re: http://thegrandnarrative.com/

[askbask.livejournal.com]

People living long lives is a good thing. It's unfortunate that the birth rate is so low in Korea (the lowest in the world, or close to) that they're lacking young people to take care of the increasing percentage of old citizens.

I wasn't really trying to fit the bunny suits into this, in fact that anecdote just confused me. What I referred to was youth who identify themselves as being at odds with some impression of their society's values. I'll quote a survey held by students, of students, at Yonsei University, which was translated by James:

Despite this [changing] atmosphere, students think Korean society is still conservative, and on the question of sex in particular, 67% of the total replies that is was conservative and not yet liberal. Of themselves in contrast, 41.1% considered themselves to have liberal attitudes towards sex, 26.8% were middle of the road, and 32.0% considered themselves conservative.

4Minute's Hyuna seems to be among those, judging from this quote re: skimpy clothing at a show.

“Singers should be able to choose the costumes they want to wear while performing. Fashion is popular all around the world, but in Korea, fashion is more strict due to the conservative culture. Many things I wear are somehow tied into a controversy, and that’s very disappointing. I just want to show my true self on stage, and tying in my costume with the performance.”

Re: http://thegrandnarrative.com/

[koganbot]

Well, it's "girl" in Maddie's post and "chick" in Mixtapes/Liner Notes'.

Re: http://thegrandnarrative.com/

[koganbot]

we don't even have to deal with questions as to whether or not modernization is tainted by its association with Japanese occupiers and U.S. troops and dictatorial governments.

That is, lots of people in the U.S. choose to ignore such questions, though some Americans, of course, are quite interested in the relation between modernization and U.S. troops and dictatorial governments.

Re: http://thegrandnarrative.com/

[koganbot]

This point is not specifically related to anything you said, but it's not obvious to me that people in "traditional" garb and playing traditional roles aren't themselves sexualized/hypersexualized. That is, the issue between tradition and nontradition isn't between the nonsexual and the sexual.