Author: Stephen

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Literature Analysis Stephen Zhu

Literature Analysis:

Puzar states that performing “Aegyo” does not detriment both the performer and the receiver in terms of the “vertical mobility” and the power in their professional career and private life (Puzar and Hong 2018, 7). I agree with Puzar about his statement that the capability of performing “Aegyo” is a “soft power” of females in South Korea, and I believe it has been used by the SNSD group to successfully attract their intended audiences.

According to Puzar, performing “Aegyo” refers to a widely accepted practice of East Asian culture, specifically South Korean females, to pretend and imitate the behavior, facial expression, linguistic and the voices of young children or pet animals to give the receiver an impression of cute, vulnerability and lovability (Puzar and Hong 2018, 1).  As a Ph.D. in Culture Study, Puzar has done a thorough and professional research to study the “Aegyo” in the Korean social context by distributing questionnaires and interviewing with the interlocutors. The result shows that the “ideal female” in Korea usually can perform “Aegyo” in a situational intelligent way, and it is a “tactical tool” that has been used by the female to serve a various purpose such as negotiating, softening the conversation, entertaining the superior and ultimately achieving their goal (Puzar and Hong 2018, 13). Since the SNSD group’s major targeted audiences are the mid-age males in a patriarchal society, many of the choreographic videos have demonstrated the characteristics of “Aegyo” either performed by the girls or in the setting and the lyrics of the songs, such as gee, oh!, I got a boy and much more.

Moreover, in the traditional East-Asian context, feminity has always been associated with “water”, although the water is soft, it still has the capability of shaping rocks. Although being “soft” or act “Aegyo” may look like it is disempowering women, but it may turn out to be a more adapted and suitable tool to empower female in a patriarchal society where social hierarchy has been strictly enforced.

 

Bibliography:

  • Puzar, Aljosa, and Yuwon Hong. “Korean Cuties: Understanding Performed Winsomeness (Aegyo) in South Korea.” The Asia Pacific Journal of Anthropology (2018): 1-17. doi:10.1080/14442213.2018.1477826.
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Video Analysis Stephen Zhu

Video Analysis:

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It is widely known that the management companies target different market segments with different idol groups, according to the founder of the SM entertainment, Lee Soo-man mentions that the main target segments of the Girls Generation are the male audiences in their 30s and 40s. According to the research conducted by Puzar, it is more likely for a younger female to gain a favorable impression from the elders or superior if they perform “Aegyo” well (Puzar and Hong 2018, 10). In order to better capture the target audiences which is the mid-age males, many of the SNSD’s choreographic videos, “oh!”, for example, demonstrated a large degree of “Aegyo” in their performances, settings, and lyrics.

The characteristics of “Aegyo” in performances are body movements, facial expression or behavior that resembles the clumsiness, vulnerability, and cuteness of young children or a pet animal, that gives the receivers an impression of innocent, lovable, vulnerable and approachable (Puzar and Hong 2018, 2). The main identifier of “Aegyo” in performance includes but not limited to cutified tantrum related movements, fist-waving, vertical clapping, winking, clumsiness, ignorance, raising the center of the eyebrow and imitating the facial expression of the pet animals (Puzar and Hong 2018, 2). In the music video “oh!”, there are more than twenty counts of Aegyo-related performances. The most prominent and significant ones start at the beginning of the video, where the performers, acting as college cheerleaders, gathered in a room chatting and having fun but not studying; and one of the performer’s clumsy mistakes at 1:19 of the video when they were practicing cheerleading. Moreover, “Aegyo-related” body movements such as fist-waving at 23s, winking at 36s, tantrum related behavior at 1:07 and 1:13, and fake crying at 2:07 has been repeated and performed throughout the whole video.

The setting of the video, including the choices of the items shown, the main color theme and the costume, have all contributed to further demonstrate the winsomeness of the girls. The main colors of the video are a combination of bright colors such as pink, purple and tiffany blue. In Asian culture, these colors are all associated with young, innocent, energetic feminity. Moreover, a football helmet and a football have appeared throughout the whole video, girls were kissing and touching the helmet which shows their admiration for masculinity and demonstrated their desire to receive protection from the men. The costume that shows plenty of legs and skins distinct the more seductive and sexualized “Aegyo” performed in the video from the “Aegyo” of the innocent young children and demonstrates hyper-feminity of the performer.

The lyrics in the choreographic video “oh!”, further performs “Aegyoness” by submissively putting themselves in a subordinate position to male. From analyzing the translated version of the lyrics, many of the lyrics suggest that it is the girls “first-time” to talk to the boys like that. Also, most of the lyrics show that the girls are hoping the boys to look at them and implies that the girls do their hair and wears makeup for the male’s attention. Interestingly, the attention-seeking behavior can also be found in infants and young children. Furthermore, a line of lyrics says that: “…don’t make fun of me, I’m just saying some stupid things again,” which implies that the girls admit they are been stupid and childish in front of their Oppa.

It is widely argued that the performance of “Aegyo” detriments the power of female by positioning female in a subordinate position to male. However, under the cultural context of Korea, it is widely accepted, or demanded that the girls to perform “Aegyo” and the research of Puzar indicates that female is more likely to succeed in both their private life and career if they can perform “Aegyo” well (Puzar and Hong 2018, 13). Therefore, Girls generation’s thorough performance of “Aegyo” in all components of their choreographic did help them to acquire a large group of mid-age male fans.

 

Bibliography:

Puzar, Aljosa, and Yuwon Hong. “Korean Cuties: Understanding Performed Winsomeness (Aegyo) in South Korea.” The Asia Pacific Journal of Anthropology (2018): 1-17. doi:10.1080/14442213.2018.1477826.

