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

[askbask.livejournal.com]

I found the video immediately funny. The chair scene is maybe taken too far. But he's not only mean to women, and he stops being mean when he finds a mean woman. In other words the message is 'fight back' and not 'accept it'.

Was initially _very_ disappointed with the track. I thought now was the opportunity to, I don't know, do something different. He's got catchy songs in his arsenal that do. But it grows on me in the way that I think to myself "if people hear this a couple of times or watch the youtube they'll probably buy it on itunes". So it might not do too bad on the charts this time either.

I watched his live streamed show on youtube where the MV and performance of it was premiered. Psy is a sentimental guy, he talks quite a bit about how he feels at the moment. Among other things the show featured a blistering performance from a 2NE1 on overdrive after not having much to promote last year.

[koganbot]

Is there a link? Esp. the 2NE1 performance (or an equivalent if they've done it elsewhere recently)?

I think my reading is more interesting than yours, whether or not I'm "right" — and I wish Ga-In had gone on to join Psy in mayhem. Again, I think the chair scene is the most powerful thing in it. Maybe the vid needed to be meaner.

[(Anonymous)]

Ga-in is plenty in the mayhem, she's all up in the middle of the mayhem and doing twirls around it! I thought she was great in this.

[koganbot]

Oh, she is great. She's great in everything, pretty much, at least from "Abracadabra" on. And she's in the thick of the pole humping, for sure. But not of the gratuitous cruelty, which is what I meant.

Some of it reminds me of early Chaplin, though without Chaplin's physical genius.