The Eternals is hitting theater screens this week...
to celebrate, I made a video series of my thoughts on where the MCU is right now, how it got to be so darn successful, and which pitfalls are coming up, which might undermine the success of their next phase.
Video One: How the MCU got to the top.
Video two: Trouble on the Horizon: problems that will become big for the MCU very very soon.
Coming soon: Video three: Problems bedeviling the MCU right now.
The Plague Film Bonanza has sprawled large enough to require a central control and table of contents, so I'll have the rules here, and links to each of the installments.
To Recap:
Weirdo that I am, I'm commemorating the CoVid19 lockdown by watching plague movies. Some people cope with stress and anxiety by rewatching The Princess Bride or Singin' In The Rain, but I do it by going dark. If you also deal with uncertainty by watching movies about other people in even more stressful situations, this here is for you!
Maybe you dealt with a coming lockdown by buying (or trying to buy) facemasks, hand sanitizer, and ungodly amounts of toilet paper, or adjusting weekend plans. Well, I went and found every movie about infectious diseases I could and have been watching them one by one. So if you're housebound anyway, why not pass the time scaring the crap out of yourself, right?
I'm writing mini-reviews of some classic, less-than-classic, and absolute garbage plague films, and because I love you, I'm writing them up for you, readers, and I'll end the series with a nice best-of countdown!
To sum up the ground rules:
Qualifying:
Rule 1: It has to be a narrative film. There might be some great plague television out there, but I have a kid who is apparently studying from home until he is forty: binging entire seasons of TV series' that are too scary to share with him is off the table. Documentaries would require an entirely different scoring system, so they're out, too. Most, but not all the films here are fiction, and I'm limiting the series to narrative films.
Rule 2: The film has to be about a plague or viral infection. That is, it must put significant attention on what the infectious agent is, how it spreads or works, and what can be done about the infection. If the response is "we need to hide from/kill all the zombies" (Dawn of the Dead) it's not really a plague film: it's a zombie or monster film. If the response is "we can beat this if we discover and exploit a weakness in how the virus spreads" (World War Z) then it's a plague film. Another example: if the vial of plague pathogen in Mission: Impossible 2 were replaced with a computer chip, or a piece of microfilm, the rest of the film basically wouldn't change. Mission: Impossible 2 is a MacGuffin chase, not really a plague film. There's a little wiggle room here, and I'll be making some calls. Deal with it.
Theory of Scary Movies (context):
Films that hold my attention are scored on four dimensions, with one bonus category, but for my first two categories, I need to explain my theory of scary movies.
Because plague films are usually scary, I need to explain that there are two ways scary movies scare us. Think of Alfred Hitchcock's bomb theory: a bomb exploding under a table surprises the audience, but if the audience knows there's a bomb under the table and it doesn't explode, we get suspense. A surprise can be part of good storytelling, but it can also be a cheap trick. Suspense makes small, mundane details suddenly important or compelling.
Scares work this way, too. Some movies scare us by having a monster jump out of the closet. I call these jump-scares, and they're scary for five seconds, like the bomb under the table exploding. The new It remakes use this again and again. A good jump-scare comes from sound design, editing, and camera work. There's a craft to it, but it's simple setup and payoff. Make people think something is coming, and then deliver it in a way that messes with their expectations somehow. I'm measuring this kind of scare in my "Scary" category. Does the film make me jump like a cat? The scary category also covers gross-outs, which are common in plague films. If there's blood, pus and gore making the audience feel squicky, points go here.
Like the bomb under the table that doesn't explode, other movies scare us by having a character suspect there's a monster in the closet, and find they're too afraid to open the door and check. Suddenly, that closet door is scary all by itself, and every time the character has to go in that room, or a muffled sound echoes through the house, we feel anxiety. My favorite horror movies establish an ominous tone that something bad is going to happen and let that dread build and build. The payoff, when it comes, is more satisfying because the film set it up so carefully. Think of the films Paranormal Activity, The Others, or The Babadook. It doesn't even need to be outright horror: We Need to Talk About Kevin does this beautifully.The imagery isn't gory and the jump-scares (where they exist) are understated, or contribute to the ominous mood that builds. This kind of scare sticks with you. Unlike the chill that's gone in five seconds, these movies have you checking your locks or changing your passwords a week after the film is over. I'm measuring this in my "Frightening" category. I personally prefer this type of scare, though the best scary movies (It Follows, The Thing, The Ring, A Quiet Place) do both.
The Scoring Categories The Failed Experiments:
Not all these films are going to be what we conventionally call "good films," but even bad films have ways to hold one's attention. If a film was so dull, poorly made, or predictable that I didn't watch it from beginning to end, and instead skipped to the "good parts," it gets a DNF (Did Not Finish). I tried, but even as I pretend zombie films are relevant to a global pandemic, I have enough integrity not to review a film I haven't seen through.
The Categories: Each is graded out of five points. Frightening (Does it create that moody, ominous feeling of dread that builds up, and stays with you afterward?) Scary (Is it the kind of scary that makes you jump in your seat, or wish you'd eaten a smaller lunch? Surprises and gross-outs get points in this category.) Plausible (Does the plague, and people's response to it, seem realistic, as if it could possibly happen? If unrealistic, does the film follow its own rules, and unfold believably, granted the initial premise?) Awesome (Is it a good movie? Does it hit its marks? Are the scary parts scary, the sad parts sad, and the joyful parts joyful?)
Finally, for bonus demerits/points: "But wait, there's more!" stinger - does the film end by hinting that the infection is on its way to a sequel new location? You know...the montage where the contaminated water ends up at a bottling factory while ominous music plays, or the one infected cat escapes the exterminators and heads toward the Lincoln Tunnel and the mainland? Yah those are cheesy, and I will be docking points for them, depending on the amount of cheesiness.
By having two categories -- half the entire scoring -- on scariness, this system will over-rate scary movies and under-rate things like dramas or love stories. We'll discuss that as we get into the reviews.
