[UPDATE]
MBC has apologized and said "It will not happen again" -- we'll see.
Hat tip to
Eat Your Kimchi.
More at
Kushibo, and
The Unlikely Expat, and
Expat Hell
If the video's blocked on copyright grounds (they're shitheads, but they like to guard their stuff, those MBC folks), contact me and I'll see to it you get a copy of the video from the uploader.
OK, Korean media people. Here's the thing.
You, collectively, get to plead ignorance ONCE. Once altogether. Not once every three years: there's no reboot button. There are areas where you are supposed to have learned the lesson, and then not do it anymore.
And after that first "oh, we didn't realize," the free pass has expired. Forever. That Get-out-of-jail-free card is one-use only.
In fact, if you look at the makeup - all the way down to the white space around the lips -- it looks like the people who did
this blackface DID know enough about blackface to make sure the Korean singers' makeup was identifiable as classic blackface.
To compare: (
source)
And:
Note the Koreans in versions of Hanbok: Korea's traditional clothing.
Notice also the TV Station logo on the top right.
The Koreans lined up in the background, being entertained by the minstrel show.
The caption at the bottom: one of the blackface painted actors shouts "I love you Korea!"
They're supposed to be dressed as a cartoon character.
That cartoon is extremely racist itself. You can read about it here.
And you don't get to say "Oh. That was another TV station/studio/music company that did blackface last time:
they should have learned their lesson, but
we can hardly be blamed..." Because you have people in your company who have been in the industry, who have been paying attention to the industry, since the last time some asshat did this. (in January)
So pull your head out of your asses Korean domestic media companies. Because your stuff gets put on Youtube, gets watched by all the expats living in Korea. Pull your heads out of your asses because a month after Girls' Generation got on Letterman, and (as is hoped) a whole bunch of new people started to pay attention to The Korean Wave, and began to be interested in Korea... here's what they see:
And that's embarrassing. Embarrassing for Korea, because some people? All they know about Korea is Girls Generation on Letterman, Hyuna's Bubble-Pop video, and now these screenshots.
Embarrassing for all the people trying to promote Korea overseas, to change and improve the image of the country.
Not all Koreans are racist. That's obvious. But Korea's media makes Korea look like a racist backwater from time to time. And with images like this, Korea's media makes Korea look like a
really racist backwater.
And the Koreans who
aren't racist, have to kick up a storm when this shit
does happen, so that it doesn't happen again, and it doesn't take letters from the NAACP or the Simon Weisenthal Center to cause a retraction or an apology.
If this video gets pulled from Youtube (and it might), contact me. I'm in touch with the uploader, who has a copy on their computer.
Oh, but tu quoque, Roboseyo: you see, Billy Crystal wore blackface at the Oscars! Yes. He did. And he got called on it, a lot, because blackface just isn't acceptable. When "chinky eyes" got drawn on a Starbucks cup in America, it caused a bloggy firestorm. Because while America clearly hasn't solved racism (that's not how these things work anyway), America
DOES talk about these things, and everyone can learn where the lines are drawn, because everybody is witness, or party, to these discussions.
It was just a little over a month ago -
ONLY A FREAKING MONTH since since the last blackface fuck-up on
Korean Television. (SNL Korea's blackface Dreamgirls skit). That time I was talking about the ambiguities on the radio -- why should American cultural sensitivities be suddenly forced on the entire world's media, just because someone might put something on Youtube?...
But when I look at these images, and this video... such attempts to contextualize go out the window.
Look at the video above. This is not a video that would only offend Americans sensitized to blackface. Look at these pictures. Find me an African who doesn't find that offensive. (
source)
How about this music video. (
Bubble Sisters were 2003. We STILL haven't learned, nine fucking years later?)
How about this fried chicken commercial. (Uploaded 2009; not sure when it aired)
This no longer strikes me as an isolated incident. This strikes me as something Korean society needs to have a soul-searching discussion about.
