티아라 파이팅!!! (T-ara Fighting!!!)

[koganbot]

This isn't my analysis of what I think happened. I'm never going to know what happened. But I'm fantasizing what I'd have expected on July 25th if I'd logged on and seen the T-ara tweets, and a soothsaying friend had told me, "This is about to erupt into a scandal; can you predict what it'll be?" I'd have guessed, "The scandal will be idol singers pushing each other or being pushed beyond their endurance." This is partly because it fits the tweets, but also because the story of being pushed too hard was already abroad on the Net, in relation to all of K-pop but particularly to T-ara. When I first heard their rendition of "Like An Indian Doll," it was embedded in a Seoulbeats piece that said, "The T-ara members are particularly notorious for taking falls and fainting from exhaustion as their killer schedules catch up with them," and that attributed Jiyeon's lifeless demeanor in that performance to her exhausting schedule. When I first read* about Eunjung slipping and breaking her kneecap last January, the author speculated that this wouldn't have happened had Eunjung not been overworked. And I'd already done a horrified post myself when I'd run across a video interview with Qri (captioned "Tiara cutie and pretty") where she'd said, "On average, I sleep for 2 hours," and then laughed. I'm not necessarily endorsing the Seoulbeat interpretation (as a matter of fact, I fooled around with differing analyses for why Jiyeon might present herself like that), much less saying it's the only way to interpret the tweets: I don't know if T-ara are overworked or not, actually, or if Hwayoung was trying to fend off excessive work. But I think you have to notice the way the tweets incorporate the language of the Korean work ethic. Here are the tweets. I'm using the allkpop translation for Hyomin, Jiyeon, Eunjung, and Hwayoung, with an alternate translation by oniontaker** in brackets; I only had the oniontaker translation for Boram and Soyeon. Obviously, oniontaker is translating as "dedication" what allkpop translated as "determination"; I've also seen it as "will":

Hyomin: "The differences in levels of determination^^, Let us all have more determination. Fighting!!!" ["It's a difference between levels of dedication ^^ Let's all be dedicated and hwaiting!!!!!!"] [Me: According to Wikip, "fighting" (파이팅) and "hwaiting" (화이팅) are basically the same word, based on the English word "fighting"; I've gathered over the last couple of weeks that it's used to cheer people on, T-ara fans posting the meme "T-ara fighting/Hwayoung hwaiting" all over the Net.]***

Soyeon: "It's a difference in Dedication + Manners + Selflessness. Let's be strong again today."

Jiyeon: "The differences in levels of determination ^^, Always be humble ^^ and sensible ^^ I applaud you, acting genius ^^" ["Difference between levels of dedication ^^ Having manners ^^ Always staying polite^^ I applaud you, acting genius RT Hyomin"]

Boram: "Clapping... clapclapclap!! RT Jiyeon"

Eunjung: "A position can make or break a person, but determination can make a person too. Sigh, it's unfortunate. You have to know to take care of the people around you."

Hwayoung: "Sometimes, even determination alone is not enough. At times like these, I feel upset but I trust that it's a blessing in disguise from the heavens. God, you know everything right?" ["Sometimes dedication alone is not enough. At times like these, it might be disappointing but I still believe that God has a good reason for making this happen... God, you know all~ don't you? Hoot~"]

* * *
I'm slowly working my way through God Of Study on Hulu. I watched episode four a couple of nights ago, which included teachers forbidding a student to go to the bathroom until he'd finished a particularly difficult math problem, and forcing another student to sit out in the cold in the wee hours of the morning doing one set of math problems after another until he'd scored 100. This was presented as the acts of extraordinarily caring and dedicated teachers doing everything they could to help students who would be flushed down the toilet without them.

To reiterate: I'm not saying this is the one and only context in which to interpret the tweets by Hyomin, Jiyeon, Soyeon, Boram, and Eunjung. But I think this sort of work ethic hovers in the background when the word**** variously translated as "determination," "dedication," and "will" shows up in such tweets.

My alternate scandal story, then, would be of tough love and dedication and will and ra-ra all breaking down, breaking someone down rather than lifting her up. Sometimes determination isn't enough.



(I'm enjoying God Of Study, but I'd only give it a borderline recommend: good acting and staging have to contend with a story and conception that barely give a character more than one or one-and-a-half traits, the character and trait never growing naturally in relation to the other characters and their traits. But there are some cool things, a set of skeptical and recalcitrant teachers ready to undermine our Hero Teacher and his happy plans but regularly showing up as a dusty, motley, sloppy, scraggly swarming mob in disaffected dress, peering in at the class, wondering WTF! They're sort of an accidental chorus, who presumably will be won over by the final episode. In the meantime, we're seeing a bunch of character actors who, in cahoots with the costume department, are having a blast.