It's unlikely that any film will get a 20/20 on this scale, because frightening, scary and plausible are usually a trade-off: films that make me jump like a cat usually don't also make me fear door handles, and a film that does both probably asks for a big suspension of disbelief in the plausibility category.
Weirdo that I am, I'm commemorating the CoVid19 lockdown by watching plague movies, and because I love you, dear reader, I'm writing them up for you, and I'll end the series with a nice best-of countdown!
Scoring:
Films that fail to hold my attention get a DNF (Did Not Finish) and no score (that would be unfair).
Films that hold my attention are scored on four dimensions: Frightening (Is it the kind of scary that builds up, and stays with you afterward?) Dread & anxiety get points here. Scary (Is it the kind of scary that makes you jump in your seat, or wish you'd eaten a smaller lunch?) Surprises and gross-outs get points here. Plausible (Does the plague, and people's response to it, seem realistic, as if it could possibly happen?) Awesome (Is it a good movie? Does it hit its marks?)
Each of these dimensions will be scored out of five.
Finally, for bonus demerits/points: "But wait, there's more!" stinger (Does the film end by hinting that the infection is on its way to a sequel new location?) That's tacky, and I take away points depending on the amount of cheesiness.
Weirdo that I am, I'm commemorating the CoVid19 lockdown by watching plague movies, and because I love you, dear reader, I'm writing them up for you, and I'll end the series with a nice best-of countdown!
Scoring:
Films that fail to hold my attention get a DNF (Did Not Finish) and no score (that would be unfair).
Films that hold my attention are scored on four dimensions: Frightening (Is it the kind of scary that builds up, and stays with you afterward?) Dread & anxiety get points here. Scary (Is it the kind of scary that makes you jump in your seat, or wish you'd eaten a smaller lunch?) Surprises and gross-outs get points here. Plausible (Does the plague, and people's response to it, seem realistic, as if it could possibly happen?) Awesome (Is it a good movie? Does it hit its marks?)
Each of these dimensions will be scored out of five.
Finally, for bonus demerits/points: "But wait, there's more!" stinger (Does the film end by hinting that the infection is on its way to a sequel new location?) That's tacky, and I take away points depending on the amount of cheesiness.
Coming Up in this Post: 감기 (The Flu) (2013) Black Death (2010) Pontypool (2008) Extinction: The GMO Chronicles (2011) 괴물 (The Host) (2006) Viral (2016) The Girl With All the Gifts (2016)
Well I'm a bit weird, I guess. While most people respond to an epidemic scare like CoViD 19 by buying facemasks and hand sanitizer, and adjusting their weekend plans, I went and found every movie about infectious diseases I could and have been watching them one by one. If you're housebound anyway, why not pass the time scaring the crap out of yourself, right?
Now, I'm writing mini-reviews of some classic, less-than-classic, and absolute garbage plague films, and after the summaries, I'll finish off with a big ol' countdown from worst to best... so stay tuned!
Also, if you have a suggestion for a film I should include, please mention it in the comments!
Now not every film I mention will get a score. A few films just couldn't hold my attention all the way through. If a film was so dull, poorly made, or cliched I ended up skipping to the "good parts" it gets DNF (Did Not Finish). I tried. Also, some films that seem to be plague films actually aren't. I'll use some discretion in the margins here, but sometimes a film that seems to be about a plague actually isn't. For example: if the vial of plague in Mission: Impossible 2 were replaced with a computer chip, or a piece of microfilm, the rest of the film basically wouldn't change. Mission: Impossible 2 is a MacGuffin chase, not really a plague film. A lot of the plot of World War Z is about Brad Pitt trying to figure out how the zombie virus works, and that focus of attention makes it a plague film, while Dawn Of The Dead is more about people escaping zombies and less about the workings of the virus, so it's off the list.
A good pestilence film is scary, but any connoisseur of scary films can tell you there are two kinds of scare. One is like oatmeal: it sticks to your ribs, and hours later you're still full. Days after a scare like this, you're still checking the closet, adding locks to your doors, and changing your passwords. These scares are often a slow burn, and they spend a long time building that feeling of dread before finally paying off and messing you up. It Follows, Fulci's Zombi, Paranormal Activity and We Need to Talk About Kevin are like this. The other type of scare, the jump scare, is like wasabi: it sure is intense, but five seconds later, its impact has dissipated entirely. For sudden noises and things jumping out of the closet, films like Drag Me To Hell, It2017, The Grudge, Final Destination and most slasher movies are examples. The best scary movies do both (The Shining, The Thing, The Ring, It Follows, A Quiet Place). Personally, I prefer the first type, but I'm easy. A scare is a scare.
Scoring: Of course I need a scoring system. Frightening (How scary is it the first way - the ominous, the creepy, the "I'm never leaving the house without hand sanitizer again" way?) (Scored out of five) Scary (How scary is it the second way? Is it startling, chilling, or gross?) (Scored out of five) Plausible (Does the film make me believe this could actually happen? Does it make sense and at least have some modicum of logic? Does it follow its own rules, and unfold believably within its premise?) (Scored out of five) Awesome (Is the movie awesome? Like, is it an actually a good movie? Do the payoffs pay off? Are the scary bits scary and the sad bits sad?) (Scored out of five)
Does it end with a cheesy "but wait, there's more!" stinger? (negative one or two points, depending on the cheesiness)
It's unlikely that any film will get a 20/20 on this scale, because frightening and scary are generally a trade-off: films that make me jump like a cat usually don't also make me fear door handles.
In this review: Carriers (2009) Deranged (연가시) (2012) Patient Zero (2018) Outbreak (1995) The Bay (2012) Perfect Sense (2011)
At long last, something has prompted me once again to set finger to keyboard (doesn't have the ring of set pen to paper, does it?) and, naturally, it is the wonderful old blog friend Ask A Korean! with whom I have disagreed before. Let's party like it's 2009!