(
source)
Because if foreigners wearing hanboks is the only acceptable way to put foreigners on TV in Korea -- either in Hanboks, or with bones in their freaking noses... Korea really, SERIOUSLY needs to talk about portraying non-Koreans in the media, in a way that treats them as humans, as adults, as thinking, feeling beings, and not just as embodiments of stereotypes, (
source)
as a validating foreign gaze,
(
source)
or as pretty faces saying Korean men are
handsome, Kimchi is delicious, and everything Korea is a wonderful! (Misuda
accomplished more than that... but it did put otherness on display...and nobody's explained to me why the
opinions of
pretty, foreign women (put your emphasis on whichever of those words you choose) are more valuable than the opinions of non-pretty, or non-foreign, or non-women.
I wrote about that here.
... if those are the only images foreigners get in domestic Korean media, we'll have another generation growing up who are unable to think of Korea's relationship with the world in any frame other than "us and them" and that's not a healthy attitude for a country that wants to be a global player.
The cultural argument needs consideration: last time around, I argued it's ethnocentric to say the whole world must ascribe to
our values of what's offensive... but it's also ethnocentric, and just fucking disrespectful, to say "because we're a different culture, we're allowed to mock your racial/ethnic/gender identity group as much as we like. You just don't understand us." (And it's dishonest to
continue hiding behind "We don't know any better" (you get to play that card once) or "You weren't the audience" (that's not how things work in the hyper-connected information age. Everybody sees everything all the time). Does Korea
really want to be considered an elite/advanced nation? Then set that "Korea's still a developing country" excuse to rest and start taking ownership.
So between the type of tunnel vision that says "Everything that offends me must disappear from everywhere" and the type of tunnel vision that says "Because we don't share every aspect of your cultural history, we're allowed to brazenly continue practices that we are well aware are offensive to a lot of people" we need to find a middle ground where all involved cultures feel they're being respected. It needs to be a reciprocal conversation: not just a dictation of one media's mores to another culture, nor a flat cultural argument and a subsequent refusal to listen.
And the way to find that middle ground is to talk about it. Continually -- these kinds of discussions are never completely finished (cf: Billy Crystal), but every time we revisit the same themes, we've come a little farther, learned a little more, and are more likely to get things right. So let's talk about it. In English, and also in Korean.
Because here's what happens next: Korea's One Use Only "Get out of Jail Free" ignorance card has already been played (back in freaking 2003, when the Bubble Sisters used blackface)
Now that the free pass has already been used, every subsequent time garbage like this gets on Korean Television, or in Korean newspapers, bloggers are going to write about it. And send letters to groups like the Simon Weisenthal Center and the NAACP about it, and contact the journalists we know, and share it on facebook and twitter. And cause
as much embarrassment as possible for korea, until the TV producers who say "Yeah, sure, paint her face black. It'll be funny." Stop saying that. Until the KTO has a sit-down with the chairperson of MBC and says "Stop undoing our Korea promotion work with your racist brain-sharts." Until SM Entertainment and JYP lay a little smackdown on local Korean media for making their Hallyu venture harder to achieve because instead of "K-pop? Weren't they on letterman" the initial respons becomes "Korea? Isn't that the country that still makes blackface jokes?"
And while we're here, let's not forget: there's already an
anti-Hallyu backlash in Japan, and
other places. As
Block B discovered, it doesn't take much to get an entire nation up in arms at a percieved slight (cf: Jay
Leno's dog eating joke and
here), and you never know when this or that story unexpectedly goes viral. If MBC decides to mock the Thai, or Filipinos, or Vietnamese, next time their variety shows can't think of a joke, if the next target are some dirty Chinese instead of some blackface pickaninnies, that rumbling anti-Hallyu backlash could crystallize into something too big, and too angry, for an apology video to smooth over.
Korea wanted a place on the world stage. Well, now that you're here, this is what happens. Everybody watches everything, and dirty laundry gets hung out for the world to see. There are no more secret shames, so let's hope Korean TV programmers, music video producers, and the like, start treating non-Korean cultures with a little more respect and responsibility.
We haven't forgotten about you, T-ara. Don't worry.
More links:
Hitler and Anti-Semitic stuff:
Bar named Gestapo
Hitler bars.
Let's not forget the kinds of apologies Koreans have been known to demand in the face of insults to their heritage.
The Nazi Coreana ads: using Nazi symbols and Hitler references to sell cosmetics.
Explaining why Koreans suffered more than the Jews. Because it's a contest, and the people who suffered the most win.
