Frank Kogan

Hello, I haven't commented here before but I'm a friend of Sabina's and I've been following your kpop tag. You're right that Big Bang are "mainstream". The closest comparison to Korean idol groups I can think of, in the US context anyway, are Disney-industrial products (in the UK I guess it would Simon Cowell), and Big Bang are without a doubt an idol group.

...If it makes you feel better, G-Dragon and Taeyang wanted to be a rap duo. TOP is a mutual friend from middle school who was rapping on his own before joining up. Daesung auditioned as a singer. With the exception of Seungri, the members of this group only "reluctantly" became idols - the story they tell is that the President of their label told them one day that that was how it was going to be, and so, that was how it was.

That said, I still think you have this interview the wrong way around. As askbask says, this particular show is closer in spirit to a talk-performance show than a pure variety show. (Another show like this is Mnet Soundplex - here's (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6aQIN5nexD8) BB's great performance there last year which they partially lifted for the U&I performance.) You are right that the "what kind of person are you on a date" question is a mainstream question - it's a variety show staple because it's what the (mostly teenage female) fans want to know. askbask nails it: the goal with questions like this is to create an appealing fiction, not necessarily to tell the truth.

The version of this that Lee Hyori asks, though, is actually not the sanitized idol version e.g. "when do you want to get married?", "what would your ideal girlfriend be like?" It's a more adult version that comes closer to acknowledging who they really are - even if you think, like I do, that the "girl" they talk about might not really be a girl, at least not in every case. (Though Sabina will tell you, I also have a Big Bang theory that says there are gender issues here that have nothing to do with sexuality.)

Especially considering that G-Dragon and Taeyang were child stars and Seungri joined Big Bang when he was 13 - and even TOP has some middle school rap battle footage floating around - there's a real danger of being stuck with a younger image of yourself you've outgrown, I think. Lots of the stuff Big Bang is doing now, including the bunny girls in GD&TOP's videos, GD's androgynous rockstar hair, the more mature sound, etc, is an attempt to outgrow that image and transition to a more adult one. So Lee Hyori is actually, in a way, doing them a favor by semi-following the idol script, but in a way that allows them to counter the public image of themselves that already exists - to actually "grow up" on camera. If that version is maybe a bit sleazy, well, they are 25 year-old rock stars, after all.

As for the danger of more of this stuff... it's actually very low at the moment, because apart from this show (where they also performed) Big Bang aren't scheduled to appear on any variety-show type programs, apart from one that will also have other members of the label. They've never done many of these appearances (by Kpop standards) anyway.

In short it's safe to like these guys as "alternative", but alternative within a mainstream context... personally I think that with every year, Big Bang come closer to pealing more of the mainstream image of themselves away, and in the meantime they've made some really pretty subversive art within that context, including this cellphone commercial (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q7Co3xha-RM) (which is also an example of "loose sync", which you discussed before).