But The Korean has, in my opinion, bitten off a little more than he can chew in attempting a be-all and end-all definition of K-pop. We'll get to why in a minute, but first, let's summarize his original argument, as found in his blog post. We'll try to be concise, and if you prefer the real McCoy, go read the original here and its follow-up here, instead of my distillation.
Summary of AAK!
The Korean appears to take issue with those who define K-pop specifically as what others would call "Idol K-pop" -- the image that comes to many peoples' minds (especially if you're on Tumblr or Instagram) of leggy young women and be-sixpack'd young men making cute faces and dancing in sync to highly produced music tracks in elaborately crafted, probably colorful videos. The Korean's definition is clearly in contrast with this, and some of the evidence he uses is solid on first pass:
He uses the examples of three artists who have almost nothing in common musically, but who are all grouped under "K-pop" to broaden the definition from that narrow "Idol Kpop" definition. IU (video here), BTS (video here - recent winners of a social media award at the Billboard Music Awards) and FT Island (video here - whose youtube channel, FTISLAND makes me want to read 'FISTland' which sounds more Chuck Tingle than JYP) are all called "K-pop"; he also points out the lineups of the "K-pop Stage" at the SXSW music festival, where groups ranging from idol pop to indie punk to hip-hop all appear on the same concert stage, under the K-pop banner. Most damning of all for "small wagon" K-pop definers, when Psy's "Gangnam Style" became a smash hit, those who were talking about K-pop in 2012 were, for the most part, perfectly happy to hitch their wagon to his comet, rather than making a stronger effort to clarify that Psy does not fit the mold of "Idol K-pop" in a number of ways.
Genres need boundaries but we're bad at describing them
When glimpsed through a closing elevator door whilst pelvis-thrusting, the Korean language lyrics, colorful video, electric, synth-heavy arrangement and rap sections were similar enough to what we'd seen on the latest Hyun-a single (not to mention her appearance in the video) that anybody anxious to boast that K-pop was taking over the world would gladly paper over the differences between Psy and those handsome, be-sixpack'd boy bands that fit the K-pop mold more accurately. More about Psy later. This is definitely the strongest part of The Korean's argument: that little or no effort has been made to draw boundaries for what is K-pop and what isn't, and genres need boundaries, even fuzzy ones.
Think about other music and this is intuitively true: there are songs that straddle the line between soul and R'n'B, or soul and hip-hop, or folk and twee pop, or grunge and punk, but there are also songs that are definitely one or the other, even if the genres are not clearly defined and people couldn't explain why they think one is and one isn't part of their genre. People argue about whether this song or that song is this genre or that, and when Taylor Swift stopped being country and whether Justin Bieber qualifies as R&B, but don't dispute that genres exist, and are different from each other. However, The Korean does his argument a disservice in his rejoinder post when he puts up pictures of white cats and brown dogs: music genres do not delineate as starkly as cats and dogs, which cannot mate and create viable offspring. Music genres are constantly mating and creating viable offspring in shocking combinations. The Korean is a smart guy and knows what false equivalence is, and he is guilty of it here. Sandwiches are a much better comparison because different people will pitch their "This is NOT a sandwich" flag on different squares of the chart, and be able to defend their choice.
This chart is culturally biased.
Words get more than one meaning all the time
The Korean's argument derails when he starts insisting that words -- the term K-pop in particular -- be defined and used more narrowly than what is actually done in practice. While it's one of the best-written paragraphs in the original article, it is also where his argument is weakest:
In our current, "post-truth" world, it is more important than ever to insist that words must mean what they say. "K-pop" plainly means "pop music of Korea," because "K" obviously stands for "Korea," and "pop" obviously stands for "pop music." Q.E.D. And in fact, that is exactly how the term was used when it first entered the English language. Most English speakers--i.e., non-Koreans--encountered pop music from Korea for the first time in the early 2000s, and called such music "K-pop." The term was essentially the equivalent of gayo [가요], the word Koreans use to denote popular music generally, without reference to any genre, style or era.
Besides the fact he never defines what "pop music" is, which is a baffling and difficult conversation of its own beyond the scope of this response (given that AAK did not address it either), The Korean slips here and gives up the fatal flaw in his discussion, mentioning that it was in the early 2000s that most English speakers first encountered pop music from Korea, and described it as K-pop.
Because the problem with using the term K-pop to describe "pop music of Korea" is simply that Koreans generally don't use it to describe Korean music, and certainly didn't before the early 2000s. I teach at a Korean university and sometimes ask my students what music they like, and they name genres like "ballad" or "dance" or "hip-hop" and even if they name a group known as "K-pop" to the world, they might describe it as K-pop, or they might describe it as girl-group or boy-band. The Korean cops to the fact the term K-pop is used differently in Korea than outside of Korea in his rejoinder post, written after reading some comments disagreeing with his original post.
...when one observes the actual usage of the term "K-pop" by non-Koreans, it is abundantly clear that the term is not the same thing as "idol pop." When the international fans encountered Korean popular music that was clearly not idol pop--such as Gangnam Style--there was no effort to enforce the conceptual boundaries of "K-pop" to exclude Korean popular music that was not idol pop. When the international fans recount the history of "K-pop," there is no effort to trace the development of idol pop as a distinct strand of style that exists within the broader universe of Korean popular music.
The term K-pop is used differently by Koreans than by non-Koreans. We can drill down into even more detail if we want. When we poke around the term K-pop, and learn about its origins, and look at how it's used in different places, the inescapable truth is this: the term is used differently by different people, for perfectly good reasons that are easy enough to grok. The only confusion comes when people start cross-talking, failing to pause and take seven seconds to clarify "Hey, random stranger on the internet, do you mean K-pop as in popular music in Korea, or K-pop as in manufactured Idol Pop from Korea?"
The Korean wants to insist that every word or term have one meaning, and one meaning only, across all contexts, regardless of who is saying it, but language doesn't work that way. The word "set" has different meanings, depending on whether you are a performer getting ready for a concert (a set list), lining up to begin a footrace (ready, set, go), a sailor (set sail), a tennis player (won in straight sets), making jello (put it in the fridge to set), programming your digital alarm clock (can you set my alarm for me?), collecting pokemon cards (two cards short of the whole set), work for a theater company (set design is fun but hard), or preparing for a corner kick (our team is good at set plays). Some of those meanings resemble each other, and so do the different meanings of K-pop, but the context and the speaker changes the meaning.
