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koganbotLive version of "Just Follow," with Zico in place of DOK2; HyunA's relative stillness makes her as steamy as ever, and Zico just kills. His rap in the middle is entirely new, and he improves on the original.
Rapping, and this slow tempo, suit HyunA well. She's digging in, sounding hard and wounded; meanwhile, her sensuousness operates on its own accord, drifts along with the music, a force field that saturates the room.
Don't know if the ban on the "Bubble Pop!" video and on its live dance routine influenced this performance. She's in pants this time, not panties or minis, and she doesn't thrust her pelvis a lot. And this works fine.
Since K-pop is so new to me, I don't understand how the censorship functions, assuming that it does function. Seems laughably ineffective to "ban" a video a month after it's out, and to order changes in a dance routine that's been performed for just as long, the song having already peaked in the top 5. My understanding is that the "ban" means the video can't be shown before 10 PM. But that hardly affects the Internet, right? I'm assuming - though I don't know - that in South Korea, a place with more thorough broadband than anywhere else in the world, kids can go online and watch pretty much whatever they want, though maybe there's some sort of childproofing.
I wonder if there's tension and excitement in Korean pop precisely because of the country's various cultural disjunctions. Of course all countries have cultural disjunctions, but maybe HyunA's style of sensuous sexiness couldn't show up in the pop of 2011 America since America has gotten all blatant and jab-you-in-the-ribs tedious with its sexiness. Honestly, I find it hard to give a shit about Beyoncé's or Katy Perry's body. And Lindsay's and Britney's are focuses for (or sites of) insanity more than lust, it seems. That's the discourse, anyway.
Any thoughts you guys have would be welcome, especially since some of you, unlike me, actually know something about Korea. From what I've read, broadcast TV is still the main medium for music videos in Korea, and live performances on TV are still the main promotional tool for pop idol groups. So the stations can refuse to air a song, or, after a certain performance, can say, "Oh noes! your dance was dirty and children watch us, so don't do that again," and the performers will go "What? you found that offensive? we were merely expressing ourselves artistically; [pause] OK [reluctantly] we won't do it again." According to Wikip, KBS TV wouldn't play 4minute's "Anjullae" because of the line: "Starting from today, I won't give myself to you. Now, I will never give you my entire heart. Now, I won't ever give myself to you." And the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family has banned videos for reasons as trivial (to me) as the video showing people in a club that has a bar! But what that "banning" means is that the song or video can't be broadcast before 9 PM on weekdays and 10 PM on weekends and can't be sold to anyone under 19 - and the banning comes weeks or sometimes months after the song or video has been released, making the banning laughable, I'd think. So on the one hand you've got "standards" which are officially strict, and often petty, but on the other hand they seem easy to flout or to get around or even to play with and play off of, letters of laws being followed while spirits are getting massively mocked.
Or am I misreading this, and is a crackdown underway? Is HyunA being singled out for past transgressions?
Although titles such as Ministry of Gender Equality and Family seem comical, they probably reflect genuine contrary tensions and motives and confusions regarding clamping down on versus liberating female desire, and wanting to protect women and girls from exploitation.
Zico's group, the rookie boyband Block B, has an EP with one excellent song, "Halo," the other tracks falling into various degrees of blandness and blah. Could use more rapping, definitely, and better tunes and better singing. Zico's also got one or more mixtapes, a few tracks of which I've heard on YouTube; dexterity and force, need better overall sound. Nothing with the fierceness and pizzazz of "Just Follow," the molasses of which seems to have unleashed the opposite in Zico.
Rapping, and this slow tempo, suit HyunA well. She's digging in, sounding hard and wounded; meanwhile, her sensuousness operates on its own accord, drifts along with the music, a force field that saturates the room.
Don't know if the ban on the "Bubble Pop!" video and on its live dance routine influenced this performance. She's in pants this time, not panties or minis, and she doesn't thrust her pelvis a lot. And this works fine.
Since K-pop is so new to me, I don't understand how the censorship functions, assuming that it does function. Seems laughably ineffective to "ban" a video a month after it's out, and to order changes in a dance routine that's been performed for just as long, the song having already peaked in the top 5. My understanding is that the "ban" means the video can't be shown before 10 PM. But that hardly affects the Internet, right? I'm assuming - though I don't know - that in South Korea, a place with more thorough broadband than anywhere else in the world, kids can go online and watch pretty much whatever they want, though maybe there's some sort of childproofing.
