Soundtrack for the post: Wish You Were Here - Pink Floyd
Brian Deutsch is on his way out of Korea. I've known this for a while; Brian and I have met a few times, and even worked together on some stuff. Brian even contributed one of the most useful posts ever on Roboseyo: what to do with a three day weekend in Jeollanamdo - a post which I promised to answer in kind, with advice on a three day weekend in Seoul... but then forgot to do. (Actually, I haven't forgotten: it's almost finished!)
The Korea Times even wrote up a piece on Brian leaving... given Brian's commentary on The Times' reporting, I read it carefully, looking for a hints of "Ding Dong, The Witch Is Dead!" in the tone. Given the controversy he courted at times - particularly during the Coreana Nazi ad, the summer of 2008, when netizens went after his job, and recently, calling out the IFriendly misfire for its bad English - and the sheer relevance of his posting, to expat life in Korea, some kind of send-off was certainly deserved. Brian was my personal choice for most relevant, and most topical K-blog of 2009 - the only other contender, in my opinion, is Popular Gusts - especially since the once excellent Korea Beat turned into one part of "Asian Correspondent" - which was probably good for the makers of the site, but which dilutes the once very straightforward, Korea-focused content of the site. While Brian made some statements of regret about the time it took to maintain his blog, and what it's done for the name Brian Deutsch, at least in Korea, I think I can safely say that every blog reader and writer in Korea is very grateful for his work. I'll write him a letter of reference any time he wants. His blog has been extensive, well-written, amazingly prolific, and on the point timely. It's been an impressive run, and his absence will certainly leave a void in the K-blogosphere.
Brian and I have hung out a few times: he's a good guy, nice, kind-spirited, soft-spoken, and his manners are WAY better than mine. Just to prove we really did hang out, here's a picture from the last time we hung out together: I didn't get permission to post this picture, but I hope he doesn't mind. His fiance is also super-awesome, charming and funny, and they're really cute together. Girlfriendoseyo took to them immediately, and gets a gubby happy face every time I mention them.
There's one thing I'd like to say, for the record, about the title of the KT article: "'Angriest Blogger' Leaving Korea"
There aren't a whole lot of regrets, or things I wish I could take back, during the time I've run blogoseyo. For the most part, I'm happy to take the missteps in stride - I've fired off half-cocked a few times, I've failed to fact-check a few times, I've blundered in blogger courtesy before, and mistook a few trolls for real people, but most of it, I'll leave at "You live, you learn".
One of the things I WOULD take back, given the chance, would be the Golden Klog category "Angriest K-Blogger" - The Hub of Sparkle is still showing security warnings, so I can't link it, but I think, looking back, that it was an unfair category in the first place, and worse still, that it unfairly saddled Brian with a reductionist label. I invented the category on a whim, and didn't really think about how the nominees would like being tagged that way. Sure, maybe his critical posts were strongly written; they were also some of his most popular, and frequently referenced posts, but they were also not the bulk of his output, by any stretch. The regional information, and the festival news were other areas Brian put in more effort than the criticism, and his criticism always had a reason, an explanation, and almost always suggested a solution, which is more than I can say for many of the other contenders for "Angriest Blogger" - who are usually harsh, petty, overblown, and prone to generalize specific cases in a way that Brian didn't. He never lost perspective, even when mad netizens were trying to have his job.
A relevant article titled "Easy = True" that just showed up on "Givemesomethingtoread.com" makes the case that simple, snappy bits of information are taken to be more true than more complex explanations, expressions, or ideas. That's why a snappy neologism like "kimcheerleader" catches on: it's more fun to say than "Defensive Korean nationalist" "Korea booster" or "Korean ultra-nationalist". All advertising is built on that principle, and so is OJ's freedom (If the glove don't fit, you must acquit). I regret that "Angriest Blogger" was such an easy catchphrase, too contagious to fade into the background, and became the label by which Brian was known for the last year, even as he toned down the rage., because it mischaracterized a good guy, and a great blogger.
Good luck in the future, Brian; we'll miss you here in Kblogland; eventually someone will take over as the go-to news source, but until then, the K-blogs will be a little less fun, and a little less interesting than they were from 2007-2009.
