Tag: K-Pop

Parasocial Patreon Post Bonus

Stitch
https://soundcloud.com/zina-marie-772368491/parasocial-patreon-post-bonus/s-mZFLYAn59oF

The recording this is from on Patreon (out 12/10) is uh… 20 minutes long and this is kind of a segue away from the thing I was actually focusing on and therefore not super relevant. But I wrote and recorded it so… here it goes anyway.

Transcript

In Haeryun Kang’s NPR piece “’Hitman’ Bang Si-hyuk, The Brand-New Billionaire Behind BTS”, there are two parts that stand out to me when it comes to thinking of how people misunderstand and, to an extent, misrepresent, the parasocial relationship as it exists between idol and fans. 

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Music Video Anatomy #5 – Uh Oh

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Title: Uh Oh

Artist: (G) I-DLE

Setting:

The first setting of the music video – and the part worth clocking and commenting on for me – is a part of a strip mall that looks like something you’d see in the United States with English signs for a tattoo parlor, a corner store or bodega (the store on the right), and a pawn shop (trust me on that one). If I went outside right now, those three things are probably right close to each other in my own neighborhood. They are not anywhere near where any member of (G)I-DLE calls home because of where these businesses are located.

The use of the corner store/strip mall as a locale for the video is to ping viewers’ brains into going “ah, yes, they’re in ‘the hood’ and so this song is authentic”. You see similar attempts to situate Korean (and Korean American) artists accordingly in older videos like CL’s Hello Bitches or Dumbfoundead’s “Mijangwon” where the setting has its own very loud character.

Sound:

Described as belonging to “the boom bap hip hop genre” both the music and visuals of “Uh Oh” were put together to evoke this sense of authenticity in hip hop that always makes my teeth itch. I do think that (G)I-DLE – and Soyeon in particular in the group – are really talented and make interesting and innovative music that their peers aren’t always doing. Like 4Minute before them, this is a hip-hop oriented group and that means a lot of their song stylings lean heavily on things like “boom bap” hip hop or trap or whatever they think will catch an audience that knows them but isn’t familiar with hip hop outside of them.

Styling:

Clothing wise, the young women of (G)I-DLE are all wearing clothing meant to make you think they’re hip hop. Whatever hip hop actually means to them. From them on down to the back up dancers, this is a really good example of “hood cosplay” specifically because it’s the clothing and hairstyles in context. On their own, in a montage of the girls hanging out at an indoor mall or playing laser tag or something… the outfits would literally not have the context of “we’re basically cosplaying folks who live in ~the hood~” and you could handwave away some of that.

Also, at one point Yuqi does have what looks like bantu knots in her hair and even if we reset the video so it was entirely in the desert or they were floating in outer space… I have to say that that doesn’t help.

Full Thoughts:

In an article from Soompi about the music video release, (G) I-dle’s Soyeon is quoted as saying:

“I didn’t necessarily plan to make ’90s-style music when I started working on the song, but I wanted to do hip hop. So I thought about what kind of hip hop would be unique to (G)I-DLE and not too cliché, and I thought of boom bap hip hop.”

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Link Lineup – November BONUS

Stitch

Everyone’s writing such good content and I can’t actually bring myself to wait until December to share some of the stuff I’ve read since the last Link Lineup post! So bonus links for all!

The Business of Selling White Women the Righteousness of Their Own Anger

After all, it was a white woman feigning outrage (that she later admitted was a lie) that killed Emmet Till in the first place. But while white readers ordered so many books about white privilege during the summer of Black Lives Matter protests over the police murders of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor that they created a shortage, the majority of books about women’s anger often depict all women’s anger as being equal, a force for good and never a tool used to silence and punish others; they largely ignore the slew of white women having meltdowns at the sight of non-white people having barbeques, enjoying swimming pools, or birdwatching that abound on the internet. Perhaps that’s because the idea that white women’s anger is, has been, and continues to be a source of terror for a lot of marginalized people is simply not something white women, even “good” white women who marched for Floyd and Taylor, are particularly interested in buying.

I think it’s been interesting how I have constantly been accused of anger – when I am at best mildly annoyed and deeply inconvenienced – by white people who are angry that I exist and that I write what I do.

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Music Video Anatomy #3 – No More Dream

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Did you catch the first two installments of my Music Video Anatomy series last month? I covered Epik High’s epic ode to hating the haters “Born Hater” and the H1GHR Music collab for the TELÉFONO Remix!

Title: No More Dream

Artist: BTS

Setting:

There are a couple main settings for No More Dream. At points across the video they’re on a school bus. At others, they’re in an alley in front of it. At the start of the video, they get off the school bus into skatepark with a skatepark with a quaint neighborhood theme and then a skatepark with classroom… themes.

