More Angry Than Funny

[koganbot]

I'm only two views in, but so far this seems way more angry than funny. I wasn't expecting it. The jokes appear mean, deliberately, like tacks on a chair, electric-shock handshakes. Maybe Psy's attitude is that the decorum he's throwing raspberries at is mean in itself, so he'll be mean to decorum.

Watch on YouTube

Nine comments down I see:

cjua2803 6 seconds ago
PSy is such a troll lmao

The music is relentlessly nondevelopmental. Intentionally refuses to give us any release.

As a dance track, it isn't as compelling in its maddening repetition as "Harlem Shake," but maybe that's beside the point, if there is one.

Btw, Ga-In, his partner in mischief here, the one who gets him back with the chair trick, was in the best K-pop video I've seen ("Irreversible"), and another that's in my top ten ("Abracadabra").

*Maybe I should've been. The only Psy track I knew other than "Gangnam Style" was "Right Now," which maybe isn't just about getting the commuters to shake and the secretaries to feel better; maybe it also harbors background dreams of giving a wrong time, stopping a traffic line. The gag in the "Gangnam Style" vid is something of a "what am I doing here?" in relation to the posh life of Gangnam; in this one the answer seems to be "I'm fucking everyone up."

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

Mm. In my most charitable moments I wonder if Psy is inviting us to debunk the images of "gentlemen" that are being marketed to us in pop music (ones that, to a certain extent, in his role as "senior" and unelected leader of the hallyu wave, I guess he too has to subscribe to -- though considerably less than conventional idols), but... other times I think he's just trolling. I definitely agree with you that "this sort of aggression isn't just entertainment" -- I foresee many soul-searching articles as we attempt to figure out what it means so we can enjoy it. Or not.

[koganbot]

I search my soul on other topics, actually. As for this song and video, I think it needs better music, and more... something, in the video. More extremity. More invention. The kids' scene with the soccer ball, for instance: it needed to do something that was more disappointing to the kids. To tell you the truth, the most powerful moment for me was the one you disliked most, when the partner-in-crime faked out and flung over the woman he was pretending to help.

I'm kinda 6.0 on the music, 7.0 on the video. But I don't know where I'll end up.

[arbitrary-greay.livejournal.com]

It needs more contrast, more fakeouts of Psy appearing to be an actual gentlemen (or at least putting on the airs of it) and then turning around and going asshole. Without it, it's like telling the punchline to a joke without that crucial pause.

Case in point, the kids' scene with the soccer ball needed more Peyton Manning. It's about setting up that contrast of expectation, either in the audience's mind or in the kids' mind so that the audience can relish the kids' having theirs demolished.

[koganbot]

Actually, nothing is just entertainment, so I think I need to say more in specific about this, though I'm not clear as to what "this" is, what my topic is. Whatever Psy's intentions, and whatever he thinks about "punk rock" or whether he ever gave it a thought at all, he's being something of a punk here, way more than CL and crew were ever being punk. "Punk" isn't an unmitigated praise word. And I don't use it to describe many performers, especially not now. There's still a multiple meaning to the word, for me: it's weak kids trying to be tough, it's brats trying to fuck things up (so it's not just weak people trying to be tough, since most of those aren't trying to fuck things up but rather to slot themselves into a safe spot from which to hurt others and feel good about it). So that was kind of my original sense of the word "punk" applied to music when I saw it in places like Creem and Fusion in the early and mid '70s, a double meaning already, something poised uneasily between bullying and brat, but at least some sort of social risk, enough to be a target, not just a bully or brat. Made good sense as a term applied in retrospect to mid '60s garage rock, "96 Tears" and "Pushin' Too Hard," all the stuff that sounded like junior high school (and had hit back when I was in junior high school), and maybe a few of the metal kids of the '70s. It made less sense applied (which it was, at times) to Lou Reed and the Stooges and Dolls and Alice Cooper, all of whom were way more self-conscious and aware of how problematic they were being (like the Stones and Dylan had been, the people the original garage-rock punks were imitating and only getting partly right, the garage punks slotting themselves too easily into what had been real uneasy in the Stones and Dylan), playing the problems like an instrument. I basically resisted using it for the Stooges et al. until '77 or so when that usage, now for the Ramones and the Sex Pistols too, became unavoidable, and sort of useful. I think the Sex Pistols were more powerful than the Ramones, by quite a bit, maybe because the Pistols didn't stint the power, because maybe hurting people seemed less problematic to Johnny and his mates.

I don't feel I'm finding my way to the words to express myself (I'm relying on "junior high" and "Sex Pistols" to resonate, rather than, you know, delivering their actual sense). But anyway, "Gentleman" is about hurting people, and not just the victims in the video but, you know, hurting us, too, hurting the social fabric, and not necessarily with good intent. And as such it's not nearly as good as the Ramones, much less Raw Power or Appetite For Destruction or Never Mind The Bollocks or The Marshall Mathers LP. There's probably some unknown-to-me line of Korean "humorists" that it draws on, and obviously I don't know what the performers in that line make of hurting people, don't know whether they do it or not, whether, if they do it, they do it to play it as problematic, have their cake and smash it in your face too, or just, you know, find ways to hurt.

Interesting video, would have been more interesting if sound and vision had been better. I'll probably forget to think about it. Sonically, this month, my musical excitement is Evol's "Get Up."

By the way, here's the Stooges, a poorly recorded live track, 1974, their last performance ever, in a truly problematic moment (though this rip leaves out the opening anti-Semitism, "this song is dedicated to all the Hebrew ladies in the audience"). Among other things going on here, Iggy is goading the crowd (including a bike gang he was feuding with) to throw bottles at him. (And I also think he was sort of descending to their level, though maybe if he hadn't he'd have been less of a punk.)

Iggy And The Stooges "Rich Bitch":
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oIuUlRPCMPE

[koganbot]

For what it's worth, I'm now up to 8.0 or even 8.5 on the track, more for the way the beats continue to pull me than for the sociology (not that there's anything wrong with the sociology, just that, even if the sociology can rock you, the sound has to come through for the rocking to really stick). Wish I could say more about what it is about the beats. Let's try: the way the synth at the start sounds snide and pushy (the tone of the synth seems to be razzing us); the way the drums fall out and come back in at 1:02 and then again at 2:06 — these are the only real nods towards the idea of a release, a transcendence, an emotional payoff, and they're only a nod. I still think "Harlem Shake" plays this better, the drive towards something and the withholding of it.

I've been exploring early '00s Psy, effective tracks like "2-Year-Old Wife" and "Yes, I Am," which from the English bits may be provocative etc. in their attitudes (maybe when he says "I wanna make you love you make me feel so high tonight, just come to my bed I wanna feel you want, I wanna make you love you make me feel so high tonight, just come on I want to fuckin' you, bitch," maybe he's using the word "bitch" provocatively, maybe he's using it generically or affectionately, maybe he thinks they're really bitches). The uploader on YouTube says of "Yes, I Am,": "This is the man I love... Soulful, sincere, intense and genuine."