They're a comic reflection of the lead character among the students, a kid whom the teacher railroaded into the special class, who's afraid of giving up his distrust and despair, while sweetness and daring peek out from him on the sly. Well acted by Yoo Seung Ho, a scowl frequently crossing his handsome face, then half-retreating.

Jiyeon's in it, as sort of the fifth wheel among the five students, there only to pursue the handsome boy, who's barely able to stay polite while he tries to figure out how to tell her he's not interested. She's got the accoutrements of cute, but she's aggressively unhappy. This is a good starting point for a character, one who needs to grow a character, but unfortunately the script treats her like a fifth wheel too. She's the only one of the five whose home life is left unshown. I suspect Jiyeon's T-ara schedule didn't give her much time, so she wasn't given that many lines.)

* * *
Again, the point I made in a number of other posts and comments: the social story here, for me, is the power of the bully story — that three or five bitchy girls bullied a poor, victimized sixth — its insistence that it get told, how it lands atop this ambiguous event and takes it over, possesses it, despite poor or nonexistent corroboration. That there's another story potentially already in place, a story of a work ethic spinning out of control, and that this second story gets overwhelmed, pretty much shut out, serves to demonstrate the power of the bully story. I realize that some of this may be luck, that it could be that of the various stories hopping around the Net on July 25th, the bully story got a slight lead and snowballed from there via cumulative advantage (see my LVW piece on cumulative advantage for an idea of how something may end up far better known or far less known than something else of equal appeal). And of course other stories are being given voice too (Evil Manipulative CEO Places Vulnerable Idol Girls In Destructive Social Dynamic), and I wouldn't mind if a few more caught some wind (how about Idol System Fucks Up or Paternalism Has Few Resources For Counteracting Incompetent Daddy?). But the bully story wouldn't have caught hold if it weren't already speaking inside gobs and gobs of people.

* * *
As for the title of this post: T-ara are getting a raw deal here, don't deserve this maelstrom. Even the very culpable Mr. Evil Manipulative Jackass Boss shouldn't be the fall guy (though he ought to have stepped aside or been fired by now). It's a difficult road forward. Perky and happy probably won't work for T-ara, who are now damaged goods. There was something a little disreputable about them anyway, too opportunistic to be a Class Act like SNSD or to play at Class Warfare like 2NE1. Maybe the adjective "scrappy" becomes even more appropriate. And their fans may have to put up with being bullied by every bully who feels like accusing someone of endorsing bullying. Hwayoung, meanwhile, may now have "problem child" affixed to her reputation. One of Jackass CEO KKS's many blunders was to in effect make it hard for Hwayoung to step forward and rescue T-ara from the charges of bullying her without this seeming to be a tacit admission that she was indeed arrogant and irresponsible and hard to work with. But her resisting the many temptations to badmouth people in the last two weeks seems impressive to me. KKS left a door open for her to return if she apologized: she did apologize, to her fans, to the company, to T-ara; she told her supporters to stop; and she said to the boss, thank you, I'd rather go my own way. Classy. Dignified.

Live, she gets short of breath when she raps, and even on record she's not as good as Eunjung. But "Day By Day" was a nice showpiece for her, and now she's got a chance, maybe, to pick her material and her position, her own pace, with a lot of us ready to listen.

T-ara fighting. Hwayoung hwaiting. 화영 화이팅.

*I don't remember where.

**Oniontaker has taken down his site; found these on the T-ara Magical Kingdom Tumblr.

***So "T-ara fighting!" doesn't mean T-ara are fighting with themselves (even if T-ara are fighting with themselves), more like "Go T-ara!" or you want T-ara to fare well and (in this instance) to do their best, to persevere. That's my guess, anyway, and seems confirmed by Yahoo Answer. But if anyone reading this knows more or better, please comment. Hyomin wrote "화이팅," which transliterates — not translates — as "hwaiting." "Hwa" (화) and "i" (이) are written here as separate syllables, the a and i being pronounced "ah" and "ee," more or less, and I'm guessing when you pronounce them one after the other you're close to the long-i in English (especially if in effect you mash them into one syllable, though I don't know if that's what's done; this is me making another guess). "Fighting" transliterates more directly into Hangul as "파이팅," with the letter ㅍ (p) as a stand-in for f, which I think has no equivalent in Hangul (again, help me if I'm wrong; I don't know Korean).

****Is it this one: "의지"? Or am I picking out the wrong word from the tweets?