Wonder Girls, thanks to ballot-box stuffing, won a top video award. Wonder Girls have also won top spots through write-in votes, on polls about the best NFL Player of all time, Longest River in Brazil, Top Bollywood Star, and Best Ocean Named The Pacific Ocean.
Foreign English Tutors haven't been caught, or punished for it, but we're still evil. Thanks, Kang Shin-who, for your series on illegalenglish tutors.. Stafford says you're dumb. Tell all your friends: if a guy from the Korea Times named Kang Shin-who wants to talk to you, say no. His record of misquoting, making stuff up, inflating stuff, and casting people in a false, negative light, is pretty long by now. Here's a start.
We've talked about this a lot on the blogs, and Girlfriendoseyo and I have had some interesting conversations about it, too: bald-face fact - Korea's media portrayal of foreigners and foreign cultures emphatically reveals that when it comes to trying to portray and understand foreigners living in Korea, and foreigners in general, Korea just really, really doesn't get it, expects us to be things we aren't, imposes stereotypes on us that are far removed from how most of us really are, and so forth. I've seen black people once on a Korean TV show... now, granted I don't watch a lot of Korean television... but in fifteen seconds of screen time, they first frightened the protagonist, then walked by her as if she'd been worried for nothing, and then ran up behind her and stole her purse.
A lot more ink/pixels have been spilled on this topic than I've dug up here (go ahead and put the link to your blog on the topic in my comments), but for a sampler: the Misuda girls prattle on about their cellphones and Korean boyfriends, sometimes taking breaks to bad-mouth foreign men. Ms. Parker in Korea has written about Korean television programming that makes foreigners look like fools, and that French guy from Tamna is the prettiest, most harmless white person the cute oyster-diving girl with big eyes could ever meet, but not typical of white people. (photo source)
(then again, I suppose this...)
is better than this:)
Is there another way to look at it, where we're not just snorting with disdain? I think so. There might be a way of recognizing that Misuda is a good thing, even if we sometimes think it's ridiculous. Maybe we can even forgive Isaac Durst.
Here's my crack at it. I think it's helpful to compare Korea's uneasy movement towards a diverse society, and that same cultural quantum shift, as it occured in American race relations a generation or two ago.
(Parenthetical statement) Now that I've put my neck out: a disclosure/disclaimer:
1. I haven't studied race and media in America in detail; excuse me, or correct me, if I miss the nuances. I also know the Korean and American experiences of race relations and media don't line up exactly. We could rattle off the ways they're different, but that's about a 500 word rabbit trail that'll derail my argument. I'm not an idiot, and I know it's not a clean analogy, and there are a lot of factors - particularly power dynamics - that make this a different case.
2. I'm engaged to a Korean lady, and will probably live in Korea for much of my adult life, so I have a vested interest in looking as optimistically as possible at these issues. Because this is the bed I'm going to lie in, while I try to be honest, I also try to be hopeful and generous. Call me an apologist, a sellout or (substitute ruder word for same) if you like; you're welcome to go drink the haterade at Dave's instead.
3. Foreigners living in Korea, and our response/reaction to how we're portrayed in Korea's media, and the way it affects Koreans' perception of us, is only one small subset of a whole barrel of issues and influences and factors that comprise a rapidly changing Korea interacting with a rapidly changing, globalizing world. The issues are much bigger, and more complex, than just how Isaac Durst influences Korean students' (and parents' and hogwan owners') expectations of their Kindergarten teacher.
When I see foreigners portrayed in the Korean media, two things come to mind. Sammy Davis Jr., and The Cosby Show.