"Set" is not the best example because it's such a simple, flexible word that it's easily co-opted into new contexts, but there are other words we know have hugely different meanings in different contexts. Buffer means different things if you're talking about financial planning, diplomacy, car care, or Youtube videos. Suite means something different if you're a composer or a hotel manager or MS Office user. Pitch can be a baseball move, a tar-like substance, an attempt to sell something, a degree of darkness, a musical note, or the ability to sing the correct musical note. Words like insulate, program, developing, overture, advance, target, and on and on. Even within art circles, indie can mean a distribution model or musical aesthetic, dubstep refers to a completely different musical sound if you are from America or the UK. Meanwhile, wherever someone draws a line between genres, artists specifically flock to that boundary to defile it, just for the sake of argument, or out of sheer playfulness, or because they don't give a shit who says what is which genre: they're just making art they like. Ask Banksy or Marcel Duchamp, or Prince, or John Cage, or Lin-Manuel Miranda.
Avicii's country techno song.
How are people using the term?
K-pop also has different meanings depending on who's using it, and where. That's normal. The meanings are conceptually coherent within those contexts, to those using it, so... what's the problem?
If you are trying to promote Korean cultural products, then anything that you think will generate interest (and then tourist dollars or cultural export dollars) for Korea gets a K- in front of its name. Anything popular (or profitable) is K-pop, and anything that garners international success or accolades becomes retroactively tagged "Korea's Representative X" (this explains Psy suddenly becoming the flag carrier for K-pop when, by the strict definition of Idol K-pop, Psy doesn't fit the mold).
If you are stocking shelves at an American record store in 2003, or making music more searchable in the iTunes library by categorizing Asian popular music by country, and you want to differentiate music from Korea and music from Japan (and this is my guess as to the reason it is specifically called K-pop rather than some other name), or you need a shorthand tag to let people know where all the Korea-originating acts will be performing at your music festival, then K-pop means any music from Korea other than traditional stuff... or from the other end, if you have so much Korean music in stock now that the "World Music" shelf is overflowing and Korean music needs its own shelf, K-pop is a nice catch-all for anything that comes from Korea.
If you are a PR or an economics lover looking at the infrastructure of music content distribution or promotion in Asia, K-pop is a business model, a content development model and/or a distribution model.
On the other hand, if you like looking at GIFs of sexy Korean boys with sixpacks, or leggy Korean women making aegyo poses, and you have a Tumblr account and use the word "oppa" a lot but don't know any other Korean, then K-pop means a specific type of look, a specific type of music, and a specific type of sexy people.
If you are looking for other people to join you in celebrating a set of shows, bands and whatnot you like, or that has a connection with something in your heritage, K-pop is a good term to use to find other people who want to celebrate it with you.
On Orwell's on language and retroactive naming of things
It is not Orwellian that different people have found different definitions of K-pop serviceable labels, in the different contexts where they use it: though Korea promotions has been involved, it has not been a sinister top-down attempt to manipulate or control people, or to make Korean culture or art into something it is not, just a bit of fuzzy-minded opportunism on the part of K-pop power players and Korean promotions folk hoping for a windfall. This has happened before: on his Hot Fives and Sevens albums, Louis Armstrong had a bunch of tracks with "Blues" in the title (14 by my count in the 4 disk set), even though he was making one of the foundational jazz recordings, because blues was selling at the time. Look at the number of songs with "Soul" in the title in the 70s, be they soul or not. K-pop's popularity abroad would have continued at, or nearly at pace without the Korean government's intervention, and K-pop would still exist if it weren't being marketed abroad, though it would look different and act a bit less grandiose. Not all meaning-slippage is Orwellian manipulation of meanings and reality, aimed at creating confused passivity in a populace. Sometimes they're just trying to sell units, or people are grabbing onto the nearest searchable tag to increase their platform's reach, or looking for others who also like their favorite genre, in order to celebrate it together, and engaged fans will figure out where they stand soon enough.
If you define K-pop as "popular music of Korea" like The Korean, then Shin Joong-hyun and Kim Wan-seon are K-pop, because their music was popular, and it was Korean. But here is the catch: Koreans never called those artists' music K-pop, and probably won't start. Sometimes retroactive naming can work -- for example, when the terms "Mansplaining" "Slacktivism" and "Vaguebooking" were invented, something clicked and people could relate the new term to things they'd been observing/practicing for years, but had no name for it until those terms were coined. How handy to have a word for it now!
In most cases, though, retroactive naming that goes back too far makes me uncomfortable, because it can bulldoze more nuanced stuff that was going on at a time in the past. The term K-pop appeared around 2001-2003, and going back a few years to call SES or Seo TaeJi K-pop isn't too much of a stretch, because early K-pop groups were intentionally, specifically trying to duplicate their success. But going back decades gets more and more spurious, because Koreans did have names for the music genres that The Korean is retroactively erasing under the K-pop banner.
Mansplaining, vaguebooking and slacktivism were terms that brought more clarity and understanding (though they are now also suffering meaning creep); calling everything K-pop does not. I would be interested to hear The Korean explain to me why HIS act of lumping groups that aren't K-pop like Jo-yong Pil or Kim Chuja under that banner are OK, but Korea Inc.'s effort and/or lazy-minded non-Koreans' lumping of disparate groups like IU or FT Island under that banner are Orwellian, other than that Ask A Korean is not a government ministry (which, to be fair, is a solid point if we are concerned about mass-manipulation). I would be happier still if he removed overdramatic claims of Orwellian manipulation from his discussion of meaning slippage in music genres as descriptors. (UPDATE: Beyond Hallyu discusses this much more concisely than I do.)
