Problematic Korean Video Friday over at Poptimists: T-ara YA YA YA

[koganbot]

I posted T-ara's "Ya Ya Ya" vid over at poptimists, and I'm posting here as well, since, if the past is any guide, the poptimist mass are too intimidated by the soberness and severity of Korean music videos to offer an opinion, leaving it to us. But you should visit and check out what I said.

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Comments

[troisroyaumes]

For what it's worth: I think this video is really problematic, and while there may not be an interesting discussion in the mistreatment of Native Americans in South Korea due to the lack of a significant resident minority population, there could be an interesting discussion in the export of offensive stereotypes in U.S. media and how those stereotypes get magnified when reproduced in other countries influenced by U.S. culture.

[koganbot]

Assuming that Korean demographics are similar to America's for this sort of pop - which may be a wrong assumption - I'm guessing that the core audience for this goes from young girls through to teenage girls, maybe to young women as well, without too many boys, and that what the fans may therefore get from it first and foremost is that a gang of girls capture and tie up a boy and then each girl gets to be brazenly seductive towards him to the point of near molestation. And they get to do this within great kaleidoscopes of color, the Island/Indian motifs being a pretext. Which doesn't mean that the stereotypes don't have potentially stereotypical effects. I'm assuming that even the kiddies are sophisticated enough to realize that e.g. placing Native Americans on a tropical island makes the whole thing not to be taken seriously as depicting what a "native" or anyone is like. But nonetheless, a subliminal message might remain. The whole tie-'em-to-the-stake-and-boil-'em-for-dinner imagery, which in the past was used to characterize Africans and Amazon tribes and North American Indians and Polynesians, is a way of infantilizing and treating as primitive the formerly non-industrialized West. So even though that message is irrelevant to why anyone would care about this group and this video, that doesn't mean the message isn't potentially there, claiming that "they" are children compared to "us," even if "we" are the ones dressing as them for the video and not taking any of it seriously. (And where do the Koreans place themselves within this "us" and "them"?) But as skyecaptain would point out, the way to find out what sort of message people get from something is to ask them, which I'm not in a position to do when it comes to the prime audience for "Ya Ya Ya" (well, I suppose I could go to YouTube and ask, though as Dave would also point out, asking in a way that elicits useful answers is not easy in any context, much less YouTube).

I still think the main story here is of girls/young women playfully taking aggressive sexual initiative, which I'm inclined to think of as a Good Thing - though I wonder if the girlishness of it all allows for a license that the T-aras wouldn't have if they were dressed more womanly in the video - and I wonder if the "native" imagery sets up the girlishness.

(The sometimes self-consciously put-on girlishness (almost to the point of camp, unless that's a cultural misreading on my part) in Orange Caramel videos is definitely a subject for further video problematics, and is something I am certain I do not understand.)

I was going to say that even if the stereotypes were originally generated in Europe and North America, there's no way a video like this gets made here anytime in the last 30 years. But I don't know this, actually, and who knows what Ke$ha might resort to if she decides to make a video for "Cannibal." She does like to paint her face, for sure, though I also doubt that she'd want to demean anyone who's not a wussy male. I do think the "Ya Ya Ya" video is something of a cousin of Ke$ha's "Cannibal," both Ke$ha's words and Ke$ha's singing, though a very mild cousin. (See See Jonathan Bogart's and Katherine St. Asaph's posts about "Cannibal" at the Jukebox. ("Banshees, of course, are explicitly female, and the gender coding is no mistake. 'I am cannibal' begs to be completed with 'hear me roar,' especially once she actually does.") But also see Nick's retort down in the comments.

Female stalkerism (I'm talking about Ke$ha, now, not T-ara) isn't new in popular culture, and it's not even new as a positive image - Katherine Hepburn in Bringing Up Baby is fundamentally, and very attractively, stalking Cary Grant, and it turns out to be for his own good; and in a comparatively subtler way [only subtle in comparison to Bringing Up Baby] Carole Lombard is doing the same to William Powell in My Man Godfrey. But still, Hepburn and Lombard in those two roles are also presented as child-like. Whereas Ke$ha's not child-like so much as she's feral.

[troisroyaumes]

I certainly don't disagree with your points about the the message of sexual initiative being a good thing--feminism in Korea has always been associated with acknowledging and expressing female sexuality. E.g. my mother, when talking about early 20th century feminism in Korea, mentions things like wearing makeup/revealing clothes or sexual freedom, neither of which would be associated with first wave feminism in the U.S. I also agree with your analysis that this is potentially problematized by their infantilization, and like most cultural phenomena, one can't simply reduce it to this is Good or Bad.

I do think there is a subliminal message that remains from videos like this as OTT as it seems; there always is, isn't it? After all, stereotypical humorous portrayals of Asian-Americans in U.S. media fuel the "ching chong" jokes that are made in ordinary life, regardless of how seriously anyone takes the stereotypes. It's also worth noting that Korea was the formerly non-industrialized non-West not so long ago and included in the Western stereotype of infantilism/barbarism; it was a Third World country when my parents were growing up, and I'm in my mid-20s. I don't know how the "us" vs. "them" dynamic will exactly fall out in this case though; I don't think Koreans typically associate themselves with Native Americans.

I was going to say that even if the stereotypes were originally generated in Europe and North America, there's no way a video like this gets made here anytime in the last 30 years.

I think even if we assume that such a video can't be made today, we can't deny that there is still is a lot of misappropriation of Native American symbols like headdresses and face paint (one of the many posts) and the negative portrayal of Native Americans/First Nations/etc. in contemporary U.S. media (e.g. blog about representation in children's literature, there are many other sites/posts that can be found by Googling). In fact, Ke$ha herself has come under this criticism, though I don't know if anyone has specifically talked about "Cannibal" (Racialicious open thread). Not to mention, media of 30+ years ago is probably still available for consumption, not just here but overseas as well.

I do think there's a magnification effect that takes place and is worth discussing: South Korea consumes a lot of U.S. media and absorbs the more subtle manifestation of stereotypes about ethnic minorities in the U.S., but when these stereotypes are reproduced in Korean media, they often seem more exaggerated since those minorities are not actually present in Korean society in large enough numbers to protest. Granted, I am not really situated to deconstruct the issue in great detail.

[koganbot]

Totally unrelated to this discussion: I still intend to write about those Korean indie videos you linked for me several months ago. Need to do a few more year-end wrap-ups first.

[troisroyaumes]

Would definitely like to hear what you think!

[koganbot]

without too many boys

From the evidence of fan chants, I was wrong. The fan chants sound very male, more male than I've heard for any other K-pop group. Not that I've heard enough K-pop groups.

[koganbot]

[koganbot]

By "formerly non-industrialized West" I surely mean "formerly non-industrialized non-West," though I'm sure you know what I mean.

[koganbot]

[descriptivist.livejournal.com]

One factoid I found interesting is that their stylist apparently thought up the "Indian" concept after hearing the song. I'm wondering if that has something to do with the "nonsense" lyrics (which for some reason was news (http://www.allkpop.com/2010/12/e-tribe-reveals-meaning-behind-t-aras-yayaya-lyrics))? I'm not sure where this fits into the overall discussion of cultural ignorance as distinct from racism - maybe as evidence that this is indeed based on the export of a movie-Western stereotype in which Indians whoop and clap their hands over their mouths. (I can't help but wince every time I see that move in the dance.)

Also, Frank, you make a good point about the fat-mocking at the end of the video. At least this video manages to be problematic in more than just one way!