Soundtrack: Sammy Davis Jr.: Mr. Bojangles
Sammy Davis Jr. was criticized, even during his time, as a sellout. The act he played for Sinatra and the Rat Pack boys was kind of insulting - he was a token, and the smiling, eager-to-please butt of racist jokes. If an equivalent act went onstage today, there's be a rightful outrage, and Davis knew that was the role he played -- just listen to the words to the song Mr. Bojangles (which you should be listening to, right now)... but frankly, White America needed those pioneers: we COULDN'T have skipped Sammy Davis Jr. and gone straight to Marvin Gaye singing, "Let's Get it On" - it would have been too much to see Marvin Gaye expressing a bold, confident sexuality, if they hadn't gotten their feet wet first with Sammy Davis Jr's Bojangles song and dance. And maybe Sammy Davis Jr.'s persona didn't resemble the actual lives or characters of the African-American people of his time, and maybe they didn't feel that he represented them, but then, at least it wasn't a white guy painting his face black anymore. When we project current sensitivities into the past, we miss what Sammy Davis Jr. meant to his audience at the time, and get upset that he was taking the racist jokes on the chin, rather than, like the people of his time, appreciating that he was the first black performer ever to appear on many of those stages, sometimes in clubs and venues that wouldn't have allowed him to enter the building as an audience member.
(Western Media, let's not forget, isn't innocent of stereotyping)
The Cosby Show was the same thing, in a different context. It was a little farther along than Sammy Davis, and it's been criticized lately for something that one scholar calls "Enlightened Racism" - basically that by portraying an upwardly mobile African-American family that never dealt with actual race-based issues that existed in America at the time, The Cosby Show presented a post-racial America that didn't actually exist, and allowed white viewers to feel that "If the Cosbys can be successful and respectable, that shows that any African-American family can do the same; if the black family down the street isn't as successful or respectable as the Huxtables, it must be their own fault" - this kind of attitude may have led to complacency in rooting out remaining vestiges or racism and discrimination in America. That was a long sentence.
But there we go projecting modern sensibilities on past times again: I've been accused of being way to optimistic for holding this opinion, but I think that America (and here I mean US and Canada, as we all watched The Cosby Show as loyally) DID still need the Cosby Show, despite, or maybe because of the way it basically took a sitcom about an affluent white American family, and cast it with black actors. No, it wasn't an accurate reflection of how most African American families lived, talked, thought, or acted, but it DID humanize the African-American family that lived down the street, it made them less "other" - heck, it invited them into our living rooms. As inaccurately as it may have portrayed the typical African-American experience, it also said "Not all black families are like the ones you see on the evening news". There was still a long ways to go (still is) but it was another step.
Now, we can watch a show like The Wire, that deal directly with the ugly, institutionalized racism and despair that still afflicts a lot of poor communities, but just like we wouldn't have accepted Marvin Gaye without first getting our feet wet with Sammy Davis Jr., we wouldn't have accepted The Wire without getting our feet wet on The Cosby Show.
You know what? Right now, in the Korean media, we still have one foot planted firmly in Sammy Davis Jr. territory. (Dancing black monkey puts on a cartoonish show/Dancing white monkey puts on a cartoonish show) When Girls Generation dresses like cheerleaders and dyes their hair blonde, and tosses mangled English phrases into their songs, well that isn't as insulting as blackface, and the power dynamic's WAY different (I'm not an idiot, remember?) but it's just as superficial a reading of American culture.
Next thing about Isaac Durst and Misuda: frankly speaking (see what I did there?), Koreans don't look much better on Korean television. Living overseas, we sometimes make the mistake of comparing Korean popular media with the very best our home cultures produce -- after all, THAT'S what we consume while we're overseas. While I'm here, I spend my time looking for the very best our home countries can produce: I'm downloading, or watching online, episodes of The Sopranos, or old seasons of The Simpsons in its prime, or whatever well-written TV Series my friend in Canada liked enough to mention to me in an e-mail, not TYPICAL shows, like Real World, Steaming Pile of Reality, or Two And A Half Men. It's hardly a fair comparison: we've got to compare SNSD with Miley Ray Cyrus, not with freaking Radiohead, and we've got to compare Misuda with Maury, not with 60 Minutes or even Oprah, or we're missing the point.
