![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
koganbotStarting this second thread regarding the Minami incident to forestall Livejournal's terrifying collapsed-thread syndrome encroaching on the previous thread (here).
My guess is that it'd be hard for any fan to endorse Minami's self-abasement. Even those who support idol "purity" and manage to link it to being sex-free and boyfriend-free will have that overridden by the sense that Minami is a damsel in distress. In fact, those people might especially be the ones who will have their "damsel in distress" buttons bumped, and will be genuinely torn.
The rest of my thoughts are about K-pop, since I know next to nothing about J-pop:
In K-pop, is the no-dating rule really all that pervasive? Doing a little bit of Websearching, discovered that back in 2010 when T-ara's Soyeon was rumored to be dating Supreme Team's E-sens, neither agency managed to deny it at first, even though apparently it wasn't true. Core Contents Media: "They are very close but we haven’t heard about an official relationship yet. We believe that if two adults come together to date, it should be something worth congratulating." Is possibly the only sensible thing Core Contents Media has ever stated in a press release; anyway, confirms what I remember Jiyeon saying about T-ara not being under a no-dating rule.
What are the shades of meaning to the word "Scandal"? In this interview report I'm uncertain as to whether or not E-sens et al. are using the word facetiously. Perhaps the Korean word that gets translated as "scandal" has shades of meaning not present in English, e.g., in Korean "scandal" is often simply shorthand for "latest comeback" or "received a MacArthur Foundation genius grant."
And here's a story from October 2010 that I particularly cherish: the rumors about Soyeon and E-sens having just broken, Netizens come to the only possible logical conclusion: this romance was manufactured by Core Contents Media as a conspiracy to distract attention from Jiyeon's alleged-nude-photo scandal.
http://www.allkpop.com/2010/10/t-ara%E2%80%99s-soyeon-and-supreme-team%E2%80%99s-e-sens-are
NETIZENS, YOU GOTTA LOVE 'EM!
(Photo at top is of Tony Camonte (Paul Muni) (right) and his secretary Angelo (Vince Barnett) in the original Scarface. Angelo was an excellent choice for secretary in that (1) he didn't know how to write, and (2) he didn't quite understand the telephone; so, when someone on the other end insulted him, he took out his gun and was set to shoot, figuring that if you could talk through a phone you could fire bullets through it as well.)
My guess is that it'd be hard for any fan to endorse Minami's self-abasement. Even those who support idol "purity" and manage to link it to being sex-free and boyfriend-free will have that overridden by the sense that Minami is a damsel in distress. In fact, those people might especially be the ones who will have their "damsel in distress" buttons bumped, and will be genuinely torn.
The rest of my thoughts are about K-pop, since I know next to nothing about J-pop:
In K-pop, is the no-dating rule really all that pervasive? Doing a little bit of Websearching, discovered that back in 2010 when T-ara's Soyeon was rumored to be dating Supreme Team's E-sens, neither agency managed to deny it at first, even though apparently it wasn't true. Core Contents Media: "They are very close but we haven’t heard about an official relationship yet. We believe that if two adults come together to date, it should be something worth congratulating." Is possibly the only sensible thing Core Contents Media has ever stated in a press release; anyway, confirms what I remember Jiyeon saying about T-ara not being under a no-dating rule.
What are the shades of meaning to the word "Scandal"? In this interview report I'm uncertain as to whether or not E-sens et al. are using the word facetiously. Perhaps the Korean word that gets translated as "scandal" has shades of meaning not present in English, e.g., in Korean "scandal" is often simply shorthand for "latest comeback" or "received a MacArthur Foundation genius grant."
And here's a story from October 2010 that I particularly cherish: the rumors about Soyeon and E-sens having just broken, Netizens come to the only possible logical conclusion: this romance was manufactured by Core Contents Media as a conspiracy to distract attention from Jiyeon's alleged-nude-photo scandal.
http://www.allkpop.com/2010/10/t-ara%E2%80%99s-soyeon-and-supreme-team%E2%80%99s-e-sens-are
NETIZENS, YOU GOTTA LOVE 'EM!
(Photo at top is of Tony Camonte (Paul Muni) (right) and his secretary Angelo (Vince Barnett) in the original Scarface. Angelo was an excellent choice for secretary in that (1) he didn't know how to write, and (2) he didn't quite understand the telephone; so, when someone on the other end insulted him, he took out his gun and was set to shoot, figuring that if you could talk through a phone you could fire bullets through it as well.)
no subject
Date: 2013-02-11 06:49 am (UTC)http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onyanko_Club
(Post-ironic idol group BiS recently promoted themselves with a picture with all members smoking, but, hey, they want to kill all idols…)
If you believe AKB sources, many girls have been punished not for dating, but for exchanging e-mails with fans. It does have a certain logic if you think that what the company is doing is controlling access to an idol world. If you check fan accounts of the same events, then they were dating, drinking, sleeping in fans’ houses. But these scandals are almost always mediated through tabloids, so it could be interesting to know what things they argue to do what they do (my very vapid impression is a mixture between exposing fakeness and a sort of revenge mentality for thinking “you” are better than “us”). Another recent “scandal” was a tabloid exposing a member from Super Girls (not only that she got a boyfriend, also an abortion). After some time not showing on events, she graduated from the group, I think not really talking about it on her blog. For an example of how many fans get to know these kinds of things:
http://geinolabo.ldblog.jp/archives/4326125.html
For smaller groups, fans usually post and talk lots about when things get wrong. Not sure if it was a Himekyun Fruits Can or JK21 live show, where the group decided to stop performing because there were alcoholic drinks being sold. Alice Project, that looks like a progressive company in certain things, got a scandal where management discovered that four girls have been dating with fans for months. That they were using their Twitter accounts for coding messages to them, probably didn’t help much. Then, there are things where most fans get puzzled because they don’t really know what happened. A group from Spiral Music gets disbanded, some members are kicked out, all messages on their official blog are deleted and if there was an explanation about it in form of blog post, also is deleted in hours. The only graduation I remember on Tokyo Cheer2 Party was a girl, immediately kicked out, was for doing something that broke the rules in a terrible way. Fan reactions on Twitter were mostly shock and surprise (nobody seems to know the real reason). A really, really small group got a message where management accused a member of mismanagement of her blog account (sad that they were so small that nobody seems to know what things she was posting about). This happened recently and I don’t know if it counts as scandal, but group Gal Doll (a trio) became a duo, changed their image, website and explained that the didn’t have any contact with the former leader of the group for two months. Then after posting a video about it on YouTube, she twitted back asking for apologies to all people involved. A girl from another very, very minor idol group worked on prostitution. Management knew months after and they broke all relations with her (they were also the ones letting know what happened). Then there are people that broke with their management company and you really don’t know if it is for some sort of scandal or not. Idol group Raise Chou Chou goes from 15 members to 5 in roughly four months, so you suspect is more a problem with management than anything else. Marry Doll announces that they are broking with their management and that they will post the new blogs and website for this or that source.
I don’t remember any scandal for Ebisu Muscats, but some of them are pornstars. Not that pornstars doesn’t get their scandals, twisted relations with management and all that, but…
Not sure if they count also as “scandals” is when a member announces her graduation for certain things, to follow her studies, for health reasons. And then in less than two months she is with another company, or being in a maid café, or something along these lines.