Puzar, Aljosa. “Asian Dolls and the Westernized Gaze: Notes on the Female Dollification in South Korea.” Asian Women27, no.2 (2011): 81-111

Lin, Xi, and Robert Rudolf. “Does K-pop Reinforce Gender Inequalities? Empirical Evidence from a New Data Set.” Asian Women33, no.4 (2017): 27-54

Epstein, Stephen, and James Turnbull. “Girls’ Generation? Gender, (Dis)Empowerment, and K-Pop.” In The Korean Popular Culture Reader, edited by Kyung Hyun Kim and Youngmin Choe. 315-36. Durham: Duke University Press, 2014.

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Video 2

Thesis Statement:

Despite some of SNSD’s music videos and the lyrics are subjected to male gaze, their capability of demonstrating characteristics that are appealing to the female fan base contributed to their large distribution of female fans.

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Short Essay Stephen Zhu

I must give my warmest  applause to all the group mates who has participated in the preparation and the production of this video. I really have to say everyone in our group has really done an outstanding job to create such an amazing video. Without being physically participated in the process of making the video, we can never understand how difficult it is to produce a high-quality music videos, not to mention we were just producing a cover video. For this cover video assignment, I mainly worked as the camera man and the assistant for our director Tong Lin. Due to the fact that I was too busy during the time of the video shoot so I will be taking more responsibility in the production of the second video.

When we were planing the video, we figured that the video editing will be a time-consuming task so we started the production process pretty early. Tong Lin and I had tried to closely analysis the original music video frame by frame to gain a basic understand of all the elements in the video. I think the most difficult part is to learn and imitate the camera angle in every scene of the original music, since the camera angle follows the beats of the music and the performance, so we had to rapidly zoom-in and out and move around following the music. Moreover, the lack of professional equipments adds an additional level of difficulties, cause the original music video was filmed by more then 2 to 3 cameras simultaneously in multiple different angles. With only 1 camera, we had to have the girls dance the same move again and again so we can capture the group dances from different angle.

Although there were a lot of difficulties in  producing the video, but the overall process is still fun and aspirational. As someone who had never participated in filming music videos prior to this course, I have to say it really allows me to understand how much effort that the pros put in to create those amazing videos.

 

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American Music Influence on Kpop in the Past and the Present

How did American music influence Korean music of the past and of the present? Are the influences of the past still prominent in Kpop today?

From the 19th century to the 21st century, the Korean music industry has been influenced by the Japanese music in the colonial era, and the American music during, and after the Korean War. Among all the foreign influences on the Korean music, I would say the American music culture has the most significant impact on the evolution of Korean music regarding the style of the music and the preferences of the domestic audiences, and these influences are still apparent even in the contemporary  K-pop musical products.

The major influence of American music on the Korean music started during the Korean War. The USA MGIK, which was the name of the USA troop situated in South Korea, provided the opportunity for the Korean citizens to experience the “American Music” through a radio channel called the AFKN (Shin and Kim 2014, 275).  The original purpose of the AFKN radio station was to educate the US troops in Korea about the Korean culture, and it also acted as a source of entertainment for the US troops by broadcasting the American hit songs from time to time. Due to the close relationship between Korea and the US, the AFKN radio station had also become a popular option for the Koreans. As a result, the US popular music got to spread among Korean society. Meanwhile, jazz and rock ‘n’ roll, these two completely new music style had immediately attracted a group of Korean audiences, some people started to try to learn the songs from the AFKN radio station (Shin and Kim 2014, 275). The other primary driver that causes the Korean artists to learn the US pop music was the American Military Base Show. In order to become a high-ranking performer at the MIPALGUN show and earn a considerably high income, Korean artists learned to perform the latest popular American songs and dance moves to entertain the troops (shin and Kim 2014, 277). After the beginning of the Vietnam War, many US troops left Korea to fight the Vietnam War, the Korean artists who used to perform in the military camp now had to modify their performances and integrate Korean elements to attract domestic audiences. Although the US troops were out of Korea, the entrenched influences of US popular music still shaped the music preferences of the domestic music industry (Shin and Kim 2014, 276). After the 1970s, rock and R&B elements became increasingly popular, which motivates more and more performers to start performing songs that contain these two elements. In the 1980s and 1990s, new music styles from the US such as hip-hop, pop, and ballad has flooded the Korean music industry.  Also, many new performing groups were formed, and some of the idol groups became the legend and the pioneers who integrated both rap and rock music into their songs, such as Seo Taiji and Boys. Since then, many young artists who studied aboard in the US returned to Korea and shaped the Korean music industry utilizing the experience that they had with the latest popular culture in the US (Jin and Ryoo 2012, 119). Due to the success of the cultural hybridity in the contemporary K-pop music, the present Korean performers are more encouraged to integrate English and foreign culture into their musical products, so the foreign audiences can enjoy and resonate with the music as much as the domestic audiences do (Jin and Ryoo 2012, 128).

In the past,  the AFKN radio station introduced the new music genre from the US to the domestic residents, and the income from the MIPALGUN show provided the incentives for the Korean artists to learn and perform the US music. However, in modern k-pop industry, the main reason that drives the assimilation of Korean pop music and the American pop music is the trend of cultural globalization.

Bibliography:

  • Shin, Hyunjoon, and Phil Ho Kim. “Birth, Death, and Resurrection of Group Sound Rock.”In The Korean Popular Culture Reader, edited by Kyung Hyun Kim and Youngmin Choe. 275-95. Durham: Duke University Press, 2014.
  • Jin, Dal Yong, and Woongjae Ryoo. “Critical Interpretation of Hybrid K-Pop: The Global-Local Paradigm of English Mixing in Lyrics.” Popular Music and Society37, no. 2 (2012): 113-31. doi:10.1080/03007766.2012.731721.

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