Author: mishelle liu

Literature application by Mishelle Liu

From his days as a member in the idol group 2pm, Jay Park came a long way to becoming the entrepreneur he is now. What differentiates him from the majority of performers in the popular music industry in Korea, is his cultural identity and his ability to “crossover” (Snorton 2015: 349). The term cross over “a piece of music can be made to appeal to people who would normally not find it interesting” (Ibid.), while a certain type of music will have its target audience, by crossing over, one can make their work appeal to new audiences. The shift in his music style, from typical idol group production to his hip hop and R&B solos, shows how crossing over allowed him to gain new fans while at the same time still appeal to his original fan base.

Hip hop music is a genre in which “authenticity articulates with regulatory discourses on racial purity,” thus, while “’real artists’ and fans are presumed to have experienced its lyrical content matter”, but at the same “music is instrumentalized as a form of racial nationalism” (Ibid., 351). With his American education and background, Jay Park’s journey as an artist in the social context of contemporary Korea is a combination of two cultures and a clash of music genres. To make hip hop music from niche to mainstream for korean audience, he first explores the possibilities of this market from the point of view of a successful idol group, then moves on to seeking possibilities of bringing to his audience more controversial and authentic content. What makes his experience stands out is the stereotypes that regulates the industry.

In conclusion, to Jay Park, there was the struggle to overcome stereotypes in both America and Korea. The difficulty to be recognized internationally as a hip-hop artist for someone with his background goes without saying.

Snorton, Riley. “Dark Cosmos: Making Race, Shaping Stardom.” In The SAGE Handbook of Popular Music, edited by Andy Bennett and Steve Waksman. 346-60. Washington D.C.: SAGE publications Ltd, 2015.

Video Analysis “Joah” by Mishelle Liu

“Joah” was a song written and performed by Jay Park, produced by Cha Cha Malone released in 2013. This song, compared to his recent works, has quite the contrast to his current star image. Rather than the daring artist that we all know, “Joah” is a more typical K-pop idol’s love song, one that fans would smile while listening to. To capture the warm feeling of having someone you like, the title and the main theme is “좋아”, Korean for “to like”. This simple word play gives Korean audiences a clear definition of the song’s content while also making it easy to pronounce for English speaking audiences. Aside from a few simple phrases, the lyrics are mainly Korean. This is a song that expresses how much one absolutely loves everything about his lover, showing his feelings of joy when he thinks about her and promising her that she will be his one and only.

The sweet melody and warm instrumental all creates a lovey-dovey atmosphere. The music quality that the brass band brings makes this a very old-school, warm feeling song. The music video, which was shot in Seattle, features Jay as the main character and a girl that he likes as the heroine. The warm hues of the scenery bring the audience a pleasant feeling. Throughout the video, setting changed from day to night, locations were all over Seattle: from streets to a dance studio, and then to a romantic ocean side bench. To create a boy next door, easy going looks, his outfits varied from simple denim jackets, flannels, to sporty jumpsuits featuring the Seattle SuperSonics. He looked like your typical school crush. The girl is also dressed in such fashion: simple tee shirt, long hair, innocent and friendly girl-next-door look. In most scenes we can see these two walk side by side, while Jay Park express in his lyrics how he feels about this girl. In other scenes, we see Jay park hanging out with his friends and dancing in the studio. Knowing his background attending middle school in the states and b-boying, fans will easily associate these scenes with how Jay Park was when he was in school, letting them feel closer to their idol.

Although this song is more expressive of love and the feeling of liking someone than the mainstream Korean culture norms, it reflects more of Jay Park’s American culture influence. As I mentioned before, the lyrics are mostly sung in Korean, however, the chorus phrases and simple sentences are written in English. Most of these are very blunt, such as “Stay with me forever and ever baby please”, and “I want you and I need you, don’t ever leave my side”. This hybridization of English and Korean language helps to convey to a local audience a western culture social setting. It presents “the contemporary K-pop trend of mixed lyrics that illustrates the playfulness accompanying the convergence of multilingual ingredients” (Jin and Ryoo 2014: 128).

While his works nowadays looks vastly different from “Joah”, Jay Park’s more approachable side is still evident in his work such as “Sexy 4 Eva”. To appeal to his previous fans from his days in 2pm and his later gained audience since his transformation to a solo artist and entrepreneur, we can see how the different types of music that he produces will continue to help him gain popularity and recognition as a well-rounded artist.

“박재범 JAY PARK –’좋아 Joah’ .” Youtube video, 4:05. Posted by “JAY
PARK,” April 9, 2013. https://www.youtube.com/watch?
v=rMtCJC39SqU

Jin, Dal Yong, and Woongjae Ryoo. “Critical Interpretation of Hybrid
K-Pop: The Global- Local Paradigm of English Mixing in
Lyrics.” Popular Music and Society 37, no. 2 (2014): 113-31.

In many households across the globe, television has been and continues to be a source of information, a link to global affairs, and a medium for entertainment and mass communication. I remember my childhood in China, waking up to 7 a.m. news coming from the living room TV. After coming to Canada, because of the language barrier, neither my mother nor myself were fond of watching local TV programs, instead we would be watching Japanese or Korean dramas from online sources together.

Much of the audiences that used to rely on television in North America has changed their viewing habits, mostly due to emergence of internet-based companies such as youtube, Netflix, Hulu, these options stand as strong competitions to major networks (Lee 2018, 107).

However, South Korean television is not experiencing the same change and shift in its audience’s viewing preferences. Being the TV nation that South Korea is, television’s place in people’s home remain consistent, and internet is merely an add on for “disseminating the entertainment and information already produced and aired by television” (Lee 2018, 107).

The television’s role in contemporary popular culture in South Korea, in comparison to our smartphones or tabloids, it remains “a prevalent mass medium in the digital age”, for “its simplicity” (Kim 2018, 55). The qualities that it holds, “immediacy and intimacy” (Kim 2018, 54) brings the liveliness of theatre to the privacy of one’s home. Our viewing habits changed largely from the day and age where cable TV channels were initially introduced, 23 years from where the changes began, we notice an uprising trend of a more complex consumer habit: “creating intermedial activities between TV and other platforms”(Kim 2018, 55), multitasking, from tweeting to texting, it all shapes the viewing experience into a larger social activity than what it was before.

TV also function as a medium to distribute and aid the production and circulation of K-pop, programs like “kBS’s Gayo Top Ten” which ran from 1981-1991, and present day music chart shows that continues to be popular such as M Countdown, Music core, Music Bank, and Ingigayo (Kim 2018, 58). This type of programs are widely popular in Korea although they don’t have much presence in North America nowadays. The reason behind is the “demand for live performance” in order to satisfy “the desire for the visual mark of authenticity.” (Kim 2018, 72).

In conclusion, South Korean television industry still holds the key to people’s hearts. The simplicity of the experience it provides allow for immediate and intimate connection to its audience. This trend will likely continue for its ability to combine multiple functions together and the social influence it holds, it is harder to be replaced than the Western counterparts.

 

Lee, Jin-Kyung. “Visualizing and Invisiblizing the Subempire: Labor, Humanitarianism, and Popular Culture across South Korea and Southeast and South Asia.” Journal of Korean Studies, Vol. 23 No.1 (2018):95-109.

Suk-Young, Kim. K-Pop Live: Fans, Idols, and Multimedia Performance. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2008.