The foreign gaze in Kpop, and definitions that do too much
There is one other important thing The Korean seems to miss in his discussion: the term K-pop was invented to differentiate Korean music from other types of Asian pop music: a differentiation that only needed to be made once Korean music started gaining, or targeting, audiences outside Korea. It became popular at the time of (not necessarily because of) efforts to promote Korean culture abroad. From its very origin, the foreign gaze is baked into the term K-pop. This is why such disparate groups get lumped together. That is how Psy can be the most important K-pop artist, even though he doesn't fit the K-pop mold (foreign gaze don't care), yet also not rate a place on The Korean's "Top 50 Most Influential K-pop Artists" (he hasn't changed Korean music much; he's just made more people outside Korea aware of it, which doesn't affect the music scene in Korea very much at all). Psy's position relative to K-pop changes completely depending on whether you're looking at Korean music from inside Korean culture or outside, and any definition of K-pop that doesn't/can't account for this is suspect. The Korean gets quite close to realizing the importance of the foreign gaze in defining K-pop while addressing Jon Dunbar's objection in his rejoinder post, but stops a couple steps short of it clicking.
I would argue that The Korean's definition of K-pop is unhelpful, because it does too little (it ignores the crucial part the foreign gaze plays in lumping all modern popular Korean music together) and too much (identifies things as K-pop that are not and never have been called K-pop by people in Korea -- the ones who consume and care most about Korean popular music) at the same time. I would have no issue with this if he just said "Here is my working definition of K-pop. Got it? Got it!" But instead, he asserts that his definition of K-pop is the definitive one and others are incorrect. That is why I am writing to re-muddy the waters.
K-pop is a great tag for search-engine optimization and helping readers find his excellent countdown, but by naming it the "Most Influential K-Pop Artists" series, and even worse, insisting his definition is the correct one and others are wrong, he is flattening out the huge diversity of sounds and styles of Korean music that exists, and confusingly hinting at a foreign gaze upon a series in which he has worked very hard to take Korean music on its own terms. I would find it much more accurate if he titled it "The 50 Most Influential Korean Musicians" or "The 50 Most Influential Korean Popular Music Artists" because the term K-pop and the aesthetic Jaden Smith will shoot for when he plans to drop a K-pop single wouldn't exist yet for 30 years when some of The Korean's top-ranked artists made their music.
Let's have more language, not less (speaking of Orwell)
In the end, while I enjoy the discussion of what K-pop is, and really appreciate The Korean's engaging in the discussion, and especially sharing some great music in the video clips, I would advocate spreading and popularizing more names for the different types of Korean music, rather than butting his head against a wall, trying to change the common usages of a term that is already out there, being used by different people in different, understandable ways, for good reasons of their own. Instead of saying all popular music of Korea is K-pop, let's get K-punk, K-indie, K-folk, K-hip-hop, K-dance, hell, K-Britpop and K-Eurotechno out into the ether as well, so that people have more tools to describe the music they like, instead of torturing the one single term we've been working with into froot-loops of twisted and confusing definitions.
Let's get away from too much lumping-together-of-things: clearer, more accurate language is better, the term K-pop has its uses, and it's not that hard to clarify and avoid confusion. It is not necessary to insist words must all have only one, context-free definition when they don't, and trying to do so bulldozes all the other terms that are being used to talk about Korean music. Actual, engaged K-pop fans would happily learn that variety of terms, use and discuss them, while non-engaged observers would never bother to learn any of them no matter how much online huffing and puffing there is for them to ignore, but who cares what they think anyway?
This image is sexist, but you know which one of these people will have more helpful conversations about colors?
Music genres do this. They just do. And outsiders don't care. Deal with it.
Let's play a game...
Let's play a game! (source: pinterest is rubbish for sourcing photos. Sorry.)
UPDATE:
You may notice that I have not offered a definition of K-pop of my own in this whole discussion. Is K-pop a genre? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ sure! I don't really have a horse in this race: on an upcoming episode of the podcast I do with my buddy Eugene, (listen here!) I'll offer something of my own definition, but the point here is, K-pop works better as a term if we don't ask it to work too hard, or do too much. Beyond Hallyu's piece explains this admirably. If your definition of K-pop works for you, and either connects you with like-minded people, helps you find music you like, or gives you a framework for your top 50 Korean musicians countdown, go with it! But don't be too pushy insisting on your definition: language and culture tend to resist becoming overly tidy, and when it doesn't, that is when to bring Orwell back into the discussion.
There will always be big wagon and small wagon K-pop believers: people who think K-pop should be defined as broadly as possible, and those who think it should be more narrow. In that spirit, here's a fun game: let's make a rubric. Run your favorite group through this, and count up their score. Set the bar as high (small wagon K-pop) or as low (catch it all) as you want. Decide for yourself how many points a group needs to earn before they count as K-pop, and we can decide if Psy is or isn't K-pop, whether it's still K-pop when the Wonder Girls start playing their own instruments and singing in English, whether EXPedition is, or No Brain, or Diana Ross and The Supremes for that matter. Here is the checklist, with my own point values. Change the point values to fine-tune your own definition, and then check who clears it and who doesn't.
Group 1: Necessary? Sufficient? Disqualifying?
__ Marketed toward Koreans in Korea (50 points)
__ Sung in Korean (50 points)
__ Marketed toward Korean diaspora (15)
__ Group is signed with either: A Korea-based, Korean-owned label (15) One of the "big three" Kpop labels (YG, SM, JYP) (30)
__ Group promotes itself on Korean shows like Music Bank, Inkigayo and Music Core (40)
__ Group is NOT signed with a Korea-based, Korean-owned label (-60 not completely disqualifying, but close)
__ Group/singer was active before the 1990s (DISQUALIFIED)
__ Group/singer was active since 2007 (3 points)
__ They play their own instruments at live shows (-80: they're not K-pop anymore. They're K-something else.)
Group 2: Makeup and Formation
__ Add 5 points for every member the group has after the first five (so, a six-person group gets 5 points; seven-person = 10 points; a 12-person group = 35 points)
__ Subtract 3 points for every member of the group who was not born and raised in Korea
__ Subtract (__) more points for every member of the group who could not pass for Korean in physical appearance (ethnicity/race is important to some people, who will want to put a point value here. I don't really care as long as the next requirement is satisfied).