Meanwhile, there ARE some signs that Korea's media is moving from Sammy Davis Jr. towards The Cosby Show: James Turnbull writes about Bandhobi, a movie about a Bangladeshi guy who befriends a Korean girl. Compared to the century-plus that passed between the Emancipation Proclamation and the civil rights movement, and finally The Cosby Show in America, Korea's way ahead of pace. As far as I know, early American television sure didn't feature a show like Misuda, that asked African-Americans what they thought about the day's topics. It's one of the things that makes Korea a fascinating place to live in, the way it goes so quickly through all the changes that took our home cultures centuries to navigate, and yeah, it's messy - Korean feminism is trying to negotiate second wave feminism and third wave feminism simultaneously, rather than one at a time, the way we did, which leads to a fascinating muddle of labor complaints and sexy dances and birthrate/maternity leave controversies and music videos laden with the question "have they or haven't they been re-claimed?" -- women are dressing like the girl-power symbols of America, without yet fully having claimed the power those women are expressing in their own cultures.
Lee Hyori: U-Go-Gull: is she a symbol of Korean feminism, or is her play at empowerment a sales-boost?
So can we be patient, for the time being, with how foreigners are portrayed on Korean television, and be glad that, while some of the portrayals are stereotyped and negative, some are stereotyped and positive, and every once in a while, we DO get a foreigner in the Korean media who ISN'T a caricature (see Bandobhi and the foreign bride in "Thirst" if you don't believe me) We're still waiting for the Korean equivalent to the Cosby Show - one where the foreign family acts out situations similar enough to Korean families that, while it might not resemble our actual lives, it helps Koreans see the mixed-race family down the street as essentially the same as them, which will make it possible, after that, for truer portrayal of foreigners' lives in Korea. And until that happens, we should be vocal when our image is politically-tinged, or aimed at scaremongering, but we should probably also be patient with the dancing monkeys, as long as everybody involved realizes that's what they are, and take the time to let our Hogwan bosses, and our students, and our students parents, know that Isaac Durst is a TV person, and TV people are different than real people.
Maybe one day we'll be able to celebrate a post-racial Korea, where it really doesn't matter what color you are. Maybe we won't, but most of the foreigners here would be happy if things changed enough here that, even if we don't have any special rights, we could buy our I-phones, take out bank loans, get the job we want, the fair price we deserve, and date whomever we like, without catching any grief above and beyond what Koreans give their own people about those things. Those of us who are marrying Koreans especially want those things for our kids. Whatever kind of media portrayal, or progression of inaccurate portrayals, it takes to reach that point will be worth it, if that's where we arrive. It'll probably take longer than we want it to... but I bet it'll also take shorter than it took for North America to pull its head out of its ass and start treating visible minorities as real people.
For myself as well, I can definitely say that the one thing I hate most, as a teacher, is surprises - preparation is a key to a teacher's success, and springing this kind of last-minute "Why are you late for the class you didn't know you had?" garbage is the kind of stuff that prevents me from delivering a good product to my students. You want qualified teachers doing good work in your classrooms? You want the good ones to like the situation enough to stay on longer and longer? Give them the tools to do so, which means, above anything else, the materials they need, and the time to prepare them.
Some quotes from the ESL Cafe page:
So I was practically on vacation for the past month. I still had to come into work from 9am-5pm every day and I had camps for two hours a day...
Most of the people I asked either didn't know or they told me there definitely weren't classes until the end of February. Or they just told me not to worry.
I got a phone call from my boss, who I asked on Friday, who told me that there were no classes this week, that I need to come in immediately.
I've been here for nearly three years... I've been trying to get them to tell me for the entire time that I want to know when I have class because I like to PREPARE. Why is it so hard to tell me what everyone else already knows?
If I was back home and people acted like this I'd know they were just screwing with me. Since this happens to a lot of people here, I know its not that. Just why? WHY?!
I'm really not going to miss this job when I leave Korea this month.
Another person, same comment thread:
I am leaving. Twenty-seven days. Thank god.
Now, we've all heard before the Dave's ESL Cafe is a little black-hole of Anti-Korean Haterade... but when stuff like this happens, there's nothing to do but deny that it takes two to tango, and if Korea wants to improve the way foreigners talk about Korea, the first thing they need to do is look at the people who deal with foreigners in Korea directly.
