Discussion #3

Essay 1

Q3.There are an increasing number of foreign idols, foreign choreographers, videographers, songwriters, and so on in K-pop. What are the larger implications and motivations of the increased foreign production-side participation in K-pop?

Ruolin Wu

Nowadays, with the development of social media, K-pop industry has moved from off-line to online, from domestic to global market. The entry of non-Korean idols,choreographers, videographers and songwriters become a new strategy for Korean entertainment companies to target more overseas audiences. To illustrate, there are more and more K-pop songs associated with English lyrics, which is a way to attract foreign language speaker for reducing the linguistic barrier can make audience find familiar cultural component, and eventually increase the consumptions. Media psychologists suggests that the raise of pleasure of comprehension in audience’s mind result in more recreational consumptions (Vorderer & Hartman 2009:540). By introducing two media psychological words cultural convergence “ when audiences confront foreign entertainment produced in a similar culture, they will find it familiar but less novel” and cultural divergence “when audiences encounter foreign entertainment generated in a dissimilar culture, it will be perceived as novel but less familiar” can better explain the cultural distance and foreign products (Baek 2015:733). In short, cultural convergence involves the audience whose culture is similar to Korean and cultural divergence involves the audience whose culture is different from Korean.

With the growing number of non-Korean idols and singers such as Chinese, Japanese, Thais, K-pop idol groups are mixing multicultural components in their productions in order to step into the global market with a low level barrier. For example, the Korean girl group F(x) is mixing one Chinese, two Korean and two Korean American members, as a Chinese audience, I can definitely say that this group is really popular in China due to a large part of their member Victoria Song, the leader of F(x). Which means that audience enjoys watching and listening familiar entertainments (Baek 2015:733). As the important distribution of K-pop culture are major Asia and America, so the main target of K-pop global market can be divided in two parts (Jung 2009:73).However, the strategies for companies to approach those two types of audience are different. The previous example of F(x) illustrates the preplanned market, representing companies make multinational groups to target Asian countries (Beak 2015:734). The other strategy is word-of-mouth effort. As an example, the unexpected success and popularity of Psy’s Gangnam Style is actually because of Scooter Braun who is an American entrepreneur, talent manager, investor, philanthropist, and entertainment executive introduced this song via Twitter, resulting in millions of consumptions on Youtube. The role of Scooter Braun in word-of-mouth effort is an opinion leader, with his spread to those different cultures from Korean, the reputation of Scooter Braun leads to Psy’s success in western audience. With similar logic, production with famous foreign choreographers, videographers and songwriters is using word-of-mouth, their reputation in their countries can gain more consumers as well.

To conclude, the large increase of foreign production side participates in K-pop is the motivation of Korean entertainment companies to target more diverse audience from outside of Korea. Preplanned market and word-of-mouth strategies are two really powerful tools for companies to use to expand their sales. In my point of view, at present, companies can never be successful without the help of social media, which implies that knowing how to use social media properly is the key concept for K-pop industry.

Bibliography

Baek, Young Min. "Relationship between Cultural Distance and Cross-Cultural Music Video Consumption on YouTube." Social Science Computer Review 33, no. 6 (2015): 730-748.

Jung, Eun-Young. "Transnational Korea: A Critical Assessment of the Korean Wave in Asia and the United States." Southeast Review of Asian Studies 31, (2009): 69.

Essay 2

Miradee:

As the media industry continues to have an over-representation of men in production work, it is no surprise that a vast majority of media, including K-media, is viewed through male gaze, a term proposed by British film theorist Laura Mulvey to explain the treatment of females as mere sexual objects on the screen. With support from apparent psychical and ideological principles, it has been determined that the “male figure cannot bear the burden of sexual objectification” (Mulvey, 1975: 12). In response to this dominant way of thought, I argue that although female gaze does exist in K-media, the current patriarchal environment we live in makes it difficult for the term to carry an equal meaning to that of male gaze.

Men in films have traditionally been given the role of active hero while women are used to exemplify the male's greatness through his display of control and power towards the female. The male is meant to have a stronger visual impact as “he is a figure in a landscape” (Mulvey, 1975: 13) and immediately captures the viewer's attention. The same set-up can often be found in Kpop music videos. Specifically for male artists, even if the audience mostly consists of women, male gaze is implemented because men are represented without the need of an outside gaze and instead look upon their own conscious physical satisfaction, unlike their female counterparts (Epstein and Joo, 2012: 17). In other words, the presence of a female is used to reaffirm the male's sense of greatness, reducing the female's importance by focusing more on fragmented body parts and less on her full identity. Furthermore, the female viewer's “sexual longings are equated with a wish to be dominated and to service the object of desire” (Epstein and Joo, 2012: 16), meaning that women exist only to feed the ego of the superior men.

Nonetheless, I believe that certain Kpop groups are looking to push for some change and defy society's reliance on male gaze. For example, the now disbanded idol group, 2NE1, consisted of four female members who often sported odd hairstyles, wore interesting fashion, and exhibited fierce attitudes through their music worked towards female empowerment. However, female gaze cannot simply be seen as the equivalent of male gaze because “lingering patriarchal structures allow nude torsos to convey individual phallic power, whereas feminine beauty, though meant to entice, becomes the property of the national collective” (Epstein and Joo, 2012: 18). The persistent power imbalance between men and women in society limits the impact of female gaze. In many instances, the “man controls the film phantasy and also emerges as the representative of power” (Mulvey, 1975: 12), leaving very little room for the woman to challenge him.

To the question of whether or not female gaze exists in Kpop, my answer to that would be yes. Yet, it is undeniably difficult to replicate male gaze in a world dominated by masculine worldviews. Hopefully, with the emergence of more female representatives in the media industry in particular, the norms will be continued to be subverted and allow female gaze a chance to evolve in a more positive light.

Bibliography:

Epstein, Stephen, and Rachael M. Joo. “Multiple Exposures: Korean Bodies and the Transnational Imagination.” The Asia-Pacific Journal 10, no. 33 (2012): 1-24.

Mulvey, Laura. “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema.” Screen 16, no. 3, (1975): 6–18.

*Currently google sites do not support the hanging indent for the bibliography, we are still trying to find a way around this.