__ Subtract 8 points for every member of the group who is not fluent enough in Korean to make appearances on Korean television
__ Group was chosen and trained by the label (15 points)
__ Group members are on restrictive, probably unfair long-term contracts (7 points)
__ Group members are all gorgeous by conventional standards of attractiveness. (18)
Group 3: Aesthetics
__ Creative choices for songs, videos and dances are made by the studio, not the performers (8)
__ Music videos all have a "concept" (5)
__ 3 points for each group member with a designated role ("the visual" "the bad girl" "the vocal")
__ Music is driven by synthesizers and sounds like a mash-up of other popular music genres (4)
__ Features rap solos that add nothing to the songs, or dance breaks that sound like the trendiest EDM styles of the day. (4)
__ Cute poses and extreme close-ups feature prominently in videos (3)
Group 4: Promotion/Differentiation from other Asian pop
__ Subtract 4 points for every single released only in a language other than Korean (lose too many points, and you're not K-pop anymore: you're Asian pop, J-pop or something else)
__ Subtract 2 points for every single released with a Korean version and a version in another language
__ Subtract 5 points if the group has a "sub-group" targeting markets outside Korea
__ The Korean government has actively promoted their music (12)
__ Add 2 points for every advertising campaign they appear in in Korea.
__ Add 1 point for every advertising campaign they appear in in the rest of Asia.
__ Has an online fan club (10 points) with a quirky nickname (3 more points) run or closely managed by the label (8 more) pumping fans for more money through special offers and deals (5 more) whose fans will fucking dox you SWAT you and cut you if you diss their group (12 more)
Group 5: Other
__ White men over thirty living in Asia who don't listen to it sneer at it contemptuously and talk about it as if they were experts on it (7 points)
__ One or more performers were discovered on a Korean audition reality TV show (__) add value here: I don't care about this but some might.
__ Nobody has suggested a different hyphenated K-genre for their music (For example, "She isn't K-pop: she's K-indie!") 5 points
__ Somebody HAS suggested a different hyphenated K-genre for their music (-15 points)
__ Their fans in Korea insist upon this different hyphenated K-genre (-25 points)
__ Their fans abroad insist upon this different hyphenated K-genre (-40 points)
__ The fans abroad insisting on this different hyphenated K-genre name are organized, have a fan club nickname, and will fucking dox you swat you and cut you if you diss their group (cancel all above deductions)
__ When a new video comes out, fans mobilize to try and set Youtube "Fastest to X million views" threshold speed records.
Add your own criteria in the comments, or change the point value in the comments if you want!
Thank you for reading, dear friends.
UPDATE!
Here are some suggested additions to the checklist from Facebook. Thank you, Jon Dunbar!
Somewhere around 2011, thoughts that would have become blog posts suddenly became long-form Facebook updates. I have decided to make them blog posts again. It's easier to find them back.
I am currently re-watching the Star Wars trilogy. The original trilogy. I'm glad I was a kid when the original trilogy was still heavy in the pop culture consciousness -- I'm very glad my first experience with Star Wars wasn't the three prequels. I'm not quite old enough to have seen the movies in the theater, but when I was in Kindergarten, one of my classmates used to smash the structures other classmates would build out of cardboard bricks...
While shouting "Return of the Jedi!" AND he had a Return of the Jedi lunchbox. And we rented Star Wars not long after we got our first VHS machine.
As Disney is winding up their pop-culture machine to unleash the Star Wars hype dynamo, they are doing a pretty good job of feeding the beast and letting fan excitement drive it, rather than using too heavy a hand. They are experts at playing their cards well.
That opening hit, the noise and the trumpet: by the time those 6 and a half seconds of fanfare go by, I'm ready for fun and adventure, and the main theme hasn't even started! So... read as many whiny blogs as you want, hate George Lucas as much as you like, snicker away that Lego Count Dooku looks eerily like George Lucas...
no seriously, look at him! The version in the Lego Star Wars animated films is seriously eerie
but after all the griping and equivocating, all it takes is six seconds of trumpets and friends, I am in.
And, for fun, here are my Star Wars and other extended universes prediction:
Star Wars: The Force Awakens will be much much better than the prequels and will do really well, though
The sheer density of Star Wars properties lined up for release will lead to fatigue before the sequel trilogy is finished. A star wars film every 18 months will wear us out. ANYTHING every 18 months would wear us out. Even Captain Jack Sparrow, who ruined Johnny Depp's brand at least as much as Tim Burton did.
The Han Solo prequel will be either incredible or awful, with no middle ground (I think it will be awful, and they shouldn't try, for the same reason I think nobody should make a biopic of Freddie Mercury: how on earth are you going to duplicate what everybody knew the first time they saw it, was unequivocally a lightning-in-a-bottle perfect alignment of forces. Chris Pratt deserves his own character, and Harrison Ford's Han Solo should be like Al Pacino's Michael Corleone and Michael J Fox's Marty McFly: so definitive nobody should bother trying to touch it).
Disney's Marvel Universe will also continue doing well until superhero fatigue is in full swing (Thanos, because he looks ridiculous off the comic page, might be the straw that breaks the camel's back, as Marvel slowly pushes back the limit of exactly how ridiculous they can make their films before they lose the suspension of disbelief),
But DC's Batman/Superman film, or the Justice League film that's coming after it, will catch the full brunt of the superhero backlash - just please give us one good Wonder Woman movie and one good Black Widow (or Scarlet Witch, or Ms. Marvel, or even She-Hulk) movie before everybody starts canceling Phase Three of their extended universes and starts re-making Die-Hard, please!
As for other stuff... I like Prince's new album, Tame Impala's new album, Destroyer's new album, and Beach House's new album. Go listen to them.