One thing I like noting within Music Video Anatomy is when a hip hop video doesn’t go with expected settings. With “No More Dream” you can tell that there’s a goal for there to be some clear hip hop connection but then, as you can see on the Behind the Screen site’s entry on the No More Dream music video, there are a lot of nods to what’s basically alt culture that isn’t related to hip hop in the US? Which is pretty cool.

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[Video (Re) Post] Cultural Appropriation, Choice, and Some Cornrows

Stitch

In this video, we’re looking at the recent dustup with ATEEZ Hongjoong’s cornrows, KQ Entertainment’s statement in response to criticism, and how even here fandom is full of people who CHOOSE to be antiblack *to their fellow fans* in the name of their idol favorites.

Links:

ATEEZ Parent Company KQ Entertainment Issues Apology for Hongjoong’s Cornrows (https://www.teenvogue.com/story/ateez…) – My news coverage for Teen Vogue The statement from KQ Entertainment on the Daum fancafe (http://cafe.daum.net/ATEEZ/n62e/173)

“K-pop’s online activism for Black Lives Matter is complicated” – Vox’s Reset Podcast (https://open.spotify.com/episode/0fix…) – Start at the 16-minute mark for Miranda Larsen’s incredible segment!

The Cultural Appropriation Conversation So Very Hairy (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5vidw…)

Appropriation, Appreciation, and Good Ole Chicken Noodle Soup (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0yXnC…)

What Fandom Racism Looks Like: Antiblackness in the K-Pop Industry and Its Fandom Spaces (https://stitchmediamix.com/nonficpost…) – The masterpost for my ongoing project!

K-Pop Fandom Racism Bingo

Stitch

New to my weird need to make bingo cards for racism I’ve seen in the fandoms I’m in? Check out my Black Panther and Star Wars fandom racism bingo cards!

Unfortunately for everyone who follows me… I’m at it again.

Nothing new has happened in my primary fandoms. I just like making these cards. (Because both the Black Panther and Star Wars bingo cards were born directly from witnessing or experiencing antiblackness, but this has just been on my to-do list for a month or so.)

So here’s my fandom racism bingo card for… various K-pop fandoms. It’s majorly multi purpose so it can be used in reference to almost anything when it comes to racism in these fandom spaces.

Now, here are some helpful explanations/unhelpful snark!

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On Korean Artists Using Their Platforms to Say that Black Lives Matter

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I didn’t expect that I’d be writing about the Black Lives Matter movement in the context of Korean pop and hip hop music – or their fandoms.

But that’s what this post is actually about – barring some all too necessary backstory about fatal antiblackness and police brutality in this country.

Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors, and Opal Tometi created the Black Lives Matter movement began in 2013 as a hashtag (#BlackLivesMatter) in direct response to the acquittal of George Zimmerman, who had murdered 17-year-old Trayvon Martin the year before.

I remember the birth of the movement, but more than that, I remember watching the news when Zimmerman was acquitted. I remember clearly feeling anger that that man killed a child only a few years older than my oldest nieceling and was going to get away with it. Because we watched as we were told once again that Black lives didn’t matter.

I say once again because the United States is one of many countries to make it clear that Black people – our lives, our opinions, and our hopes – do not truly matter to them. The United States has a history that started with the Triangle Trade, kept on going through Reconstruction Era white supremacy up to the Civil Rights movement and –

Just hasn’t stopped.

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“But Namjoon,” Nothing – Antiblackness in the K-pop Industry and its Fandom Spaces

Stitch1 Comment

Have you checked out the rest of the works in this year-long project yet?

The first time I think I saw a “But Namjoon” in the wild was almost a year ago when Stray Kids’ Bang Chan came under fire for the attempted cornrows in his hair back in mid-April 2019.

During that time, fans of the group would respond to any person with a BTS-related icon that commented on that particular instance of cultural appropriation with comments dismissing their comments because “Don’t you stan BTS”.

Many of the comments were like “But Namjoon [had attempted an afro, had whatever this style is supposed to be, covered that one Shinhwa song, etc] so how can you be critical of anyone else if you like him”.

If this was strictly an attempt at calling out hypocrisy that acknowledged that our faves in this industry are all (largely) similarly problematic when it comes to respecting Black culture(s), maybe I could’ve gotten it. Maybe I could’ve even managed to gloss over it.

But this is not a fandom where that sort of thing happens – most fandoms aren’t.

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Authenticity Essay #4: Gatekeepers and Idol Rappers

Stitch

Back when BTS was a baby group, they were subject to what seems (to me, as a fan coming later on to the group) like a really disproportionate amount of criticism. One theme that got the group loads of criticism?

Their relationship with and attempts at embodying hip-hop culture.

