Problematic Korean Video Friday over at Poptimists: Orange Caramel A~ING♡

[koganbot]

Orange Caramel's "A~ing♡" is our problematic video of the week, which I posted over at poptimists, but since almost no one there writes comments anymore, I'm putting it up here as well. As Mat says, "It's odd, because they almost have a supermodel look to them with their long legs, and it just seems grotesque to put them in cheap girly Halloween costumes." I wouldn't say I know what's going on with Orange Caramel. The videos don't seem like camp or parody, but do seem deliberately "off." Or maybe we're just the ones who think it's off, and for the core audience stuff like this is bacon and eggs, seven days a week. Anyhow, you can see what I said; you also might want to check out the convo that petronia, Mat, and anhh had here a month ago on related subjects.

"[MV] Orange Caramel - 아잉♡ Full Ver." (Watch on YouTube)

EDIT: Of course, just because something might strike us (in our ignorance) as grotesque doesn't mean that there's anything wrong with it, or anything problematic. Or the problem might only be ours, that we don't understand what's going on. But women acting girlie can raise a red flag. That is, do women in that world generally have a choice not to act girlie? What are the consequences for those who don't act girlie?

Comments

[koganbot]

I think the important point that you want me to take from this isn't that they're "playing" so much as that by donning garb from kiddie books, they've told us to suspend this or that expectation that we'd have if they didn't look like they'd stepped out of a picture book, and not to judge them on the basis of how we'd judge them if they were dressing the way young women dress when they're not playing dress-up - but also the kid's-book garb also sets up possible expectations of its own.

(But I'd point out that we suspend the expectation that what will happen on the screen will match up with real life not only when we watch a video like this that signifies "PLAYFULNESS" in big letters, but also when, for example, we watch IU's "MIA (Missing Child)," but that the "MIA" video, unlike this one, doesn't signify "PLAYFUL.")

[(Anonymous)]

I don’t think the idea of play as performance necessarily means that girls should act girlie. The game is the game and rules only help us to shape the space where we decide to interact or to have feedback between us, if you don’t want to act girlie we should seek for games without that rule. Maybe these are not the best examples in the world (they just sound more rock and they use a less cute image, they are not explorations about what it means being a woman (or more complicated matters like what a woman is to start with), but I don’t consume in a different way these AKB songs from the cute ones. Maybe I just want a certain safeness to experience certain feelings in a way that you can’t because there are many threats (at least that is the way as I read that Maki Goto MV).







Huizinga is a historian, not somebody doing concepts hard like stones to throw to other people’s heads to open them. The problem of this definition is that it arrives after like twenty five pages of examples and explanations (and it is only the first chapter), so is just more a handy way of repeat the main points than anything else. So some of the chapters in “Homo Ludens: A study of the play-element in culture” are “The play-concept as expressed in language”, “Play and contest as civilizing functions”, “Play and law”, “Play and war”, “Playing and knowing”, “Play and poetry”, “The elements of mythopoiesis”, “Play-forms in philosophy”, “Play-forms in art”, etc.

To your objection in point one, Huizinga uses as example of games cats trying to catch their own tails or dogs bitting other dog’s ears, so is a bit anthropocentric. But being less silly, obviously people profit from games (like paying to access to them or betting in them) but not in games, people play and maybe play to win money or fame or food, but the game is just the interaction, or if you want the joy we extract from it (like exchanging arguments about some band to win the discussion, or playing with the words to find the correct way to express something, or watching a movie, or playing loud bass music to fill the vibrations in our organs, etc.).

To point two, many people resume Huizinga using the “magic circle” idea, the place where the game is inscribed and where the players inscribe themselves, so we can do a karate match and break our bones doing it, but if it was a correct match we just played hard, nothing of that transcends to daily life (but maybe my mother and father would think in a different way about it). But yes, is not exclusive of it (Rodriguez connects it with performance art or with conceptual art, that doesn’t necessarily imply in them a play-element on their development of the happening action).

To point three, I think the definition is a response against certain claims more than the assertion of those claims, like if you are playing videogames you are not doing something meaningful or something of value, something that could be taken “seriously” like getting good grades or bringing food to your table…

[(Anonymous)]

… but I don’t know, I would try to re-read the parts of the book I already read and finish it this weekend (while I’m not online).

About my ideas, I don’t remember having them, but I suppose I’m trying to use the idea that somehow aesthetics interventions in the world are a way to experience alterity, see the world from outside of your embeddedness in it through your access to it or your bias in your way of interpreting it (being them culturally learned, through your ideas or believes or by default), but frankly, this sound to serious and maybe is just a way to express my preferences. But maybe I should read Theodor Adorno’s “Aesthetic Theory” or something like that… stones, heads, need to sleep…