In my Korean Popular Culture class, during our history lecture, the professor mentioned "The Kim Sisters" - a group whose name came up not long ago on tumblr as well. In trying to connect the music being created in Korea during the 1920s 30s and 40s, heavily influenced by Japanese colonialism (Japanese Enka is often mentioned as the musical ancestor to older Korean musical styles like Trot and Bbong-chak) and the US influenced rock and protest songs of the 70s and 80s, the professor draws a line through US military camp entertainment venues, where performers auditioned (echoes of modern Kpop? perhaps, though I think that's a reach), and where performing in the style American soldiers expected, was their meal ticket. A lot of Korea's most memorable performers of the era - including Shin Joong-hyun and Jo Yong-pil, developed their chops on the army bases.
The Kim Sisters came a bit before Shin Joong-hyun and many of the others. They developed an act in the '50s as kids, which became polished enough to garner an invitation to an act in Las Vegas in 1959 (source), and were a big hit in the 1960s, appearing on the Ed Sullivan show 25 times - only 9 acts ever had more. Now Ed Sullivan is kind of a big deal... yet my mother-in-law had never heard of The Kim Sisters.
Their mother was Lee Nan-Young, whose song "Tears of Mokpo" is one of the classic Korean standards: it's like "Someone to Watch Over Me" in that everybody's done this song. You've heard it in a taxi, your mother-in-law sang it in the noraebang, and one of the singers did a version on the latest music audition show.
In the Korea Times interview, former member Mia Kim admits that her group's timing was perfect: "When we started our career in the U.S., there were no Oriental acts as such. We were the first Oriental band that could play Western music and was good at it." They were the right act at the right time.
The early 1960s was also the time when the Japanese song "Sukiyaki" hit number one in the USA (1963)... so maybe there was something in the air... it was well before the Beatles brought Indian culture into hippie culture ('68), and at first google, the early 60swas a relatively quiet time for Asian-Americans, especially compared to the black civil rights movement (Rosa Parks kept her seat in 1955 and MLK met President Kennedy in 1960, around the time The Kim Sisters were putting bums in Vegas seats)... so it's hard to fit their invitation to perform in Vegas into a framework other than putting Orientalism on display -- at least from the demand side. However, getting on Ed Sullivan once ain't chopped liver, and they were invited 25 times - clearly more than a novelty act could ever muster. It would be worth further investigation.
And I really don't mean to take away from what they had going, The Kim Sisters were incredibly talented performers, able to play 20 different instruments between them, and if you watch the videos, able to sing very much in the style of Western pop groups of the time, which is interesting in its own way: the way the sisters balance their Oriental-ness (tossing a few Korean words into a song) with their very Western vocal and performance style, actually reminds me of current Korean acts trying to make it in the US, working to hit that exact balance of being similar to US pop, but not too similar, and different... but not too different. (Do we sing in English? Do we powder our skin paler or apply bronzer? Do we apply eye make-up to look more round, or more slanted? Do we change our dances? Do we harmonize with intervals from Korean music or Western music? Do these people even know what Gangnam is?) The Kim Sisters couldn't completely escape the pressure to put their Asian-ness on display: the b-side of their single "Harbor Lights" was a song titled "Ching Chang," written by E Shuman and M Garson. Sigh. I haven't been able to find the lyrics or a recording of the song online yet.
Watch the sisters. Just watch them. I'm interested in the subtexts of their performances - the fact they were partly chosen, as per the interview, because "there were no Oriental acts as such" ... but also because they 'could play Western music and was good at it" (and they really were). The way The Kim Sisters perform Korean-ness is interesting, and could be contrasted with, the ways The Wonder Girls, Psy, Rain, or Lee Byung-hun choose to emphasize or de-emphasize their Korean-ness, in order, themselves, to hit that right balance of different, but not too different, that is necessary for a pop act to distinguish itself, and the balance between foreign and maybe exotic, but not other, that a foreign act must strike.
Here are some of their performances from Youtube.
With Lee Nan-Young, the mother of the two sisters, and aunt of the third member.
Note the make-up emphasizing their darker skin and eye shape, and that their mother doesn't solo in English, but dresses in American styles.
Contrast that with the way she moves, dresses and stands in a live performance of her most famous song, admittedly downbeat compared to "Michael Row The Boat Ashore" above, but still:
They play instruments in this one, and dance in unison.. but the way they move is pretty clearly modeled on Western pop girl groups.
Goin' Out Of My Head
Starting in Hanbok, with traditional instruments, and then stripping it off to sing in English... interesting images.
And to contrast with more recent efforts to "make it" in America...
A very interesting study would be to compare the versions of Kpop videos for different audiences: what do the changes from The Korean Version of Bring the Boys Out to The American/English version show us about their company's expectations of the American market, or their perception of their members' strengths for the new market.
This is another video where the version marketed to American audiences is different from the one sold to Asians (a version which still features some white actors though).
I may have something to say here about culturalism, once I've processed some of the stuff from one of the classes I took this semester. But today... flash mobs. Because why not.
This is a flash mob. This is one of the first flash mobs. The NYC Central Station "Freeze"
I've always liked flash mobs. It seems like a cool thing to have happen, to break the monotony of your day. I love imagining the people who encountered it, going home and telling the story. "And then suddenly, like 300 people in street clothing were dancing along to The Sound of Music in the subway station!
Improv Everywhere did some of the early ones. Another I liked:
Here are probably the two best flash mob videos.
Beethoven's 9th in Spain:
On Reddit today, I saw a link to a "Flash Mob" where a group of classical instrumentalists played a rendition of "Arirang," and then the Korean national anthem, in a public square in insadong, one of the popular streets in Seoul for tourists to vist, and one of the first four places your new Korean friend will take you if you just got off the airplane.
It was alright. Here it is. It's a great tune.
But I'm having trouble calling it a flash mob. Wikipedia makes a distinction between a "flash mob" and a "smart mob." Here's a working definition of a flash mob I've written, based on the entirely subjective metric of which videos I saw on teh internetz and though "this is described as a flash mob, and it's awesome."