I wonder if there's tension and excitement in Korean pop precisely because of the country's various cultural disjunctions. Of course all countries have cultural disjunctions, but maybe HyunA's style of sensuous sexiness couldn't show up in the pop of 2011 America since America has gotten all blatant and jab-you-in-the-ribs tedious with its sexiness. Honestly, I find it hard to give a shit about Beyoncé's or Katy Perry's body. And Lindsay's and Britney's are focuses for (or sites of) insanity more than lust, it seems. That's the discourse, anyway.
Any thoughts you guys have would be welcome, especially since some of you, unlike me, actually know something about Korea. From what I've read, broadcast TV is still the main medium for music videos in Korea, and live performances on TV are still the main promotional tool for pop idol groups. So the stations can refuse to air a song, or, after a certain performance, can say, "Oh noes! your dance was dirty and children watch us, so don't do that again," and the performers will go "What? you found that offensive? we were merely expressing ourselves artistically; [pause] OK [reluctantly] we won't do it again." According to Wikip, KBS TV wouldn't play 4minute's "Anjullae" because of the line: "Starting from today, I won't give myself to you. Now, I will never give you my entire heart. Now, I won't ever give myself to you." And the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family has banned videos for reasons as trivial (to me) as the video showing people in a club that has a bar! But what that "banning" means is that the song or video can't be broadcast before 9 PM on weekdays and 10 PM on weekends and can't be sold to anyone under 19 - and the banning comes weeks or sometimes months after the song or video has been released, making the banning laughable, I'd think. So on the one hand you've got "standards" which are officially strict, and often petty, but on the other hand they seem easy to flout or to get around or even to play with and play off of, letters of laws being followed while spirits are getting massively mocked.
Or am I misreading this, and is a crackdown underway? Is HyunA being singled out for past transgressions?
Although titles such as Ministry of Gender Equality and Family seem comical, they probably reflect genuine contrary tensions and motives and confusions regarding clamping down on versus liberating female desire, and wanting to protect women and girls from exploitation.
Zico's group, the rookie boyband Block B, has an EP with one excellent song, "Halo," the other tracks falling into various degrees of blandness and blah. Could use more rapping, definitely, and better tunes and better singing. Zico's also got one or more mixtapes, a few tracks of which I've heard on YouTube; dexterity and force, need better overall sound. Nothing with the fierceness and pizzazz of "Just Follow," the molasses of which seems to have unleashed the opposite in Zico.
no subject
Date: 2011-08-25 02:56 pm (UTC)Seems to me that networks banning in advance is much more serious than ministries banning one or two months after a fact.
Several weeks ago, X-Cross were told in advance to modify their dance for "Crazy."
no subject
Date: 2011-08-25 03:38 pm (UTC)Yeah, it's more serious, but rarely do the networks stand united - so even though it underlines the absurd unpredictability of it at least it usually doesn't affect all performances.
no subject
Date: 2011-08-29 01:26 pm (UTC)The nine-member music rating committee will have more members, mainly industry figures such as music program directors and producers.
In a long-term plan, the ministry will have a separate organization take charge of song monitoring, comprising only non-governmental members.
While maintaining the current ban for those under 19, the government plans to adopt “a ban for those under 12,” following criticism that the prohibition was equally slapped on all people under 19 even though the mentality of elementary schoolchildren is much different from that of high school students.
“In this way, songs with lyrics harmful to younger children, like elementary schoolchildren, will be subjected to the ban, and those aged between 12 and 18 will be allowed to listen to them. As a result, the rating criteria for those between 12 and 18 will be eased,” Kim said.
In response to the criticism that the committee bans all songs that contain references to alcohol or cigarettes, the ministry will prepare more detailed guidelines on censoring.
“On expressions involving alcohol and cigarettes, we’ll limit the ban only to songs directly encouraging listeners to drink or smoke,” the vice minister said.
no subject
Date: 2011-08-29 02:18 pm (UTC)For that matter, how to do you prevent a 12-year-old or a 6-year-old from downloading a song and watching a video that a 20-year-old can download or watch? I don't understand how filter technology works anyway, but I assume it's easier to filter out something like p0rn than to filter out all of the general online media that adults pay attention to.
no subject
Date: 2011-08-29 02:49 pm (UTC)The airplay thing... maybe watershed will be for 19+ only. They slap on "15" ratings as a warning before some shows on TV, like in other countries. Don't know how that works on radio, though. "Please turn the volume down for the next three minutes".