When you watch their m net -hosted series American Hustle Life, the first episode has a selection of headlines revolving around BTS’ debut as a group under BigHit Entertainment (around the 1:05 mark). These headlines, when translated, say things like “BTS challenging real gangster”, “BTS debut, opening up with 90’s gangster”, and “BTS, strengthening the industry with gangster rap”.

As an act, BTs was marketed and developed as a hip-hop idol group.

In the time period that they trained and debuted, a ton of idol groups were also debuting.  Exo (2012), Block B (2011), B.A.P (2012), Winner (2014) and Got7 (2014) are just a handful of male idol groups that debuted roughly within the same era as BTS. But as far as I can tell through research, while all idol rappers are met with the same sort of disdain and suspicion from “mainstream” and underground rappers alike –

Some of the documented nonsense that BTS – and more specifically, their rapline – has been hit with by some of these dudes and, most likely, their fans has been… wild.

Case in point?

Rapper B-free’s on-again, off-again beef with BTS following a 2013 KBH Hiphop Radio interview that swiftly went sour.

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Stitch Talks Ish: Episode 4 – Where Stitch Processes

Stitch

Episode Notes:

Transcript

Speaker: Hello everyone and welcome to Episode 4 of Stitch Talks Ish. If you missed it check out last month’s episode where I reviewed BTS’s Map of the Soul: 7.

I feel like it’s a fantastic episode, just saying –

But on a related note, episode four is also going to be about K-pop, but from a more critical lens.

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Authenticity Essay #3 – Assigning Authenticity For Clout

Stitch

If you listened to my review of BTS’s new album Map of the Soul:‌ 7, you might have clocked that I’m really fucking feral for BTS’ trio of rappers – RM, Suga, and J-hope. I‌ mention it a bunch of times across my review and my social media.

On top of that, I’m a huge fan of hip hop from around the world and have been since I was a teenager listening to m-flo on my Zune. Like if I didn’t love hip-hop, there’s no way that I would’ve spent a huge amount of the past year having public opinions about hip hop and working my fingers off on this project.

That’s why, when I saw someone I follow retweet a Porochista Khakpour tweet about BTS’ rapline, I‌ kind of like lost it (laughing) at first. In the linked tweet, Khakpour writes that:

“I was a hip hop journalist for a long time &‌ really wish I could convince hip hop heads to give a listen to this track UGH on the new BTS, which features some of the most insane hard rapping i have heard since we used to use embarrassing terms like ”gangsta rap“ I‌‌ SWEAR”

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Stitch Talks Ish: Episode 3 – Stitch Talks Map of the Soul: 7

Stitch

ON BUZZSPROUT

Episode Notes

Transcript/Notes

(Not a 1:1 match with the audio as I did go off script a few times and might not have caught them all.)

Regular readers and listeners know that complaining is my love language. The first two episodes of Stitch Talks Ish probably proved that considering that that’s like what… over an hour of me complaining across the episodes?

But we’re breaking from the trend with the third episode of my series where in I give into the urge to get downright obnoxious on main about all things BTS following the release of their seventh studio album (fourth if you’re only counting the Korean ones). Map of the Soul: 7.

If you’ve managed to miss everything I’ve been going through for… what I want to say is a year and a half edging close to two years if you count the offline fandom-ing I’ve been doing – I’ve spent a lot of my time talking and thinking a lot about Korean popular culture. Like I will keep my foot on the Star Wars fandoms’ throats until the damn fandom stops being shitty, but in the rest of my time?

Well… I’ve been k-popping.

(Look, y’all know that I’m a cheesy mess at best and I needed to get that out.)

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Authenticity Essay #2 – Girls (Not) On Top

Stitch
https://www.instagram.com/p/B4CDtDrFQCV/

Near the end of October 2019, Korean rapper San E posted a photo on Instagram of his favorite (“best”) Korean rappers as part of the promo for something he’d reveal in the following days. He has ten rappers on the list, and while many of them would be on my top ten list… none are female artists.

Now, here’s the thing… I’m not actually surprised that San E couldn’t bring himself to place a single female MC on his list.

First, there’s the way that San E seems to hold female rappers – and women – to a different standard in his time as the host of m-net’s Unpretty Rapstar (2015 to 2016).

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Introducing Authenticity (Mini-Essay #1)

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I sound like a Barbie doll most of the time.

Or Daria.

If you heard me on the phone without knowing anything about me or without seeing my profile picture, you’d probably think I was a sure front runner to play Elle Woods in the musical adaptation of Legally Blonde.

For all intents and purposes, I “sound white”.

I’ve sounded like this my entire life, even when I was a child growing up in the Virgin Islands.

Out of all of my siblings, I am the only one without a recognizable Caribbean accent. If I’m around the right people – my friends and family from the islands or other Black people from other islands – sometimes I sound similar but, it doesn’t happen all that often.

All my life, I’ve struggled with authenticity.

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