A flash mob is...
1. an organized group action
2. in a public place
3. where ordinary people do something surprising and a little extraordinary
4. that has been planned and maybe coordinated beforehand
5. and then everybody goes about their day.
Bonus points for:
1. People not involved in planning it can join in (watch the Antwerp DoReMi again- people have jumped in without knowing where to step next)
2. including people under age 13 or above age 45
3. a video shorter than 4, preferably 3 minutes, unless it's friggin' awesome!
4. that "what on earth is going on?"/"wait a minute... I live in a musical?" feeling at the beginning, as apparently random people somehow seem to know the steps, or pull musical instruments out of their jackets.
Negative points for:
1. the number of people involved who appear to be professional performers. Also, music stands.
2. that general stink of being staged by PR people
3. any agenda other than "let's give the people in [this place] something to talk about when they get home from work" ... and the more obvious that agenda is, the more points you lose.
4. having a space cleared out before it starts. Feels like it was planned, and that's anathema for that "what on earth is going on?" feeling I mentioned. 5. Being this. Thanks for ruining flash mobs forever, FOX.
So... flash mobs now:
Wikipedia calls agenda-driven flash mob-like activities a "smart mob" -- if you're too clearly trying to sell me something, if your political demonstration involves apparent passers-by doing a choreographed dance or a freeze (while holding signs and slogans), or if they're clearly professional dancers (again, about the music stands), or if it was run by any business, but especially one larger than a community theater... sorry, kids. I'm not sold, and you're a smart mob, not a flash mob.
I wanted to make rule number 3 there hard and fast... no selling shit... but googling around revealed that the Antwerp Do Re Mi, and the Spanish Beethoven were both sponsored too. With a light hand, in the Antwerp case, but the Beethoven video does kinda finish with a corporate logo... so I realize that this "flash mob" thing has a fuzzier definition than I'd like. But here go those criteria, for the "This Is Arirang" video:
The "This Is Arirang" project was planned by a bunch of Korean student organizations (listed at the end.) According to the video description, "This is Arirang Project was designed with the aim to let foreigners know the Korean folk song, 'Arirang' and the 'Korean national anthem'"
Nothing wrong with that at first pass. Run by students is better than "run by a mobile company"(as slick as the T-mobile liverpool flash mob was)... though I can't help wonder why a bunch of university students care so much that foreigners know about their folk songs. Somehow I would have liked the video more if its purpose were to celebrate a beautiful song (cf Spain's Beethoven, the possible inspiration for it), rather than being to perform a beautiful song for "foreigners." Who cares if foreigners know/like arirang? The way "foreigners" are constructed in Korean promotional efforts is often problematic for various reasons, and the fact Korean culture becomes constructed as a performance of "Korea" for foreigners, bothers me sometimes, when Koreans should be doing the things Koreans do because it's meaningful to them, because it's beautiful, or fun, or connects them to who they believe they are in the world. There's a big difference between that hottie who dresses up because looking nice is nice, and the one who does it to fish for compliments.
Because, to steal from an old riddle, if the Arirang played, and no foreigner heard it, would it still be a beautiful song?
Yes. Yes it would. And it doesn't need foreigners to say "ooh! What a beautiful melody!" before Koreans can celebrate it, love it, and sing it. For their OWN damn benefit.
I was going to do a part of this blog post where I complained that flash mobs never really caught on in Korea -- even though Korea would seem like the perfect breeding ground for an absolute flash mob craze:
a culture of people who like doing things in groups (check)
everyone has a cellphone camera (check)
everybody already knows a set of dance moves and steps because of popular kpop songs (check)
one of the world's most wired populations (check)
a youth population prone to grab onto fads and run them for all they're worth, if so inclined (check)
I was going to complain that given the above, there are surprisingly few flash mobs in Korea.
Except I would have been wrong.
Now, many of these fail my own nitpicky criteria for a flash mob, because they're for a poltical cause, promoting a Kpop single, they're not in a public space, or they're too obviously staged. But then again... some of my favorite flash mobs fail one or more of those criteria, so I've got to be more forgiving.
As for flash mobs in the Korean news: well, they're popular enough to have been made illegal. Hankyoreh on that. And must be registered in advance. Wouldn't have happened if they'd been used for fun instead of for statements. But then again... I'll never begrudge someone giving a damn about the political situation in their country. Even if it means no Do Re Me song when I walk by Chunggyecheon.
It's no secret that I REALLY like Shin Joong-hyun, one of Korea's original rock'n'roll badasses.
And I LOVE his signature song 미인, which takes the sounds of that majestic Korean chanting and call-and-response sound that you hear in traditional performances, and lays a blistering guitar lick over it... and makes it really, really work...
I generally like what I've seen of Ali (알리), the singer who does this version. She can actually sing, and she's sexy in the way real people are sexy, not in the way Kpop stars or cardboard cutouts are sexy.
Ali does a version of Shin's song here - I saw it on TV this weekend... and I liked it.
It goes in three movements, laying out, in a way, three of the features of Shin Joong-hyun's original song -- the primal wail of sexual energy turns into a slinky come-on in the first part, the messy fun of Korean folk culture (which animates the vocals of Shin's original version) somes out (to varying degrees of effectiveness) in the second part [in my opinion, the rap section could have been dropped], but I liked the samulnori bit (the part with ribbons on hats and Korean drums) and then flying with the energy charge of psychadelic rock and roll at the end.
I like that young Korean artists are listening to older Korean music, and bringing it to a new generation.
The Wondergirls also did a version of Mi-in as well, with the (slightly dirty sounding) name "Me, In"
And let's not forget Big Bang doing Lee Mun Sae: Sunset Glow
the original
Oh, BTW... in 2006, Shin Joong-hyun still had it... I mean, REALLY had it:
Ever wondered about Korean film before Oldboy? The Korean FIlm Archive has just put SEVENTY - that's right, SEVENTY classic Korean films on Youtube for free, with English subtitles to boot.
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