i dremt i dremt (T-ara compared to cats)

[koganbot]

I dremt there are Websites devoted to pictures of cats who look like members of T-ara.* Maybe even an animated TV show where T-ara (and all other people) are cats. I'm donating items to Goodwill, and I see, in a bag next to mine, decorative eggs that are painted as T-ara cats. As my friend Mary is driving me back, I proudly tell her, "This is where I got the idea." I'm chosen to direct the movie. It is originally to be lighthearted, but I say to myself, "I'm gonna do this right." In the movie, things are going well in Catworld, T-ara performing, sometimes as a band, playing all the instruments themselves. Then an evil sorceress transforms them into new creatures: human beings. There are worries that I'm going overbudget. We run a saturation ad campaign, in the U.S. as well as Korea, playing one clip over and over:

Jiyeon: When I move my arms, they seem as if they're not my arms but someone else's. When I move my legs, they seem as if they're not my legs but someone else's.

Psychiatrist: How long have you felt this way?

Jiyeon: Always.

Strangely, this dream makes almost no reference to the recent controversy, though there is the flicker of a thought that we have to mention it in the movie: I make the quick decision to write it briefly into an early cat scene, but not as a major event.

*This idea is not far-fetched, though when I do a Google image search for "cats that look like T-ara," I only get T-ara looking like cats. Now that I think of it, the mv for the Japanese version of "Bo Peep Bo Peep" has them as cats and (briefly) cats as them:

And T-ara have endorsed the Tony Moly Cats Wink Crazy Tint Stick (cat-shaped lip balm sticks, "hybrid lip product that's lip balm and tint that changes to a color that best suits your skin tone").

Comments

[koganbot]

Also, T-ara performed "Sexy Love" on today's SBS Inkigayo, seemingly in one take (or at least with no costume changes), definitely in front of an audience, though I read on a comment thread in advance that this was recorded several days before the broadcast (not that I always believe what I read). And I wouldn't be surprised if the audience was preselected.

Hard to tell, given the robot concept, but in this performance more than the other two they seem confident, glad to be onstage. Hyomin gives a smile near the end, as if to say, "So there!"

[arbitrary-greay.livejournal.com]

At least for Mucore, the audience sounds appear to be recorded during broadcast. There was one SNSD performance that was pre-recorded not even in studio, but from the stadium at which they were going to do a solo concert in later. It was not the concert performance of the song, so there was no audience present at the stadium. Thus the screams heard at the beginning and ending of the song were either recorded during broadcast, or from the fan-scream equivalent of the laughing track.

"facing an audience where there's the possibility of an adverse reaction,"
Reminds me of the "CL has a parrot on her shoulder" instance. I don't think YG announced beforehand about the parrot's presence, though, like CCM did with Little T-ara.
What struck me about the parrot thing, though, is that initial (probably pre-written) articles didn't note any outrage, and were the usual run-of-the-mill hype and praise for everything during the stage, maybe dropping a "shocking" and "awkward" here and there to reflect the novelty of the stage, but overall not a negative reaction.
The criticism that would later cause YG to apologize seemed to solely derive from people who watched the performance from a screen, and not audience who had watched in studio, live.

So any fear of an adverse reaction is not fear of one from the audience they're facing, but the one that they can't face, the ones who watch and criticize them through an indirect medium and in a delayed timeline.

But companies have never really been sincere in their apologies before, especially in those MV-bans or lyric/outfit/choreo alterations for "decency," exactly because any adverse reaction is delayed, and they can get their publicity in that time period and even because of the backlash. Little kids dancing sexy to Kpop is nothing new either, from the girls in AS's "Bang!" MV, to, um, this, which did not receive any backlash. Why is CCM backing down now?

[arbitrary-greay.livejournal.com]

And black ocean-type protests are planned beforehand and not targetting specific marketing tactics or performance gimmicks, so I really don't see why CCM bothered to pre-announce Little T-ara, much less back down from it.